My dad treated me like that. After my mom died, my dad treated me like a small adult over whom he had no authority for the entirety of my teenage years, didn’t go through my room, didn’t tell me what to do, but tried to reason with me and convince me.
It didn’t work out well, because I was a child. I was nowhere near mature enough to handle that responsibility (my siblings and I were three stereotypes of too much freedom when we were younger- a recovering alcoholic, a born again Christian, and a kleptomaniac) and it made me feel unloved and like a burden. He does love me and was living the golden rule, but it turns out it’s not universally applicable.
I would be ethically unable to treat a human being like a subhuman pet even though, as you said:
(…) to reason with <children> and convince <children> (…) didn’t with out well, because <they are> children.
… and that they are not adults.
Nowhere near mature enough to handle that responsibility.
To NOT treat them as equal, to acknowledge their incompleteness as sapient beings, puts me in an impossible position. Parenting makes hypocrites of us all. Some of us can’t do it. I would be unable to do it. I know better than to try. It’s simply not within my capacity to undermine the autonomy of a being without feeling like I’m punishing them. To do so to a being that has not done anything wrong is corrosive to my humanity.
You have my sympathy that it was so difficult for you to go through. I endeavor to NEVER put someone through that.
My dad treated me like that. After my mom died, my dad treated me like a small adult over whom he had no authority for the entirety of my teenage years, didn’t go through my room, didn’t tell me what to do, but tried to reason with me and convince me.
It didn’t work out well, because I was a child. I was nowhere near mature enough to handle that responsibility (my siblings and I were three stereotypes of too much freedom when we were younger- a recovering alcoholic, a born again Christian, and a kleptomaniac) and it made me feel unloved and like a burden. He does love me and was living the golden rule, but it turns out it’s not universally applicable.
Hence the impasse we find ourselves upon…
I would be ethically unable to treat a human being like a subhuman pet even though, as you said:
… and that they are not adults.
Nowhere near mature enough to handle that responsibility.
To NOT treat them as equal, to acknowledge their incompleteness as sapient beings, puts me in an impossible position. Parenting makes hypocrites of us all. Some of us can’t do it. I would be unable to do it. I know better than to try. It’s simply not within my capacity to undermine the autonomy of a being without feeling like I’m punishing them. To do so to a being that has not done anything wrong is corrosive to my humanity.
You have my sympathy that it was so difficult for you to go through. I endeavor to NEVER put someone through that.