Children Are Not Algorithms to Be Programmed
There’s a whole breed of people online giving advice to parents and kids as if they’re training algorithms, not raising humans.
You’ve seen them. They post slick threads about discipline, focus, optimization, resilience, and not one of them has ever spent a night in a psych ward for kids, sat across from a teenager who can’t stop cutting herself, or tried to comfort a child breaking down from too much pressure at school.
I’m no Bitcoin trader or physicist.
I’m a 54-year-old social worker, single parent of an eleven-year-old daughter. I’ve worked in mental hospitals and schools, in welfare offices, coached kids, teenagers, and parents, and I can tell you one thing with certainty:
Children are not little machines. They don’t need to be optimized. They need to be seen, felt, and loved.
This social media parenting culture, this kindergarten on Ritalin, keeps spitting out slogans dressed up as wisdom:
Train your kid’s focus.
Hack their potential.
Build mental toughness.
It’s the language of people who started to believe that their admittedly high intellect makes them an expert in just anything.
And this nonsense they throw around about pedagogy isn’t just misguided.
It’s worse than tiger moming your kids.
If you want to know what that kind of perfectionism does, look at the micro-schooled kids who are raised like prototypes, not people.
Please, for the love of God, stop.
You will do real damage if anyone takes you seriously.