Greta Thunberg’s diatribe at the UN was religious fervour on steroids. Her dedication to warning that we are on the brink of annihilation, and governments are to blame for man-made climate change, is totally nuts, but even crazier is the adoration poured on this errant 16-year-old who is as far from a normal 16-year-old as you could get.
“This week, [in April this year] she was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time Magazine. She has briefly met the Pope, who encouraged her to “Keep doing what you’re doing.” She has received numerous awards, including, most recently, the German Golden Camera award. She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Quillette
Well this is backwards. The Nobel Peace Prize for encouraging rebellious children to skip school. But Greta Thunberg is a product of progressive parenting. After Greta’s appearance at the UN this week, Emily Brooke, writing for Stuff, is sipping the same progressive parenting Koolaid.
“How would you feel if your teenager skipped school? Disagreed openly with her elders? Tried to persuade you to change your lifestyle? Led other children to copy her rebellious behaviour?
If my daughter was Greta Thunberg, I’d be proud as hell.”
Stuff
Brooke is nuts too, and before sending her own child over the cliff with the rest of the lemmings, she should think about the dysfunctional Thunberg family, which is a case study in how not to raise your kids. Brooke admits she already elevates her three-year-old daughter to parent status.
“The time for unquestioningly obeying your elders is done.
We don’t need a generation of polite rule-keepers. We need a generation of critical thinkers, of agitators, of dissidents. Young people who throw paint at the status quo and aren’t afraid to fight for what they believe in. We need a generation of activists, or we’re all doomed.”
Brooke has child raising completely backwards. Future generations are not doomed by a lack of activists, they are doomed by a lack of good parenting.
Kids should be allowed to be kids and taught to trust their parents with the decision making. Progressive parenting absolves the adult from parental responsibility including refusing to say “no” to their child and foisting on them life choices which they are ill-equipped to make. Little wonder the Thunberg children are self-destructing.
Greta’s mother, Marlena Ernman, in her 2018 book “Scenes From the Heart”, gives heartbreaking insights into her tragic family.
“We are offered a story of “a family in crisis and a planet in crisis”—two phenomena that are presented as inextricably linked.
The book posits that oppression of women, minorities, and people with disabilities stem from the same overarching root problem as climate change: an unsustainable way of life.
The family’s private crisis and the global climate crisis, the authors argue, are simply symptoms of the same systemic disorder.”
Their family life is certainly unsustainable because this is a family in crisis. The children are living through hell on earth simply because the parents refused to establish parental authority in the home as soon as the child started questioning it.
“Greta is eleven years old and has gone two months without eating. Her heart rate and blood pressure show clear signs of starvation. She has stopped speaking to anyone but her parents and younger sister, Beata.
After years of depression, eating disorders, and anxiety attacks, she finally receives a medical diagnosis: Asperger’s syndrome, high-functioning autism, and OCD. She also suffers from selective mutism—which explains why she sometimes can’t speak to anyone outside her closest family. When she wants to tell a climate researcher that she plans a school strike on behalf of the environment, she speaks through her father.”
At eleven years old Greta was struggling with basic life skills and showing permanent physical effects of her poor choices, and her sister is exactly the same.
“Her sister Beata, who was 12 when the book was written, lives with ADHD, Asperger’s syndrome, and OCD. She is prone to sudden outbursts of anger, during which she screams obscenities at her mother.
What would normally be a 10-minute walk to dance class takes almost an hour because Beata insists on walking with her left foot in front, refuses to step on certain parts of the sidewalk, and demands that her mother walk the same way.
She also insists that her mother wait outside during class—she isn’t allowed to move, even to go to the bathroom. The child still ends up weeping in her mother’s arms.”
This mother is a progressive parent letting her errant children call the shots to the detriment of their long term health and well being.
“In Scenes from the Heart, when Greta eventually starts eating again, she only allows herself certain foods.
Her mother has to prepare the same food every day for Greta to bring to school and keep in the school refrigerator: pancakes filled with rice.
Greta will eat them only if there is no sticker with her name on the container: stickers, paper and newspapers trigger Greta’s OCD against eating.”
Quillette
This crazy role reversal in child-raising exonerates the parents and destroys the kids. Sadly, it is a tragedy so easily avoided.
Authority is confused with destructive authoritarianism when they are not the same thing at all. Traditional child raising clearly defines the role of the parent and the child and establishes boundaries that, far from hindering a child, enable learning and development in a safe environment. Which is something the Thunberg children desperately need.