I find this sort of attitude to be fairly insidious, you're suggesting that kids should become the entire focus of a parent's life, which is actually just as harmful.
"Make your lazy-ass kids walk when they're capable, even if it's temporarily less convenient to you" isn't saying that kids should be the entire focus of parents' lives. It's advice that will make parenting easier for them in the future, and is better for their kids.
Same for lots of stuff—the easy way out is usually harder in the long run. See also: shutting your kid up with food in public. Congratulations, now you have to carry snack crackers everywhere you go for the next several years, and you kid doesn't learn how to behave without shoving crap in their mouth. They'll probably eat worse at meal times too. Totally worth avoiding a handful of tantrums when they were 1-2yrs old though.
No, just a bigger priority than the least important item on whatever busy schedule you have. If you can't fit your kids into the schedule, and your solution is to half-ass your kids instead of half-assing or downsizing your schedule, then your priorities are wrong.
Even if you yourself (and your spouse) come first, you can treat your kids nicely or poorly. And often it's because we don't think about the impact that we treat our kids poorly. And often when we take the time to think through our interactions, we find them more fulfilling.
And really, we should have kids as a higher priority - probably higher than errands.
For many parents, those "errands" are often focused on providing shelter and sustenance for the kids. Get the kids to daycare or school, get to first job, pick up the kids, get to the grocery, cook food, put the kids to bed, maybe work a second or side job.
Sure, some errands are optional, but many are directly related to the daily grind of keeping the roof, food, and heat provided for.
Seems to be making the more modest a reasonable claim that children should be a central concern in parents actions directed at or involving the children.
We care (well, IMO) for our kids, but my wife and I continue to have our own individual interests and we do family or couple things that the kids would prefer we didn't.
Just because we could lavish our children with 16 hours of undivided attention per day (entire focus), doesn't mean that's healthy for the kids or the adults. The kids need to learn that they live in a collective world that does not revolve around them, and the adults need to have time and space to live their adult lives as well.
I don't know how or why people do this. My parents made us ride in the car with them on weekends as they spent hours driving around looking at real estate to invest in. We hated it but did it. It was quite beneficial (I just wish they bought some)
I don't think helicopter parents and devoted parents are the same thing by a long way. I can spend my whole day (12-13 hours) devoting my attention to my kids without at any point hovering over, or mollycoddling them.
Sure, but most parents aren't capable of doing that well. And even then it is a bit of a stretch. Kids are programmed to learn and don't really need adult interaction that much. They need independent time. Time to explore and make mistakes without an adult helping them. So you can say that is being nearby and being devoted while giving them a semi structured environment. Anyway, we won't solve parenting philosophy here, but the general sense (I know.. normative words) is that a parent that just spends their whole day with their kid is probably helicoptering.
>Kids are programmed to learn and don't really need adult interaction that much. //
I don't think I agree with that premise at all. Even as an autodidact, I'd say that guided exploration/learning/endeavour can be far superior in almost every way.
I'd teach a 5yo archery but I'd never give them a bow-and-arrows and leave them to learn it without adult interaction.
A parent who spends there whole day with there kids has probably taken them out to experience environments away from home?
Do you really drop your 6/7yo off at the woods miles from anywhere with a handaxe and a box-of-matches and leave them to it for the day? Or give them a raspberry pi and a box of components with a soldering iron and go out to the shops? (Or how about a band-saw and some wood!). Or give them a recipe book and an oven-lighter and hope they manage to cook a cake rather than gas themselves and blow up the street?
They can mostly make a camp fire, but please instruct first on using the axe and knife, and check the fire isn't going to start a forest-fire before they light it. Sure, after a few times they know how to chop and cut, how to clear around the fire; but do they know about peat-fires, and think to check for over-hanging branches? They need gentle direction and oversight. But they can't even get to the forest without someone taking them, which needs a devotion of time.
I completely disagree. Child-centered parenting is how you create spoiled, self-centered children that become teens that expect the world to revolve around them and adults that throw temper tantrums in traffic.
Children should be nurtured and cared for but they also need to learn how to fit into the family, which existed before they came along and will exist after they've left the house. They need to learn to be others-focused. This produces responsible, empathetic children and leads to productive and caring adults.
I'm not interesting in discussing anything with someone that deliberately misinterprets what I say in order to fix a strawman that they then set alight.
