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Notes -
A post is blowing up on my part of twitter where a guy is saying he only wants to spend 10 minutes a day with his kids.. This has a surprising amount of scissor power, with people coming down on all sides.
Relevant quote:
The one straightforward argument is that, well, he's a shitty dad. Especially since he says he wants to be working, accomplishing something, and what is his work? Well, he's a creative director at some random tiny crypto business working on "building digital gold." So... easily mockable.
The other side says that modern parenting norms are fucked, as he aludes to, and that kids used to be a lot more free range. Normally I'm sympathetic to this, but the guy's kids are below five, so idk. I think infants and toddlers definitely need a lot of attention.
Either way I'm curious how parenting norms might break down along culture war lines, and what people here think?
ETA: Also, a great and extremely sassy quote tweet:
I believe a big issue with child rearing discourse - relationship discourse for that matter - is that people really need to define what they are talking about. Before this one sleep training blew up on my feed where the range of believed practices seemed to be from letting your 3 week old scream until they pass out to not immediately running to pick up your six month old if they made any noise whatsoever.
Complaining about 10 minutes is weird, but it's not like I spend hours playing with my 2 year old. On weekdays I probably "actively play" with him less than 30 minutes a day. We interact more then that but it's just touch points. We'll interact for a minute and then he'll go back to doing his own thing.
Yeah, there's negligence and then there's normal and then there's overbearing. God forbid I pretend to be the arbiter of normal, but what I think is normal and what works for my family (ages 2 through 7) is this:
When there's food to cook, I'm cooking it in the kitchen with the kids upstairs. If there's something really finicky about the food and the kids have been rowdy, I might put on TV.
Next priority - house cleaning/maintenance. Do the chores while the kids play. Get interrupted every ten minutes to kiss a boo boo or settle a dispute.
When there's nothing to cook or clean or I just want to sit, pull out some knitting to work on in the same room as the kids. Sometimes I get looped into a conversation with them for a few minutes, sometimes they just want me to look at them or what they're doing. I make appreciative comments.
A few times a week, do a family activity together. Take them to a playground, take them to the library, etc. At home, play Go Fish for 20 minutes. Or set up two forts and throw stuffed animals at each other. This is really only the "concentrated play with kids" time and it's not even every day.
Help kids with school work, make sure they're reading, and then read to them for 40ish minutes (we read a story to the younger two before bed, which the older two are able to listen in on if they wish, then a chapter book to the older two after.)
There is no "play with kids for hours at a time." There is sometimes "shepherd kids around a children's museum for hours at a time" which is different. And it's always work, it's not fun. The enjoyment is in watching the slow growth of the children. The fun is that moment when a kid shares a toy on their own and you think to yourself, "I taught them that." But why would anyone feel guilty about not having as much fun as their child when playing a game for four year olds?
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