We attended one of Jana's school friends' birthday party today. The little boy turned 5.
Without going into too much detail, I want to say that I've never seen parenting get permissive to the point that I saw today. The mom gave the birthday boy a 20 cm long knife because he insisted on cutting the cake himself, and then left him alone to do so (while he's surrounded by younger kids) - because that's what he wanted. There were plenty of other examples too, but this just boggled my mind. The knife was very close to the face of the kid next to him at times, as he waved it around and explained how he wanted to cut the cake. I just held my baby close and felt thankful that Jana was sitting far away from the cake.
Yeesh.
Many people can't see that there is a huge spectrum between punitive and/or micromanaging parenting and permissive parenting.
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