Today I’m guest posting for my friend Amanda of Dirt & Boogers, because she’s busy moving and packing right now. Hopefully I’ll actually get to meet her in real life this weekend though. She’ll be guest posting for me here in a few months once I have a new baby. Check out my full post here on why you should let the kids be loud. Below is an excerpt:
A few weeks ago my husband took my twin five year old girls and my two year old son out to eat at a restaurant by himself. They enjoyed some chips and salsa and a cheap dinner together, when someone came up to my husband and complimented him, saying, “You’re doing a good job. Your kids are so well behaved.”
My husband thanked him, but confided in me later that he thought it was a dumb compliment. As if “well-behaved kids” meant he was a good father. Like that was the hallmark of good parenting. My husband grew up in a household where the philosophy of “kids are seen and not heard” was enforced, so hearing this compliment wasn’t exactly a compliment to him much at all.
My husband and I don’t believe that our children need to be quiet all the time, that they have to be “well-behaved” according to societal norms or to meet the expectations of strangers in order to be good kids, or for us to be good parents. I’ve said it before, but one moment or one aspect of our parenting hardly qualifies one as a “bad mom” or a “bad father.” Kids who are a little boisterous, loud, giggly, and a tad wild while out and about don’t make those kids hellions or heathens who have no rules because their parents are too lax (and therefore lousy parents). We do have rules for our children. But one of those rules is not that they can only be seen and not heard.
Read the rest HERE on Dirt and Boogers!
Do you let your kids be loud?
Leave a Reply