Lies We Tell Children

Adults are lying hypocrites, and children suffer for it

Expecting more accountability from children than from adults is why humanity is irredeemably messed up. The same occurs when we blame humans for their nature while we give a free pass to the supposedly ‘benevolent’ gods that made us… in their image, no less. Regardless of whether gods exist or not, our twisted mentality of misplaced accountability is a sickness that infects all civility and morality.

Context

Loathsome parents hold the child accountable for the parents’ moods, yet the parents don’t seem to similarly hold themselves responsible for the child’s moods. In fact, the burden of responsibility is the reverse: a parent has more control over a child’s emotional state than the opposite. Maturity should mean emotional control, and childhood means emotional dependence. And since the parents chose to bring a child into this world without the child’s informed consent, let alone a choice in parents (of all people), then logically we conclude that the parent is morally responsible to the child, and owes to the child.

The child owes nothing to the parent, especially when the child’s only reason for being is the gratification of a parent who would otherwise be lonely and depressed.

Children are just loneliness-mitigation machines: They give us the delusion of meaning and of undeserved love, which they are condemned to give us. The same applies to gods: Creations owe nothing to gods, and gods are morally responsible for their creations.

Gods and parents alike must be accountable to their children, if they need to be seen as ‘benevolent’ (not feared) in any meaningful way.

These are two incredible, cruel lies we burden children with: First, that the act of having children is somehow a praiseworthy achievement or virtue (it is not), and second, that children are a “burden” on their parents, and thus children must feel grateful, guilty even, for being graced with their parents’ “tolerance”.

The truth is actually the opposite, on both counts.

First, there is nothing praiseworthy about exchanging fluids and following the easiest programming to follow — your reproductive instinct — and then parade like a hero for being blessed with beautiful, innocent souls who are condemned to love you unconditionally. Every idiot can have children, and if you look around you, it seems that the worst people tend to have the most children.

And second, parents have no right to complain about the needs of children. If you bring a child into this world, a soul that never had informed consent to be plucked from the bliss of non-existence and be brought into your — of all people — psycho-circumstances, then you have no right at all to deny them all they need to thrive, let alone complain about giving them what they need. So please, shut the fuck up, complaining, self-centred, cruel parents.

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In that spirit, since the above are a tad too much to handle for people who’ve never amassed the humility to consider such self-challenging perspective, here are a few textbook lies that parents, teachers, and adults in general say to children, systematically and unabashedly:

Lie #1: Interruptions

We scream at children never to interrupt us. We insist that interrupting others is rude and annoying. Yet, adults interrupt children all the time whenever children are talking with each other. Or even when an adult speaks to a child, it is perfectly ‘acceptable’ for another adult to interrupt that conversation as if it were meaningless.

Children are good at noticing and at deducing meaning. We don’t let children interrupt us, even when they need something, and our conversation is trivial compared to their needs, yet they see us interrupt them all the time, even when their conversations are important, and when our interruptions are for nonsense. What do you think this teaches children?

The meaning here is that children are worthless and that children can never interrupt or bother adults, but adults can always interrupt children. So when children grow up, they think it’s ok to be just as abusive to children as their parents were to them. Or even worse, when they feel they have circumstantial power over their peers, as any adult has over children, then they can be just as disrespectful, dismissive, and abusive. Isn’t this what we teach children when our actions speak, ‘might is right’?

No, might is not right. If anything, might is responsibility and debt.

Lie #2: Lies

We say to children, ‘Never lie!’ But kids witness their parents lying all the time. Children overhear parents lying on the phone or accusing others with whom they pretend to be good friends. Breaking promises is another textbook lie that adults inflict on children.

Adults think children are dumb or deaf, so parents presume they can discuss their dirty nonsense in the presence of children, or when children are in the next room, as if children were pets or mindless machines without any ability to listen and comprehend.

What is the result? Children see how parents lie to their children, how they lie to each other, how they lie to themselves. And children notice, because adults talk in the company of children as if the children are deaf or dumb or absent.

So, children get wind of the adults’ two-faced hypocrisies. And what does this teach children? That it’s somehow ok to lie, but you should pretend it’s not, emperor’s-new-clothes-style. And this is the world we live in.

Lie #3: Irritability

This is the worst one. When children get emotional over some random confrontation they had with their peers, we brush it away as if it were meaningless, insisting that only ‘sticks and stones’ can hurt them, and that words mean nothing. Yet, kids witness adults get all offended, insulted, and emotional over nonsense, like some stupid remark by a coworker, or a car horn, or a laughable tweet by a clown politician.

