"The child gets two confusing messages when a parent tells him which is the right fork to use, and then proceeds to use the wrong one. So does the child who listens to parents bicker and fuss, yet is told to be nice to his brothers and sisters"
About this Quote
Blanchard nails a childhood truth adults hate admitting: kids learn less from what we preach than from what we perform. Her examples are almost comically mundane - a dinner fork, a sibling squabble - and that’s the point. These aren’t grand moral crises; they’re the daily micro-scenes where “values” are supposedly taught. By choosing etiquette and family harmony, she targets two arenas where parents often demand compliance while quietly breaking their own rules.
The intent is to expose the double bind: children are asked to treat instructions as law, even when the lawgiver doesn’t. A parent who corrects a fork choice while using the “wrong” fork turns manners into theater, not meaning. The message the child receives isn’t about forks; it’s about power and arbitrariness: rules matter because I said so, not because they make sense. In the second scenario, “be nice” becomes another performance line delivered over the soundtrack of adult conflict. The subtext is bruising: emotional regulation is expected from the least equipped people in the room.
Contextually, this lands in a modern parenting culture obsessed with cultivating “good kids” - polite, empathetic, conflict-averse - while adult life remains messy, stressed, and often publicly reactive. Blanchard’s wit comes from the tight parallel structure (“So does the child...”), treating hypocrisy as a repeating pattern, not an occasional slip. The real critique isn’t that parents are imperfect; it’s that kids are keen auditors of integrity, and they experience inconsistency as confusion, not character-building.
The intent is to expose the double bind: children are asked to treat instructions as law, even when the lawgiver doesn’t. A parent who corrects a fork choice while using the “wrong” fork turns manners into theater, not meaning. The message the child receives isn’t about forks; it’s about power and arbitrariness: rules matter because I said so, not because they make sense. In the second scenario, “be nice” becomes another performance line delivered over the soundtrack of adult conflict. The subtext is bruising: emotional regulation is expected from the least equipped people in the room.
Contextually, this lands in a modern parenting culture obsessed with cultivating “good kids” - polite, empathetic, conflict-averse - while adult life remains messy, stressed, and often publicly reactive. Blanchard’s wit comes from the tight parallel structure (“So does the child...”), treating hypocrisy as a repeating pattern, not an occasional slip. The real critique isn’t that parents are imperfect; it’s that kids are keen auditors of integrity, and they experience inconsistency as confusion, not character-building.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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