Toxic much?

We can all work towards a less toxic environment for everybody. Some initial thoughts – I will follow up on this.

What are we even doing?

We are worried about bullies in school, but what about the bullies children grow up with? Well, let’s have a closer look at this one adult behavior that’s just toxic. I’m sure you’ve seen videos of kids crying over something “ridiculous” and parents laughing at them. You might have even shared a video like that and laughed too. I’m pretty sure I have. Now, what are we teaching our children? The children that are just learning to express their feelings and finding out how the world reacts to them making their feelings known. If their experience is being laughed at – we aren’t teaching them that expressing their feelings is safe, are we?

Of course kids will be distraught about things that are funny to adults. And of course sometimes that will make you laugh. You then have two options. One is to sit with the child and help them deal with what they are feeling. Basically, just talk to them and acknowledge what they are feeling. All feelings are okay and it’s okay to express them and talk about them. Your other option is to laugh at them and their distress, film them and share it all over the internet for other immature adults to laugh at.

For those of us lucky enough to have grown up in pre-cell phone days. We really were lucky. Just imagine one of those stories that are still told at family gatherings. You know one of those stories where you were just being a normal kid showing normal kid behavior and somehow everybody made fun of you, and everybody is still laughing about it. A story that hurts every time it’s told. Now imagine that story was not only shared with family and real-life friends, but with the entire internet.

Just no!

Forced physical contact – are you freaking kidding me?

I’m sure you’ve encountered this one. Some relatives are visiting and toddlers are told to say hello. Then their auntie asks for a hug. The toddler maybe doesn’t feel like it and says “no”. Instead of being the adult and saying something like “okay, how about a high five?” and just not make a big deal of it, we often get a quite different reaction. Something along the lines of “look how sad your auntie is because you don’t hug her” or “you’re making your auntie sad, because you don’t hug her”.

Well, tell you what - auntie is a grown-ass woman who needs to be able to deal with a child not being forced into physical contact. It’s not the child’s job to make their auntie happy. Especially not with forced physical contact. Again, what are we teaching our kids? Forced physical contact is essential to make somebody else happy? And that this is somehow their responsibility? Can we just stop this?!

Have you seen those videos of teachers greeting their students and the students choosing how they want to be greeted? There’s a hug, a handshake, a high five, a little dance move and a bow if I remember correctly. Ever day the students get to choose. I love that concept as it teaches the children to decide what they feel like on that day. How about introducing that in your home?

But they are your parents!

Just as you don’t have to hug or sit on anybody’s lap if you don’t want to; you don’t have to have contact with your parents. People’s reaction to that is usually “but they are your parents!”. They hardly ever ask what has to happen for a child to cut ties with their parents. There usually is a history there. Nobody does that on a whim. It’s a difficult decision to make, but one that is sometimes necessary. Now the trouble is that, because we are conditioned to being responsible for other people’s happiness, we can wait too long to walk away.

The parents’ story is usually that they have no idea why this happened. Keeping up appearances and such. You never know what went on behind closed doors. And there’s of course always two side to the story. Just assuming that the person walking away is somehow doing the wrong thing is not really helpful though.

Let’s stop trying to force people into relationships that they don’t want to be in and that are unhealthy for them! So how about “oh, I’m really sorry to hear that” as a reaction to somebody telling you they have broken off contact with their parents? Nice and neutral. Depending on your relationship with the person you might want to add “do you wanna talk about it?”. A neutral reaction like that also avoids finger pointing.

Let’s help each other make our society less toxic for children and adults alike. You can start today.

P.S.: This is the toned down version of my rant. Just FYI.