What Weird Skills Have You Acquired as Parent?

Plus: Should we strive to be easy on our kids?

The other day, just before leaving for our Memorial Day trip, my 13-year-old announced that he needed a haircut. We didn’t have time to go out and get one, so he asked if I could cut his hair. I was more than a little nervous — turns out 13-year-old boys are rather picky about their hair — but somehow, he and I and his scalp survived unscathed.

25-year-old me would be SHOCKED to learn I was giving people haircuts. I am … well, let’s just say I’m a “visually challenged” person at times, but thanks to parenting through a pandemic and YouTube, I have taught myself how to cut hair. No, they aren’t the best haircuts ever, but yes, they are passable, and I am proud of that. Add it to a long list of odd skills I’ve developed as a parent, including:

• Wielding a tiny screw to widen a palate expander

• Learning which floorboards to step on to avoid creaks that could wake small children

• Hiding my shock when my kids ask seemingly ridiculous questions like “how do you hang clothes on hangers?” (that was from last weekend)

• Transporting spiders out of the house without losing my mind

• Learning everything I never wanted to know about ticks

For today’s thread, I want to hear about the weird skills YOU have picked up as a parent, and/or things you now do that you never imagined you’d do. They can be things that make you proud or things that slightly horrify you. Everything is game.

And now for this week’s

Today I’m commenting on a couple of posts I saw while scrolling on Instagram the other day that share a common theme.

First, there’s this post from @we_nurture, which has more than 5,700 likes:

Then there are these two slides from a post by @raising_yourself, which has nearly 2,400 likes:

Here are my thoughts.

I believe these posts come from a good place. My guess is that these influencers are trying to guide parents away from strategies associated with authoritarian parenting, a parenting style characterized by little warmth and respect and lots of rules and harsh punishments. It’s true that authoritarian parenting isn’t very constructive. Research finds that kids fare far better when they are raised by authoritative parents, who are warm and respectful but also set rules and limits.

But what I find is that many gentle parenting influencers take these ideas too far.