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Our duty (thelemmy.club)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 7 points 7 months ago (1 child)

I think its more that those hobbies are thrust upon you by the child. Your willingness to engage with them smooths it all out. Not everyone has patience for kid friendly activities and some find them incredibly boring.

For instance.... I work in childcare. Almost all of my personal favorite activities are very non-child friendly... (then again I also engaged with many of my favorite non-child-friendly pass times way younger than most people would be comfortable with...) I find most sanitized "kid friendly" activities pretty unbearably boring.

The kids themselves are fine though. And if anything I think they'd agree with me. If I busted out a super violent video game or something they'd probably cool with it. It'd be my fellow counselors and parents who'd take issue.

If anything my experience with kids almost softened my desire to get sterilized and cement my child free life. Kids seem fine to me. Its just all the social restrictions and expectations around them and obviously the energy, money, and time commitment. (Also I'm a soft-anti-natalist.)

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Not everyone has patience for kid friendly activities and some find them incredibly boring.

    In my experience, kids love to imitate whatever their parents are doing. But they struggle to operate at an adult level. So you provide them with kid-friendly activities to bridge that gap with an eye towards full participation as they get older.

    When my son was 1-year-old, I couldn't put a baseball glove on him and toss a baseball around. But I could kick a rubber ball back and forth. I could get him to throw his ball into his toy box. I could roll a ball to him and have him pick it up, then two-hand throw it back. I'd do this with an eye to the future. And then he got older and stronger and more dexterous, and we could elevate what he tried to do.

    I get that this isn't the most stimulating for the adult. But, at some level, you need to enjoy being around your kids generally speaking. Otherwise, I'll spot you that having kids is going to be miserable. At another level, learning how to teach is its own hobby and challenge. Experimenting with what your child can do is interesting. Reading about the next milestones and testing whether your kid can do them is exciting. Watching your kid improve over time is fascinating.

    If that's not for you... okay, fine. Maybe you take your kid to daycare and let them figure it out. And you just treat your kid like an appliance - fed, rested, healthy, etc. I'll spot you that this isn't very fun (on its face, anyway).

    If I busted out a super violent video game or something they’d probably cool with it. It’d be my fellow counselors and parents who’d take issue.

    I mean, I don't see an enormous difference between Splatoon and Team Fortress. I got Sonic: The Hedgehog collection for my son, and we can play it without any serious fear of trauma (although he has thrown the controller a few times). You can curb the degree of gore and still keep all the elements that make an activity fun.

    If anything my experience with kids almost softened my desire to get sterilized and cement my child free life.

    More power to you. Just crazy to see people blot their own childhoods from their heads and insist you simply can't have fun under the age of 20.

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