Really, adults? You claim ‘sticks and stones’, yet you lose your emotional stability much more easily than any child would.

Adults play all high and mighty in front of children, as if their stoic ‘superiority’ positions them above petty provocations, but reality shows the opposite: adults getting irritated by the smallest of things that most children wouldn’t.

‘Daddy, that kid at school made fun of me!’

‘Don’t pay any notice,’ says the father, completely invalidating the child and their own little world, where they need to be accepted by their peers.

And in the same moment, the child overhears the father complain about a sarcastic comment by someone at work, and how much it bothered him.

Children observe how easily adults lose it over some random rude comment or some undesirable headline in the news. Really? And then children, who can’t control their emotions as well as adults potentially can, are expected to show more restraint, maturity, and self-control than adults?

And let’s not pretend that words don’t mean anything. If words meant nothing, we wouldn’t all be trying so hard to come up with the best ‘gotcha’ line or witty putdown to one-up others and get applause by laughing hyenas, the impressionable, moronic masses.

We tell children that somehow words don’t matter, yet children see how words from people they are involuntarily attached to — their parents — cut like knives and cause irreparable, life-crippling trauma.

Stop lying to children. Words matter. And if you deny this fact, check yourself how worked up you get over a stupid headline you disagree with, and how you lose it in Twitter threads arguing with strangers and bots over nothing.

Lie #4: Violence

Yes, we teach children that violence is never the answer, even when children defend themselves against a violent aggressor. We have the audacity to expect children not to respond to the initiation of violence against them, then we wonder why they grow up passive, submissive, and subservient in their self-loathing.

Yet children see parents support supposedly ‘justified’ wars and violence-based centralised government, both initiators of extreme, mass-scale violence. Children understand that taxation and forced schooling are enforced via the implied fatal violence of the state. So how is it that violence is permitted then?

The lesson from forced schooling and abusive parenting is that anyone in an arbitrary position of perceived ‘authority’ can have their will imposed through violence, and not only is that ok, it’s also supposedly ‘moral’. This is the cycle of abuse. This is what the disgustingness of Abrahamism teaches, infecting our sense of morality.

Religions and political ideologies alike teach us that somehow ‘might makes right’, as in the case of the demon-god Yahweh and his loathsome, cowardly, sleazy servant, Abraham. And don’t even get me started on the evil of ‘turn the other cheek’, this subversive directive aimed at enabling and encouraging evil.

‘Violence is never the answer’ seems to be directed at the victim, not the abuser. Yes, blame the victim. Make it so that a proportionate response to an initiation of violence is never ok. Would you say that discourages the initiation of violence, or do you think it might perhaps encourage it?

Lie #5: Embarrassment

We tell children not to care what people say, yet they observe us, the supposed ‘adults’, jump through hoops to keep appearances and desperately impress the worst people around us: the shallow, impressionable idiot masses. We lie to children that they shouldn’t feel embarrassed when they are mocked, ridiculed, humiliated, and shamed by their peers, this way dismissing and invalidating their quite legitimate pain. Yet, we don’t hold ourselves to the same standard.

Then, children observe the adults get embarrassed and humiliated for not keeping up appearances, or for ‘making fools out of themselves’ in the eyes of their peers, for lesser embarrassments, no less.

Shaming is manipulative psychological abuse, and it works on even the most thick-skinned adults, let alone children.

Why do you dismiss and invalidate children’s legitimate shame, and deny them the recognition, nurture, and emotional support they need to overcome it? Why do you think it’s ok for you to receive emotional support when you are shamed, but not when children are shamed?

We don’t take seriously the shame and humiliation children feel at a tender age when it truly leaves a mark, and we expect them to show more emotional reserve and maturity than any adult. Really, adults? You feel embarrassed over nothing, and you somehow think you’re emotionally stronger than small children?

Lie #6: Actions

We tell children that words mean nothing and that we should judge people by their actions instead of their empty words. Yet children observe adults worship politicians for snake-tongue words that contradict their actions or inaction.

Children notice details far better than adults do. They notice how adults tend to value flatterers and sweet-sounding slogans, yet adults keep disregarding meaningful actions that are in conflict with the words.

We insist that words don’t matter, and that only actions matter, yet adults vote, again and again, for the same demonstrably lying politicians, even when their actions and inaction prove — time and time again — that they have been lying all along. Yet, adults keep fooling themselves when they hear the right words from people whose actions contradict them.

Conclusion

We lie to ourselves, then we lie to children, condemning them to become just as lying and messed up as we are. We transfer our cognitive dissonance onto children, perpetuating the cycle of abuse, and we all suffer for it. No wonder humanity is unable to discern reality.