"That's racist!" "You're a bigot!" "You can't use that word!"
The response is predictably, "Yes, Yes, I'm a terrible nazi bigot racist. Now as I was saying..."
There is a guide to responding, especially to the repeated questions, which often comes with discussions. Yes, you may need to repeat that discussion a bunch. So it goes.
There are many other pressures at play that make this a totally appropriate tool to communicate shared values, none of which you've considered in your argument.
> Something I wish the Left would figure out because the Right uses it on them all the time.
Sealioning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
> At some point the kids realize dessert before dinner is a question we are safe to ask, so we are gonna ask it four times a week.
Good opportunity to teach the kids about boundaries and respect for your fellow human being:
“I am never going to allow dessert before dinner, because it is unhealthy and your well-being is important to me. The next time you ask me that you won’t get dessert before or after dinner. New questions are interesting, old questions are annoying. I don‘t like being annoyed and will incentivise you to be better.”
Or:
“Sure. Here’s an apple. Fruit is dessert. No, you cannot have ice cream because it is unhealthy and…”
Or:
“Why do you keep asking the same question when you know the answer will be negative? Do you not realise that is annoying? What would you do if someone annoyed you everyday?”
> “We don’t do that here” means there are more important things for us to discuss right now.
Why is it only the political left that gets to define what things are sufficiently not-to-be-discussed?
Many of the comments here follow the same pattern: an assumption that there's an authority that is universally correct (the mother, in your example) and someone lesser-than that simply needs to be corralled into not questioning it. What if we, instead, approached these issues as though both sides are intelligent adults capable of discussion?
We don't need to be condescended to because we asked if we should push to the "master" branch.
Also, "we don't do that here" doesn't mean "not right now" it means "never, or we won't let you into the club." The phrasing of the sentence implicitly diffuses responsibility among the entire group, and marks the other person in the conversation as an outsider.
I'm not you, but I wouldn't want to say that to an employee. I want them to feel comfortable, too.
One of the parenting rules my mother enforced in our family was that she would refuse perfectly valid requests seemingly at random. Her explanation? "You have to learn to take a "no" gracefully." These were also the scenarios where attempting to argue or seek a special exemption just this once only hardened her resolve not to give in. I greatly disliked this as a kid, but grew to see the value in it as an adult.
You're setting expectations. This is pretty effective between adults, I am not sure it's as effective with children, and I say this as someone who has tried to apply it to children. The results are mixed.
There's a certain amount of value in being able to guess What Mom Would Say. Mom isn't always going to be there. On the other hand you have to be careful how broadly you apply that. What Mom Would Say about eating berries you haven't identified is pretty good, or going off the grid for 48 hours without telling anyone where you'll be and when to worry. What Mom Would Say about what your hobbies and interests and romantic life should look like might lead to estrangement and neuroses.
In hindsight as an adult, I could better appreciate the occasions where she turned down requests and possibly the reasons why, and there is some value in kids learning that there are limits to what they can get without being offered a detailed explanation in return.
> There's a certain amount of value in being able to guess What Mom Would Say. Mom isn't always going to be there. On the other hand you have to be careful how broadly you apply that. What Mom Would Say about eating berries you haven't identified is pretty good, or going off the grid for 48 hours without telling anyone where you'll be and when to worry.
This isn't really the context in which these things came up in my family. Her stated goal at each occasion was that it's very important that her kids learn that life doesn't always go the way we want. So while we could go to a friend's birthday party, we couldn't go to all of them, and she made the call (perhaps ~ 75% of requests that required a non-trivial expense would be turned down (~25% otherwise), but as a kid it was hard to see the distinction). We knew as kids that we had very little expendable income as a family, and did a decent amount of filtering out requests ourselves. I think our financial situation was a lot more dire than we could appreciate as kids, and this approach was one way my mother kept things sane.
Nice flamebait but I'll take it.
Funny you said that considering the american left (and therefore the western left, delayed a couple years) is postmodernism distilled.
The left is the kids in your story, and society is the mom. The right is just watching and reaping the rewards.
Something I wish the Left would figure out because the Right uses it on them all the time.
“We don’t do that here” means there are more important things for us to discuss right now.
I knew a mother who allowed her kids to question everything all the time. It was cool to watch. Once. After a while I realized why she was also the most tired mom I had met. At some point the kids realize dessert before dinner is a question we are safe to ask, so we are gonna ask it four times a week. I’m not sure if she ever saw that she conditioned them into that via random reinforcement. They didn’t stop until the youngest was about 14. That’s a long time to be tired.