Tangential, but the line saying: "smiles are always free" reminds me of the often overlooked cost of emotional labour performed especially by the service industry. We should also acknowledge this small thing.
I am so far removed from this now that it feels foreign to me.
In my house we must have a good attitude or be silent. It's fine to be angry or sad, just no crying or whining. Every request for a hug must be met with a hug.
I expect the emotional exercise to help workout the management of emotions and adjusting of attitude.
> In my house we must have a good attitude or be silent.
Having grown up in a house like that and re-learning to express my feelings and being able to empathize with people close to me later in life - I ask you to take a harder look at that stance.
Your house sounds a little toxic. I couldn’t tell in your post if you were positive or negative toward this, but it sounds like a denial of human emotion. Why would anyone ban crying? Sounds like the “turn it off” approach from the Book of Mormon.
Emotions are real and to be well managed. There's a time to cry. Working with adults who cry when their work or effort is brought under examination will lead to a toxic work environment.
They can cry if they have a good reason. Complaining? No. That's not tolerated. Life can be much harder so if they complain their life gets much more difficult and suddenly complaints stop.
No matter what, if they request a hug they get one. Mid punishment? During correction? They want a hug? Absolutely. Love and affection will never be denied.
When you put it this way, it seems more reasonable. Obviously you shouldn't reward or validate tantrums. At the same time, however, empathy is an easy way to acknowledge misplaced emotional reactions without encouraging them.
Meeting a tantrum with "I know you don't like the taste of vegetables, but they're an important part of growing up and you must eat them before having sweets." is different from "In this house, you cannot cry if there's no real pain."
There's no fine line between valid responses and manipulation. For manipulators, the pain FEELS real. The pain is a part of a learned behavior. Guiding those feelings instead of making a hard rule cutoff will have better results and build better trust.
On the one hand, I agree that it is important for children to learn that manipulation is not the best way to get the things that they want. On the other hand, I think it is also important for them to learn that they can trust their parents to be there for them when they truly feel they have a problem, even if it isn't physical pain, and even if it is really quite silly. But you don't want them to learn that they can't trust you, because someday they might have problems that aren't silly.
Today it might be "the socks you picked out for me aren't the right color and the boys at school will make fun of them". But tomorrow it might be a developing drinking or drug problem or early signs that a romantic interest is becoming abusive. If they learn they can't bug you about the socks, they might also learn that they can't bug you about those things either.
They're toddlers so discussion about drugs, peer pressure, and other abuse is discussed.
Those are well managed. I practiced tonight with name calling.
After preparing him I insulted my oldest.
I said "you have donkey breath"
I asked if what I said was true. "No." Okay. Now you have power and I have none. Lies cannot hurt you. Insults are lies. No one can harm you with words if you know who you are.
And if you live with a toddler, even those have to exist and are necessary for becoming a healthy being. At least if they are met with understanding by the parents.
This sounds like a very bad idea to me. If a request for a hug must be granted, how does one express the real emotional cluster of "I want to hug you"?
Do you think the people you most admire in your own life and in the broader world, both current and historical, have emotional artificiality deeply engrained in them? For me, that is very much not the case.
No - and I would not characterize my lack of interest in this article as disagreement. Labeling the cost of a smile as "free" demonstrates a lack of empathy or breadth of experience that I find distasteful and would prefer not to be part of a readership to.
you're not wrong; nothing is free: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_mask_syndrome
> ...subjects develop depression and physical illness as a result of prolonged, unnatural smiling.