"Frequently parents forget that children are people. I don't try to treat Kristen as an adult, but I do try to treat her as a person, with a child's sensibilities"
About this Quote
Parenting advice usually comes packaged as either sentimental cooing or hardline discipline. Kent McCord sidesteps both with a deceptively simple correction: children are not projects, pets, or props in the family story; they are people with interior lives. Coming from an actor, the line carries a performer's suspicion of roles. Adults can slip into playing "The Parent" and casting the child as "The Kid", then getting angry when the script stops working. McCord’s point is that the relationship collapses the moment you stop seeing the other person as fully real.
The craft here is the double move: he refuses the common false choice between treating a child like an adult or treating them like a child. "I don't try to treat Kristen as an adult" signals boundaries, authority, and protection. Then he flips to "but...as a person" to insist on dignity and respect as non-negotiables. That small hinge word, but, is doing the moral labor: it separates maturity (which Kristen doesn’t have to perform) from personhood (which she can’t lose).
The phrase "with a child's sensibilities" is the quietest knife in the drawer. It implies that adults often punish children for being developmentally accurate: too sensitive, too literal, too impulsive. McCord reframes those traits not as defects but as the operating system you must design your communication around. The subtext is a critique of adult convenience: parenting goes wrong when efficiency outranks empathy, when obedience replaces understanding, and when we demand adulthood from someone still learning how feelings work.
The craft here is the double move: he refuses the common false choice between treating a child like an adult or treating them like a child. "I don't try to treat Kristen as an adult" signals boundaries, authority, and protection. Then he flips to "but...as a person" to insist on dignity and respect as non-negotiables. That small hinge word, but, is doing the moral labor: it separates maturity (which Kristen doesn’t have to perform) from personhood (which she can’t lose).
The phrase "with a child's sensibilities" is the quietest knife in the drawer. It implies that adults often punish children for being developmentally accurate: too sensitive, too literal, too impulsive. McCord reframes those traits not as defects but as the operating system you must design your communication around. The subtext is a critique of adult convenience: parenting goes wrong when efficiency outranks empathy, when obedience replaces understanding, and when we demand adulthood from someone still learning how feelings work.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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