r/funny • u/Ok_Concentrate_9713 • 3h ago

"Scream, nobody can hear you!"

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u/johnsolomon 2h ago edited 2h ago

Sticking your middle finger up at your parents isn't cute

The apocalypse would have begun if I'd disrespected my parents like that. It would have had to be a seriously funny joke for me to avoid getting Thanos snapped

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u/Fibonacci357 1h ago

Then you didn't respect your parents, you feared them. That kind of parenting doesn't work.

1

u/johnsolomon 34m ago edited 29m ago

I didn't fear them, it was a bungled joke. My point is that some words and gestures are inherently disrespectful, so it makes me uncomfortable when adults laugh them off or even encourage them in a way that normalises kids using them in situations where they're rude or disproportionate.

I feel like treating a kid flipping off his parents as funny rather than rude removes some of the kid's sense of where the boundary is meant to be. We'll see the same attitude somewhere else (towards a teacher, a stranger or in public) and wonder where it came from. People complain about kids having no respect for authority, but... here you have it. It's enforcing boundaries in moments like this that shape a kid's sense of what respectful behaviour actually looks like. I know it sounds a bit old-fashioned, and maybe overly strict when we're just isolating one gesture, but these moments add up.

But at the end of the day, it's not my kid. I was just voicing an immediate gut reaction. The middle finger killed some of the humour for me.