Educating your children on how to express emotion is a questionnable goal

I am sure every parent has done it once or twice. Told their kid to say sorry when they’re not, hug gramma before he or she had the chance to do it themselves, guide them to show gratitude, love, forgiveness, you name it, we’ve either done it to our children or had it done to us. All of this comes from the assumption that kids need to be taught how to do something that comes naturally. “The man saved your life. Write him a greeting card to say thanks.”

True emotion is automatic. It isn’t something you need to coach a person to feel. If the child is pondering out loud how they could say thanks or invite someone over because they like someone, THEN give them ideas, or if the child looks confused about how to express emotion, give them ideas, but not as a matter of course. It takes away from the emotion itself and diminishes how much the gesture itself will mean. How much more does a hug mean to gramma, if the child hugs gramma herself or himself, without prompting, than when mom or dad is urging them to do it? All it makes gramma think is that hugging her is an errand for the kids to run, rather than something they’d be happy to do and feel natural to do.

This teaches children to be fake, not grateful, helpful, or loving

How quickly do we learn to fake emotion? How soon in adolescence do we learn to fake a smile, fake gratitude, fake love, and fake contentment even though these are not emotions we truly feel just then? Pretty early on, right? Then, we wonder why adults have difficulty showing real emotion – after all, a real emotion rarely rises when it’s the appropriate time for it. Emotion is such, it happens out of turn, in the wrong place, wrong time, for the wrong reasons, and often for the wrong person.

We feel love when our kid is disobeying us because we think that’s sooo cute. We want to cheer our kid when they defend themselves against a bully, and slap them when they do “the right thing”. In reality, we want our kid to be happy and stand up for themselves, but we have been conditioned to think that’s not the right thing to teach a child. So, we fake our own emotions to our kids and teach them to fake theirs to us. Well, you do. I don’t have kids but I understand why you do it and how you feel.

Suppressed feelings as adults

Don’t cry, don’t run, don’t jump, don’t be joyous. Now run, now jump, now, be happy. Sit down, be calm, don’t fuss. Work harder, play less, be prompt, be precise but don’t obsess. Get up, go to bed, wake up, go to sleep… by the time we’re 7, we’re well used to being yoyos in our parents’ hands.

We know what emotion is expected to be expressed at any given time. We know when to suppress emotion and when to fake an emotion if it’s not there. We work so hard on expressing and suppressing the expected emotion at any given time, that I swear the missing 90% of our brain capacity is used in this purpose. Don’t think a disrespectful thought, don’t feel an inappropriate feeling. Don’t think, don’t feel.

And we wonder why the world is fucked.

We have fewer rights to species-typical behavior than any other animal in this world. Isn’t it time we would finally give ourselves the basic animal rights?

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