The 5 Creepiest 'Progressive' Parenting Fads
We've shown before how nightmarish and cruel good intentions can be when parenting. You don't want to be your old-fashioned, neglectful parents; no, you're the wave of the future, and your kids are the waviest of the future, and you know it.
And then that entire line of thinking gets completely out of hand and ridiculous stuff like this starts happening.
Declaring Bratty Kids to Be Magical Superhumans ("Indigo Children")
Raising a difficult child can be hell -- it's exhausting to deal with a kid who is uncooperative, endlessly demanding and spoiled. You have to try to get them ready to deal with school and the adult world beyond, all while helping them recognize their own potential as the next X-Men-style evolutionary leap forward for mankind.
Did the last part of that sentence confuse you? It certainly didn't if you're the proud parent of an "Indigo Child." According to the growing Indigo Child movement, your little bratty, self-centered dick is actually a magical new life-form. Seriously, here's how the Indigo Children website puts it:
What is an Indigo Child?
They come into the world with a feeling of royalty (and often act like it).
They have a feeling of "deserving to be here," and are surprised when others don't share that.
Self-worth is not a big issue. They often tell the parents "who they are."
They have difficulty with absolute authority (authority without explanation or choice).
"Mr. Fluffles has written a 12-page thesis on why you shouldn't come into our bedroom after 10 p.m."
And:
They seem antisocial unless they are with their own kind. If there are no others of like consciousness around them, they often turn inward, feeling like no other human understands them. School is often extremely difficult for them socially.
They will not respond to "guilt" discipline ("Wait till your father gets home and finds out what you did").
They are not shy in letting you know what they need.
Doctors may say your kid has developmental issues like ADHD or garden-variety hyperactivity. Other adults may say your kid is an out of control turd who simply needs to be slapped over and over. But they would both be wrong. As the Indigo Children website says:
"We believe these children are the beginning of a new consciousness, an actual change in human nature, and many around the world are also seeing it. Educators, day-care workers and parents are all stepping up to the plate to become advocates of this phenomenon."
Yes, you are witnessing enlightened beings who will usher in a new age of understanding, one ruled by the kind of spoiled douchebags who as we speak are using their 12-year-old lungs to shout racial slurs at strangers on Xbox Live. So you take the worst kids and literally tell them that they're more special than the other people on earth. No way that can go wrong, right?
Well ... there is the issue of the kids who actually do need psychological treatment or medication. We don't want to get into the whole debate about ADHD and whether kids are being overmedicated. But there is absolutely such a thing as kids who need psychological help due to their behavior; it's no different from needing a doctor when they're sick. Only here, the sickness is being written off as another manifestation of their Indigo superpowers. Or, as The New York Times put it, "Parents who attribute their children's inattention or disruptive behavior to vibrational energy ... risk delaying proper diagnosis and treatment that might help them."
See, that's exactly what we said! So before you clutch onto "My child isn't mentally disabled, he's Magneto," please at least consider that doctors and psychologists might know what they are talking about.
Pole Dancing for Kids
There are a few things in this world that we're sure of, and one of them is that there is no way someone, anyone, anywhere, would set up pole-dancing classes specifically for toddlers.
Oh, shit. Looks like we're wrong.
Just part of a fireman's training course. Next, they'll hold a hose. Incorrectly. In heels.
The "Little Spinners" class at Make Me Fabulous, a studio that teaches strictly pole dancing, is apparently a real thing. According to them, teaching your toddler to pole dance will help them "use their bodies, move, balance and be free." Plus, it's a great way to pay your way through college. But, hey, Make Me Fabulous doesn't list the kid class on their website anymore, so no worries, right? This isn't something that's happening all over the world.
Hah, no, it totally is.
In Scotland, Up Yer Pole is offering kid pole dancing for five Scotland dollars (that's five severed fingers of your slain enemies, if we know our exchange rates). Pammy Cameron, instructor, thinks critics are stupid. She says, "These are gymnastic classes, although we will be using a pole." Of course! There are lots of situations where pole dancing occurs without dudes stuffing bills into G-strings and asking for lap dances afterward. We can't think of any right now, but they ... probably happen.
Don't write this off as a depraved European thing, either. In that other, quieter part of America that we sometimes call Canada, people have really gotten into it, too. Tammy Morris, owner of Tantra Fitness, says, "I just had a baby six months ago and I'm hoping she'll start to learn pole dancing as soon as she can."
Extreme Breast-Feeding
Imagine you're a new mother. You're scared shitless, because this thing seems way too easy to kill and is hungry, like, a lot. So one of the first questions you have is how long do I let this thing suck on my boob? (The second being "When can I get hammered?") Well, according to many mothers, it's "until after the kid is in elementary school."
Welcome to extreme breast-feeding. Speaking of which, check out this video.
If you don't have four spare minutes to spend being ridiculously uncomfortable, let this screenshot do the heavy lifting for you.
We've come up with about a dozen "heavy lifting" jokes, but they all made us feel filthy.
The video is part of a documentary called Extraordinary Breastfeeding, and in case you're curious, the kid in the above picture is 7 years old. And man, does she ever love breast-feeding. And she's not alone. Her sister was breast-fed until the ripe old age of 5, but four years later, she still yearns for the day when lunch meant latching on to mom's bosom.
Coincidentally, she also provides some of the video's best highlights, like when she informs us that "breast milk is better than anything in the world, even mango." Clearly, this kid has never eaten a bag of Skittles before. She also advises that she'd "rather have lots of breast milk than a million melons," because kids don't even realize when they're being hilarious.
