child development

I can force child to obey me, but obedience comes with high cost

By David McElroy · July 29, 2019

I don’t see how anyone can have a child without feeling terrified.

When you create a new human life, you are having the spirit and health and future of a completely independent person put into your hands. Even if your intentions are good, you can do long-term damage to the child.

You can follow the best advice you can find — from your family and friends and experts of the day — and still get it wrong in ways that leave someone hurt for life. No matter what you do, many people won’t approve of your parenting. If all this doesn’t terrify you, I’m not sure you ought to have a child.

When I was younger, I was scared to have children. When I was married in my late 20s and 30s, I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t quite know why, but I understand now that something in me was afraid of continuing the family patterns that had come down from the families of both of my parents.

Even while I was still struggling to understand my dysfunctional upbringing, I was determined not to do to my children what had been done to me.

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Who are you trying to impress? Answer may explain who you are

By David McElroy · June 27, 2019

This seems to be reunion season. College and high school classes all over the place are getting together to reminisce about old times and to nervously eye each other — with many thinking, “I don’t look that bad yet, do I?”

I know at least half a dozen people who’ve been to reunions in the last month. For some, it’s just fun, but for others it’s a time of sober reflection. When I talked with one friend today, he told me his reaction to seeing his classmates from not that long ago.

“Being there has me thinking about some things,” he said. “I looked around that night and realized these were the people who I grew up wanting to impress — and when I look at them now, I can’t figure out why I ever cared what they thought of me.”

When you were a small child, you wanted to impress your parents, maybe your siblings, maybe extended family and family friends. As you got older, the circle of people you wanted to impress changed. You wanted to impress your peers. Then you wanted to impress romantic interests. Your audience kept changing.

But at every point in your life, your choice about who to impress has said very loudly who you are.

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I haven’t posted anything new in my YouTube series about narcissism in the last couple of weeks, so some people have been asking about it. There’s nothing wrong and I’ll be back soon. The issue is simply a technical problem because of a piece of equipment that died. Here’s a brief video I posted on YouTube to explain.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

child development

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