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Alain A. Le Guillou MD's avatar

strangely enough, none of these studies, and several psychologists I have talked to mention the simple shift in language new parents now use, for about 20-22 years in my view of pediatric practice, where parents create enormous conflict and confusion since the toddler age by starting every sentence with "do you want to" when they mean "it's time to", or it's time to put shoes on, do you want to put the right shoe first or the left... and if you're sneaky and want to distract the kid a bit more, " do you want to put your socks first or your shoes first... but if every thing starts by do you want to put your shoes, kids up to age 7-10 take it literally, and fell then coerced to put their shoe on if they did not "feel like it " in the first place... leads to enormous, confusion, mistrust in parents and authority, and a very overwhelming sense that they are in full charge of EVERYTHING, even as toddlers! you can translate that in how teenagers then evolve when they face those "hormonal terrible twos"...

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Paul Scott Duesterdick's avatar

I grew up in a small town in Bew Jersey.

I was always outside. My father worked in a refinery and was home at 5 and dinner was 5:15. All you had to do was be home by 5:15.

In the summer I ran around the neighborhoods all day and if I didn’t come home for lunch my mother figured that some other mother fed me and when I showed up with three friends at lunchtime everyone got fed.

By the way , this is from 6 til 13 years of age.

Of course there were no picttures of abducted kids on the side of milk cartons those days snd even after that started it ended quickly when law enforcement concluded that over 90% of abductions were family members or grandparents dealing with divorce and other matters.

It was a liberating and pleasant childhood. No regrets.

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