I do respect my children, as you do yours. I do not try to control every aspect of their lives.

I think all decent parents will say they respect their kids.

But if we actually look objectively at how we treat them, it ends up looking incredibly disrespectful. Not everything, certainly, but more than we realized.

Parents in general speak to kids in ways they'd never speak to another adult, or at least not one they cared about! Conventional parenting is rife with disrespect for children but it's common practice so we don't even notice.

We decide that since we "have to" go to the store, it's just part of life and kids have to put up with it like we do.

"We have to leave now! 1 ... 2 ... 3 ..." "You made the mess. You have to clean it up." (That one came back to me and boy did it sound mean!) "I've been buying you things all day. Do you think I'm made of money?" "No, the food at the mall's too expensive. We can wait until we get home to eat." "No, you can't do that until you're done cleaning up." "Turn off that game now. You've had enough for today."

And those are the more obvious ones.

Conventional parenting basically seeks to mold kids to the parents' liking. It's incredibly disrespectful.

Here's a YouTube video of "momisms" sung to the tune of the William Tell OVerture:

William Tell Overture for Moms

All the moms in the audience cheer becuase they agree that's how it is and how it has to be. But if you picture what she says as a day spent with your husband or boss saying those things to you, I'm betting you wouldn't feel either loved or respected regardless if that was the intent or not! But just because all those are direspectful doesn't mean you're without tools if you give them up. It's a matter of turning your vision around and figuring out how you'd like to be treated in the same situation.