Awesomely, the kids take a page from the Cracked comedy playbook by coming up with names for each of their mother's breasts. The one with more milk is called "Milkyor," and the less nourishing breast is called "Boobyor." You can see both in this handy illustration of Beavis and Butthead suckling their mom.
And trust us -- breast-feeding until you're old enough to have a paper route is not isolated to the inhabitants of viral YouTube videos. But since we're talking about this happy clan, let's look at Veronika Robinson's story some more and go a little further down the boob hole.
Robinson happily reports, "It's quite normal in an extended breast-feeding family to have baby on one side and dad on the other ... got to keep everyone happy."
And quite happy they are; her now 8-year-old daughter proclaims, "I don't want to be weaned. I want to breast-feed forever." Oh, and Robinson gave her 9-year-old a breast-feeding as a present for her birthday. At 9. In the fourth grade.
In the interest of fairness, we should point out that there seems to be no harm in it outside of creeping out strangers like us. According to the World Health Organization, breast-feeding for two years or more is good for the kid and might even help prevent things like obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Fine, maybe we're the weird ones. And really, we guess we can say the same for ...
Orgasmic Childbirth
Called "the best kept secret" by Debra Pascali-Bonaro, a woman who has taught courses on childbirth for 26 years, you totally can have an orgasm while giving birth, if you do it right. Also, it's somehow good for the kid.
Right now women are being taught how -- all you have to do is practice relaxation techniques, kiss and caress during labor and have that baby in a candlelit hot tub, presumably while the sweet sounds of Michael Buble waft through the air.
You can watch the preview for the documentary Orgasmic Childbirth here, but we think it's not safe for work. We're not sure. There's sideboob and cleavage. Depends on where you work, we guess. What we're saying is it's a bunch of women having planned orgasms while giving birth.
Trick question. They're all porn, even the stock image of a woman eating a cherry.
And yes, they're saying it's totally something you should do. Some doctor says this about it: "This exquisite hormonal orchestration unfolds optimally when birth is undisturbed, enhancing safety for both mother and baby. Science is also increasingly discovering what we realize as mothers -- that our way of birth affects us life-long, both mother and baby, and that an ecstatic birth -- a birth that takes us beyond our self -- is the gift of a lifetime."
Happy birthday, indeed!
In case you missed it, Dr. Sarah Buckley says science is finding out that having a big ol' O during childbirth is beneficial to the baby. So you're not just using the most horrifying "toy" in existence, you're readying baby for a better life. Not just biologically, either; it also benefits bonding with the baby and "makes for better family relationships," according to this article by sex educator Yvonne K. Fulbright.
We're not sure she has any kind of degree.
Want the science of how this happens? No? Too bad!
Dr. Christiane Northrup, OB/GYN, says, "When the baby's coming down the birth canal, remember, it's going through the exact same positions as something going in, the penis going into the vagina, to cause an orgasm. And labor itself is associated with a huge hormonal change in the body, way more prolactin, way more oxytocin, way more beta-endorphins -- these are the molecules of ecstasy."
A lot more bodily fluids, too! Don't forget that part!
"Training Up" Your Kids With Constant Beatings
Today, the method of punishment for children has largely turned to "sit in the corner" or "talk it out" rather than the righteous full-on beatings of yore. And you know what? Michael and Debi Pearl think that's a bunch of horseshit.
These people exist at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from the Indigo Child crowd. According to their book, To Train Up a Child, not only should you be beating your kids, but you should be using a pipe to do it.
"We're gonna catch us some repressed memories, son."
Relax, they're just talking about PVC pipe, not lead pipe or euphemistic pipe. They're not savages. Also, when you're done relaxing, feel free to freak out all over again, because there is a huge segment of the population who read this book like it's an extension of the Bible.
But seriously, it's not like the Pearls are advocating beating newborns with PVC pipe or anything. No, it's much worse than that. Check out this savory quote:
"Select your instrument according to the child's size. For the under 1 year old, a little, 10- to 12-inch-long willowy branch (striped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch in diameter is sufficient."
"For older children, allow them to pick out their own branch for a nice bonding experience."
See, no pipe for the little ones ... just good old-fashioned branches, just like your great-grandparents used to beat your grandparents when they found out they'd been speaking to other races in a non-racist manner.
And on the off chance that you're unfamiliar with how to properly terrorize your child for being a child, there's even a not at all bone-chilling video called "How to Put Johnny Down to Sleep" that should get you right up to speed.
Fine, we get it, you're probably furious right now, what with all the advocating of beating the shit out of infants and all, but Michael Pearl has something to say to you about that as well:
"I am sorry the psychologists and secular child advocates don't get it, but then if all parents practiced child training as I have suggested, there wouldn't be any need for abnormal psychologists or child protection agencies. A lot of people would move on to more practical kinds of work, and there wouldn't be any more crime or war."
Tell us, does anything about that not make perfect sense? If regular beatings were just embraced by society, there would be nothing left to protect children from. It's common sense, people.
You can follow Dawn's ridiculous game for the prerelease of her book right here and here. Do it or she will find you, probably.
For more ways to ruin your children, check out 9 Toys That Prepare Children for a Life of Menial Labor and 12 Great Parenting Products for Traumatizing Your Baby.
And to further expand your noggin, check out Cracked's De-Textbook: The Stuff You Didn't Know About the Stuff You Thought You Knew.
