It’s nothing new that all parents choose how they want to raise their kids: what values they want to teach them and what example they want to set. Kids learn from their parents, especially by taking real-life examples.
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Now, speaking of values, sharing is caring, right? Sharing is an essential value to learn from a young age. It helps kids to make friends and keep friends, negotiate and teach kids about fairness. It also shows that if we help or give something to others, in return we can expect to get help or something that we want too.
More info: Tiktok
Kids tend to find friends faster than adults; however, for them to stay friends, parents have to be willing to cooperate
Image credits: katstickler
Mom shared a story of when her 3 Y.O. was denied a slice of cake at a public park after hanging out with a group of kids for a while who had a birthday party
Image credits: katstickler
“I've gotta mom shame”
“Only people have ever mom shamed are myself and my own mother, but one other mom is going to be added to the list. Actually, this is a question: am I entitled or was this messed up? Two hours ago, literally right now, MK and I were at the park in my neighborhood and it was us and this birthday group, right, so literally just us and this perfect group.”
Image credits: katstickler
“These kids are having a birthday party and MK is playing with them for like, what, half an hour”
“They're making friends. It was nice, it was actually very cute. Time to sing Happy Birthday. MK goes over, she's one of the group right now, right, they're welcoming her with open arms, or so I thought. I was wrong. Time to eat cake. I see MK, I see her intention of grabbing a piece of cake."
Image credits: katstickler
“So I like walk over to make sure it's okay”
“As a formality. Honestly, I was like, obviously it's okay. It's cake. It's a massive cake. There's lots of leftover pieces. The mother takes the plate away from me and gets down to her level [and] says you cannot eat this cake. Okay, this is not your birthday party. These are not your friends. Where's your mother?”
Image credits: katstickler
The woman is a social media star, best known for her hilarious and relatable comedy videos. She goes under the nickname @katstickler on both Instagram and Tiktok and has more than 11M followers on both sites. Additionally, her videos cover content regarding her divorce, co-parenting and jokes about her Hispanic mother. She has a 3-year-old kid that she calls MK, who this story is about.
The video was posted a week ago and already got more than 10M views and more than 1.4M likes. However, users online sparked a discussion regarding this situation. “If ANYTHING I’d say let’s ask your mommy first make sure it’s ok?! But NO?! And then the ‘where’s your mother?!’ one user was shocked about the audacity of the mom in the park. “And the ‘these are not your friends...’ was that necessary?!” another agreed.
Most folks agreed that it was rude, mean and very not necessary and felt sorry for MK. However, others had different opinions: “Me personally would have never let my kid go over there alone.” Another added: “I don’t like how that was worded at all… but we’re gonna be mad that someone we don’t know doesn’t include our kids in their event?”
To draw a little conclusion from people’s comments regarding this incident, it is clear that almost nobody agreed with the way the other mom in the park spoke to the kid and the wordings could have been nicer. However, a few folks mentioned that it’s acceptable that a mother didn’t want unknown kids at her kid’s birthday party. But scrolling through all of these comments, it’s clear that more users sympathized with the author. They stated that they would have definitely included MK and shared the cake. Additionally, in their personal experiences, it’s common to share and invite all kids that are around.
Image credits: katstickler
Bored Panda wrote to Kiva Schuler, who is the Founder and CEO of The Jai Institute for Parenting, and the author of the ground-breaking book The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution: Changing the World by Changing How We Parent. She kindly agreed to share her insights regarding this situation.
“Raising children is challenging enough! Parenting other parents? That's an exercise in futility,” she started. “Allowing our children to feel their feelings means we have to get right with the idea that they are going to have experiences in their life that feel bad. Today it's over a piece of cake, but someday it might be about a failed friendship, breakup, or job loss. The world isn't going to rearrange itself so that our kids won't ever feel uncomfortable feelings.”
“Rather than defend or try to protect our children from these experiences, we can use them as teaching tools to illustrate the importance of the values we hold dear,” Kiva emphasized. Speaking about this exact case, she mentioned that “this could be a great opportunity to teach about generosity, kindness and inclusivity. We can get curious about our child's feelings through questions like 'how did that feel?' or 'what would we do in our family if the situation was reversed?'"
Image credits: Pamela V White (not the actual photo)
Now, it’s interesting to think about why some people find it okay to share a piece of cake, while some support the other mom in the park and agree with her actions. “We can't ever really know other people's motivations, especially strangers. It sounds silly, but this could be someone who always had to share as a young child and has some wounding in this area. Maybe they have had experiences where they've been expected to care for other people's kids, and were reacting to that resentment,” the expert speculates.
“Every human being on the planet sees the world through a lens of their perceptions, beliefs, past experiences and defenses. Knowing this can help us to remember compassion and that it's not realistic that other people 'should' act in ways that are aligned with our worldview. Judging others is rarely useful. Teaching our kids about the world through these situations, on the other hand, is very useful,” Kiva shared.
“I love videos like this because they create such valuable conversation, but I also ache a bit inside, because parenting is ridiculously hard and complex,” expert emphasized. “Mom judgment is real, and none of us want to be exposed publicly in our 'not best moments.' And as moms, we ALL have our own 'not best moments,'" Kiva finished.
Finally, don’t forget to check out her website, where every parent can find useful information, and her book The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution, which is all about the personal growth work parents can do to step into leadership in raising their kids and gaining the tools of emotional intelligence and communication that guide our children to live our values.
Image credits: Bob B. Brown (not the actual photo)
You can check out the whole video below:
Folks in the comments defended the author
