By: Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett / The Guardian
Translation: Telegrafi.com
It's a song that's been stuck in my head all week, and, no, it's not from Taylor Swift's new album. It's from a much more sophisticated songwriter than Swift: Ms. Rachel. The song is called Big Feelings and says: "Big feelings are okay / I'm here to stay with your big feelings."
Thanks to the sensitive parenting trend, the concept of “big feelings” has become a huge source of profit on the internet, and I mostly welcome this (Big Feelings is not the only song that reflects this cultural shift; the animation small potatoes on [channel] CBeebies (There's a song called "Feelings / I've Got So Many Feelings," which my husband sings to me when I'm about to have my period.) As a parent, strong emotions are inevitable: you feel them, the little kid in your house feels them, and, at one of the greatest distances for us as a species, so do many other kids in your social networks.
In fact, images of babies and children crying are so common on some platforms that many parents don't even discuss it. I don't TikTok and my algorithm in Instagram is mostly focused on soup and magic, but when a colleague told me that she found this trend disturbing, not to mention morally questionable, I watched some of the videos myself.
What I came across was video after video of children at their most vulnerable. Crying, screaming, yelling, and sometimes reacting physically. Of course, I have witnessed these moments in my own home, but watching someone else's child go through this is incredibly uncomfortable, especially when that child is not being comforted by their own parent. Most unforgivable is the genre of videos where mothers are clearing their children's sinuses while babies or toddlers cry and scream directly into the camera. It must be said that most videos are not like this, and yet there is something horrifying about them.
Of course, “big feelings” aren’t always completely traumatic. When your child lies on the pavement in despair when they realise the cake isn’t finished, it’s hard to keep a straight face. Many of us have heard stories of our own private outbursts. Mine involved shouting “Give me all the money!” in the lobby of the Institute of Modern Art in central London. Teasing your child playfully about a moment of emotional outburst, or laughing about it with your partner while they’re sleeping, is one thing. Filming your child in a moment of weakness and uploading it online for everyone to see without their consent is another matter entirely.
Then there are the simply unpleasant trends, like the one that involved shocking babies into crying by throwing a slice of cheese at their foreheads, or cracking an egg on their heads. This content seems to be intended to humiliate children. In an article for New York Times, Amanda Hess wrote: "The scariest part of these videos is that the parents barely interact with their children. Instead, they bond over a reflection of their children that they are spreading online. And, they revel in their power over that image."
There are video creators who would hate this kind of content. They claim they are filming their children at their most vulnerable moments not to make fun of them, but because they are trying to create teaching moments - "look how calmly and wonderfully I was able to calm this child's outburst using these techniques". Some even try to avoid the inevitable criticism. "This video is shared to educate and raise awareness - not for endorsements or opinions," says a video posted by @babybearhealth (run by a pediatrician, apparently). The following message is one of the most self-aggrandizingly useless things I've ever read on the internet: "If you're not living life, don't judge the moment."
What if you don't post the moment at all? I find myself thinking. Because I judge these people. What I see when I watch a video of a young child in distress - even if the parent is trying to comfort them - is a dereliction of duty: the duty to be present for your child. And I wonder what message is being sent when your child starts to show a "big feeling" and you pull out your phone. What does that say to the baby about perfectly natural emotions? "Sharing real moments is part of the lesson," apparently.
As my husband and I begin to visit schools for our son, it’s hard not to reflect on the ways in which the approach to child development has changed since we were little. There’s a greater understanding today that “big feelings” are common for young children. These days, many adults try to validate those emotions and provide children with a safe space to express themselves. However, despite what the influencers of sensitive parenting claim, I don’t believe you can truly provide a safe space for your child if you film their sensitive moments and violate their privacy and dignity in the process. To be honest, I don’t think these people have much to teach us about parenting.
There are those who will consider this to be extreme, who would be shocked by the fact that in some ways I would rather put a slice of cheese on my son’s forehead, for a laugh, than use his discomfort as a teaching moment for clicks. But to them I would say this: if “all behavior is communication,” what, exactly, are these adults trying to say? /Telegraph/
