When I was a kid I was genuinely horrified by the idea of growing up and I think a large part of it was the insistence by adults in my life that puberty would turn me into someone completely different. They were like “sure you don’t like make up and boys now but you’ll feel differently after puberty” or like “sure you think you wouldn’t want kids now but you’ll see once you’re older”
it’s like damn, stop invalidating kids’ personalities and listen to them and maybe you won’t be so shocked when they don’t transform into a new person later
My wife and I don’t ever plan on having kids, but my Dad always had one piece of parenting advice I’ll never forget.
He said “Pay attention to who your children are when they’re little. If you do that, you’ll never be surprised at who they become. The only people who think kids suddenly become other people when they hit adolescence are the ones who never listened to what their kids were telling them the whole time.”
Tags:
#yes this #furthermore‚ it has been my experience that even when puberty *does* do shit to you it does not make you *endorse* it #knock on wood‚ but I strongly suspect that even if I *do* get some biological-clock-ticking shit later #I’m still not *actually* going to want kids #it’ll just be another annoying reflex‚ a vestige of ancestral memory #no more meaningful than the urge to jump off cliffs
Brinens and Things 