Parents who film their children crying for clicks should take a hard look at themselves | Rhiannon Lucy Coslett
TThis is the song that’s been on my mind all week, and no, it’s not from Taylor Swift’s new album. She’s a much more sophisticated songwriter than Swift: Ms. Rachel. The song is called “Big Feelings” and it says: “It’s okay to have big feelings / I’m here to stay with your big feelings.”
Thanks to the trend toward gentle parenting, the concept of “big feelings” is making big money online, and I mostly welcome it (Big Feelings isn’t the only song to reflect this cultural shift; the animated movie Small Potatoes on CBeebies has a song that goes “Feelings/I’ve got a lot of feelings,” which my husband likes to sing to me when I’m on my period monthly). As a parent, it’s hard to escape strong emotions: you feel them, the little kid in your house feels them, and in one of the biggest departures for us as a species, so do countless other kids on your social media feed.
In fact, footage of babies and toddlers crying has become so popular on some platforms that many parents don’t even question it. I don’t have a TikTok and my Instagram algorithm is mostly focused on soup and magic, but when a colleague told me she found the trend disturbing, not to mention morally questionable, I watched some of the videos myself.
What she found was video after video of children at their most vulnerable. Crying, screaming, yelling, and sometimes physical beating. I have, of course, been a witness to these moments in my own home, but seeing another child go through these moments makes me painfully uncomfortable, especially when that child is not made to feel comfortable by his or her parents. The least that can be tolerated are the kind of videos in which mothers subject their children to clearing their sinuses while their toddlers or toddlers cry and scream directly into the camera. It should be said that most of the videos are not like that, and yet there is still something terrible about them all.
Of course, the “big feelings” aren’t always completely painful. When your child is lying on the sidewalk in a daze upon realizing that the cake is not infinite, it can be difficult to keep a straight face. Many of us have enjoyed tales of our own distinct tantrums. It was a matter of screaming “Give me all your money!” In the lobby of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in central London. Playfully teasing your child about the time they had a nervous breakdown, or laughing about it with your partner once they go to bed, is one thing. Filming a child in a vulnerable moment and uploading it to the Internet for everyone to see without their consent is a completely different matter.
Then you have the trends that are simply unpleasant, such as those that involve shocking children until they cry by throwing a slice of cheese at their foreheads, or Cracking an egg On them. This content appears to be geared towards humiliating children. In an article for the New York Times, Written by Amanda Hess: “The scariest part of these videos [is that] Parents hardly interact with their children. Instead, they link to a mirror image of their children and post it online. They enjoy their power over that image.
There are video creators who hate this type of content. They claim to photograph their children at their most vulnerable not to mock them, but because they are trying to create teachable moments – “just look at how quietly and wonderfully you managed to defuse this child’s outburst using these techniques.” Some even try to avoid the inevitable criticism. “This video is for education and awareness and not for approval or expression of opinion,” one video, Posted by @babybearhealth (Run by a pediatrician, apparently) Reads. The following message is some of the most self-congratulatory messages I’ve ever read on the Internet. “If you haven’t lived life, don’t judge the moment.”
How about you not post this moment? I find myself thinking. Because I judge these people. What I see, when I watch a video of a young child in distress, whether or not their parent is providing comfort, is a dereliction of duty – the duty to be present for your child. I wonder what message it sends, when your child starts expressing “feeling big”, you pull out your phone. What does this tell your child about their completely normal feelings? “Sharing real moments is part of learning,” she says.
As my husband and I begin touring schools for our son, it’s hard not to think about how child development approaches have changed since we were little. There is a growing understanding that “big feelings” are par for the course for young children. Many adults these days try to validate these feelings and provide a safe space for children to express themselves. However, despite what gentle parenting influencers claim, I don’t believe you can truly create a safe space for your child if you are photographing their moments of vulnerability and violating their privacy and dignity in the process. To be honest, I don’t think these people have much to teach any of us about parenting.
There are those who will find this extreme, and might reject the fact that in some ways I would rather put a slice of cheese on my son’s forehead for a laugh than exploit his plight as a teaching moment for clicks. But I would say to them this: If “all behavior is communication,” what exactly are these adults trying to say?
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