Possibly but this is more to counter letting your kids go wild such that as they grow up you don't like to around them. By ining them how to behave well you equip them will the tools to interact in society.

Of course if you are a horrible person you might dislike them for their good behaviours. But if you're a horrible person chances are you'll mess up your kids with or without that rule.

I don't think people "let" their kids go wild so much as run out of parenting skills. That's what makes the idea irrational: use your parenting skills to make up for your lack of parenting skills. All you have to do is decide to do so!

> I don't think people "let" their kids go wild so much as run out of parenting skills.

There is a difference between not being able to control your child fully, and not even trying. In my experience, most parents are trying, but I have met one or two who did not care, seemingly believing that whatever their kid does is perfectly okay, because hey, it's just a small child... completely ignoring that fact that other kids around, of the same age, are well behaved.

Now, this strategy of making excuses may work well while the child is small. Like, adults will look at a misbehaving 4 years old and only think "what a horrible child... and what a horrible parent" and walk away. But as your child grows up, the environment becomes less forgiving, and it becomes more difficult for you to instill good habits. If the child's behavior irritates you, as a parent, you can bet that it irritates unrelated people at least twice as much. This creates a spiral, when the environment and your child become hostile to each other.

On the other hand, if you succeed to instill pleasant behavior in your child, it can create a positive spiral, when other people enjoy the presence of your child and by their attention reward the nice behavior, and your child has more pleasant life and more opportunities to further improve social skills.

That’s the same process we use at work everyday. When people run out of programming skill they get better by study and practice. All you have to do is to decide to.

This may be one of those cases where thinking about something explicitly is already half of the way to success.

It really isn’t the same mindset as intolerance. Why would it remove agency? Do you dislike children?

It’s about setting a boundary where it is most productive, children who are not socialised by the age of four hit problems in later life. Parents and kids who go to war help no one.

I think it comes from that the rule is titled "Do not let your children do anything that...". The language states to restrict the child's agency if you disagree with it.

I was fortunate enough to grow up with good parents, but there were times where they were misguided and myself disobeying them helped us both in the long run.

Language policing one line without the backing context is missing the point.

Those times you disobeyed were also met with decades of limiting your agency. Not letting you cover yourself in peanut butter or fight with other kids, or mistreat pets, or spend infinite money.

Jp sees resentment and pride as the ultimate source for being a rapscallion or monster, putting responsibility on the parent to keep their child in the ‘liked’ category is a very elegant way to keep a kid from destroying your house but also make a parent confront/channel any resentment or excessive pride into productive directions.