Maybe you just give shitty pep talks.
Occam's Razor. Don't do like Freud and over-generalize by making a whole profession out of explaining why he was attracted to his mother when she was just really hot.
Hahaha.
I cannot give a pep talk to save my fucking life, because in my heart of hearts, I don't generally think the person should do the thing unless they want to. Hawaii tells me that I sound fake when I try to do it.
My therapist tells me that my father's pep talk is currently deprecated (Don't be so sensitive. Grow a thicker skin.). Maybe Ogged's kid can take over my biweekly Zoom chats.
I still treasure the moment when teenage Newt told me that when I try to explain how to behave in difficult interpersonal situations I sound like a sociopath.
It's nice when kids are clearly listening.
To state the obvious, there's developmental/behavioral changes and peer influence, and while they can't be fully disaggregated, this seems likely more than 50% the latter.
At some point during the 20-25 years I ferried and watched my 5 kids participate in probably a couple thousand field hockey, ice hockey, baseball, and soccer games, I concluded that the best thing in the ride home and afterwards was to talk about something else. I learned the mantra of "Play hard, be safe, have fun" and then forget it afterwards. Because the last things the kids wanted to hear was their idiot dad telling them how to better -- that shit just turned sports into school.
3. I never thought about Sigmund having siblings. His mother had eight children. One died in infancy. Four died in the Holocaust. Damn.
12: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
12: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
14, 15: Mark Twain probably never said this, but you said it twice.
Boys are slow learners. My daughter had figured out that I was an idiot by the time she was 11 or 12.
As for sports, this is a problem I might never have. The kid is uninterested in team sports and we aren't planning to push her into them. She likes swimming and gymnastics and swimming can get competitive, but team and non-team sports seem different in important ways.
As for kids thinking their parents are dumb, she is 7 but precocious in this way, at least.
I keep failing at team sports. The kids like swimming, gymnastics, track, biking, and skiing. We visited cousins who play baseball and it was very funny watching my nephew try to explain to the Calabat that the proper way to play was not to hit the ball, run past his sister on the way to second, then detour to field the ball he hit to try to get her out.
My kid, who's coming up on 12, is more focused on how extremely boring his parents (indeed, all parents, and probably all grownups) are than how dumb we might be.
Obviously, have a drunken orgy in your house. After that, they'll be grateful for "boring".
9, 10: It's so very surreal, isn't it? My youngest is 15, my oldest is 25, and I have to give my age using scientific notation.
21. Just such an anecdote is responsible for the length of "Love to love you baby" https://airmail.news/issues/2020-4-25/he-loves-that-you-love-love-to-love-you-baby
