Children are people.

They understand things on a much deeper level than we often realize because they don’t have all the skills to verbalize what they comprehend. Where children lack in life experience they can understand within emotional intelligence. Speaking from an American perspective, our society as a whole treats children as second class citizens. Treating them as though they don’t deserve respect because they’re not adults. We as adults tell children they don’t understand love when they’re crushing, they don’t understand heartbreak when they’re hurting, they don’t know what hard is when they’re struggling and silently, or not so silently crying out for help. There’s a complete disconnect when it comes to the general view on kids and how raising them as if they lack rights, emotions, opinions, and hindering them from overall autonomy isn’t the cause of damage throughout their lifetime. A ripple effect of toxic behavior, relationships, self image, unlearned/nonexistent boundaries. Parents from the older generations starting mainly around 35+, and oftentimes POC families are unfortunately the worst about perpetuating the colonial mentality of treating kids as property and trying to instill the belief that providing them with the bare minimum (if that) in a world where none of us ever asked to be here and will all inevitably experience hardships is a privilege. I encourage you all to really take a step back and recognize we can always become better people and you can ALWAYS be a better parent. I encourage you to do your own research on how we unknowingly spread generational trauma to our kids and how we can so easily avoid unnecessary harm. Thanks for coming to my TED talk 🤷🏽‍♀️🤍