This train of thought was inspired by today's For Better or For Worse, but it happened to me all the time in real life and it's a trope you often see in comic strips and other media.
Parents tell their kids to stop watching TV and play outside because it's a beautiful day.
Why do they care? Seriously. Why do they have this need for their child to stop what they're actually enjoying and go through the motions of enjoying the beautiful day?
You often see this in older contexts where the kids don't need to be immediately supervised, so it's not that the kids' presence indoors is stopping the parents from enjoying the beautiful day themselves. In fact, in the comic strip context, the parent most often stays inside while kicking the kids outside. Why?
8 comments:
Because sometimes parents know what's good for the child better than the child does.
If being outside actually were good, wouldn't the parents would be outside already?
It's a classic case of "Do as I say, not as I do"
I've never understood that. They don't value and/or enjoy something enough to do it themselves, and yet they seem to feel it's so very very important for their kids to do that thing. And despite the fact that they think it's so very very important, they still can't bring themselves to even set an example. WTF?
Indeed! But people are like that. I'm like that (in different ways). St. Paul gave a correct self-diagnosis: "I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate... I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway."
I was always told this, too. And I was almost never just mindlessly watching TV. I can see parents wanting children to be doing something involving movement and social interaction instead of mindless, endless, whatever's-on TV viewing. But I would be reading, or engrossed in an old movie, and my parents - who were indoors - would tell me to go outside and play.
Richard's explanation assumes the parents know what they're doing and have the child's best interests in mind, but not all parents do.
Richard's explanation assumes the parents know what they're doing and have the child's best interests in mind, but not all parents do..
Most (not all) parents have their children's best interests in mind. None of them, however, know what they're doing ;-)
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