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fdghrtbrt | on: Having Kids (2019)
I would like to hear in what sense you love your kids, given that "he first six years have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else. They haven’t provided fulfilment, and they haven’t provided satisfaction. (...) Happiness for me typically starts after my kids are in bed or when I can escape them during work hours."

Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?

EDIT: Just to be 100% clear: I mean absolutely no judgement. I'm not going to tell you off or try to change your mind. I ask out of pure curiosity.

Daneel_ | parent | next
I go above and beyond to give them a great life - to care about providing them with a rich education, as well as a wide variety of life experiences, to immerse them in quality time with friends and family, to travel with them and spend time amongst various cultures and amongst nature. I’m there for them whenever they need me, and also when they don’t. I take the time to give genuine answers, to feed their curiosity, to make them great people. I give them the tools to explore things on their own and foster their independence. I also encourage risk taking while supporting them when it doesn’t work out.

Critically: I give them my full attention.

I could choose to spend all that mental effort on myself, but I choose to spend it on them. That’s as good a demonstration of love as any, in my book anyway.

Edit: no offence taken! I didn’t interpret it that way at all.

majkinetor | root | parent
You are overdoing it. Don't know who is your role model, but that behavior is IMO what leads to that outcome.

Show mostly by example, not by direct mentoring.

What rich education and various cultures for 6-year-olds (or less)? That is simply irrelevant at that age and logistics of it just makes you hate everything. Do you even take your kids to dozen of arbitrary chosen classes?

Tone it down, everybody will feel better and you won't have to fake it. Happy parent is more important for family than robo parent.

fdghrtbrt | root | parent | next
What a rude thing to say. Different people raise their kids differently. There's nothing wrong with that answer.
majkinetor | root | parent
It's you who are being rude by not allowing opinions. I am trying to help. I might be right or wrong or somewhere in between (which is all perfectly OK) but its on OP to judge it by himself if my words have any meaning for him. I said them because I noticed the pattern around me. Please stop with the drama.
fdghrtbrt | root | parent
You're the one making drama. "nooo kids don't need a robot parent" lol
Daneel_ | root | parent
It’s not forced, and we do show by example. I also disagree that they’re too young to be immersed in a love for education, culture, and people. Oh and music too. We listen to a lot of music (for fun!).

My family and friends are multi-cultural so they’re naturally exposed to several cultures, for example. It’s also important to my wife and I as the world itself is multi-cultural, so having an appreciation that different people live their lives differently is important. We lead by example simply by living in a multi-cultural life and embracing it.

Take that same approach and apply it across the rest of the points I made. Nothing is forced, I promise.

rootusrootus | parent
> Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?

It is true that some people are not really cut out to be parents. But unfortunately it is difficult to tell whether that will be you or not. I see people looking at comments in threads like this and then chiming in with sentiments along the lines of "see, this is why I never wanted to be a parent." There is no way to know that, and such statements strike me as cope. Becoming a parent changes you, but you won't know how until you do it. There is a lot of biology and psychology in play, for certain.

As I tell my own kids, however, be careful because you only get to become a parent one time. Cannot blame someone for opting out of the risk, even if the counterfactual is that they would have been amazing parents with amazing children and been much happier.