I stopped posting my kids on social media. I don’t think it’s fair to them to create an online presence without their informed consent.

It’s that basic lack of respect that keeps my parents at an arm and a half’s distance. There was nothing I did as a child that the rest of the world didn’t hear about, even if I specifically asked them to keep something quiet. I stopped asking after a while, because I realized that guaranteed that they’d talk about it. Fucking weirdos.

Respect has always been at the core of my wife and I’s parenting philosophy. Children are fully-qualified persons in their own right, they’re not an extension of their parents. They have their own tastes, dreams and aspirations. They’ll test to find the limits of what they can do, and it doesn’t really matter where it’s actually set but it’s really important that they do find it. They can understand why we have to say no to them, and if you communicate the reason they’ll respect it.

All of this continues well into their teenage years, BTW.

I keep telling my wife we have to write a book on parenting, but she thinks it’ll be too controversial (especially our views around daycare and schooling)…

People really just weren’t ready for social media or having miniature computer-cameras at their disposal constantly.

If your child is having a meltdown of throwing a tantrum then you as a parent have a job to be doing. Put the phone back in your pocket or your purse and attend to your kid. Figure out what the problem is, do what you need to do to calm them down and consider that maybe if this is a frequent occurrence that perhaps you as a parent fucked up somewhere and you’re going to have to be responsible by working to correct whatever mistakes you made that brought this bad habit into existence.

Just generally ask your kids’ permission to post them online, and don’t pressure them if they don’t want to. This is a single piece of advice that will protect you from many mistakes like these.