“The world is a cruel place.”
This quote has been said so many times I couldn’t even find it’s origins on the internet. Some people have added to it like Dathan Aurbach, author of Penpal, wrote, “the world is a cruel place made crueler still by man,” or Kate Forsyth, author of Bitter Greens, wrote in her book, “the world is a cruel place, Petrosinella, and it wounds the weak.” However, the meaning stays the same: it’s expected that people will get hurt.
In parenting support groups, the phrase gets tossed around as an excuse some parents make to purposely hurt their children. From their perspective, it’s an important teaching moment where their cruelty provides first hand experience for their child, shattering their world views of a safe place. These kinds of parents think their kids are so resilient that they’ll take the cruelty in stride, learn some kind of independence that they can’t depend on anyone except themselves to be kind, and develop the skills necessary to bounce back.
And maybe that worked for them when their parents engaged in abusive tactics to control their age-appropriate behavior as a young child and teenager. But before you dismiss your parents’ strategies and say, “I turned out fine,” really take a moment and ask yourself… did you?
I have no intentions of armchair diagnosing you, that is a path for you to walk should you want to. No, this article is about breaking the cycle starting with you.
I’m a survivor of child abuse. Child abuse that has been handed down for generations and when I became a parent, my number one fear was continuing that cycle, raising another human that becomes inherently traumatized because the world is cruel and I would have been their first teacher in teaching that lesson.
So I hyperfocused on doing the opposite. I learned about gentle parenting and respectful parenting. I’ve made it my mission to be my child’s safe person, for our home to be my child’s safe place. The world is cruel, yes, but here they’ll always have respite from that cruelty.
There will always be opportunity for the world to teach my child how cruel it is, I don’t need to be that provider, but I will be here to teach my child how to cope with that cruelty in a healthy way. I will be here to validate their feelings of unfairness, encourage their instinctual sense of justice, and empower their motive to make things right. I will be here to guide them in questioning the rules/laws through a lens of equity and making waves and lasting change should they choose to.
Continue Learning
Natalie Oliver, “A Beginner’s Guide to Gentle Parenting” (May 31, 2021). Guidepost Montessori, Higher Ground Education Inc.
Renee Plant, “Benefits and Challenges of Gentle Parenting” (Nov. 29, 2022). Verywell Family.
Amy Morin, LCSW, “The 4 Types of Parenting Styles and How Kids Are Affected” (Aug. 9, 2022). Verywell Family.
Christina Fletcher, “What’s the Difference between Gentle Parenting, Attachment Parenting and Conscious Parenting” (May 12, 2020). Medium.
Grace Koelma, “These parents don’t use rewards or punishment to get their kids to comply” (Mar. 10, 2016). Special Broadcasting Services (SBS).
Janet Lansbury, “Respectful Parenting Is Not Permissive Parenting” (Sept. 26, 2012). Janet Lansbury: elevating child care.
