{"id":125518,"date":"2014-05-06T10:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T14:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/?p=125518"},"modified":"2014-05-06T09:45:41","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T13:45:41","slug":"raising-a-boy-to-appreciate-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/raising-a-boy-to-appreciate-beauty\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Your Kid To Appreciate Beauty Will Make Them A Better Adult"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"raising-a-son\"

Well, a romantic son. I keep looking and looking for how to raise my daughter into a romantic human being, but there just isn’t any good resource. Not so if you have a boy, according to Liz Dow<\/strong>, who urges us all to try in her post\u00a0Raising a Romantic Son.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

My first reaction to this post was my usual squicked out feeling that I get when mothers begin to wax philosophic about being their sons’ first love and telling slutty tramps to get their hands off of him.<\/a> After all, in the very beginning, the author relayed a moment where she is waltzing with her son in the backyard, saying,<\/p>\n

“Romantic moments don’t just happen with your husband. If you are open to it, romance is all around you.”<\/em><\/p>\n

In truth though, the post isn’t squicky at all, just kind of confusing. Romance has a lot of definitions, and the one the author is talking about is that “quality or feeling of excitement of the mystery of everyday life,” as opposed to the roses and candlelight kind, which is why it’s weird that she seems to phrase parts of the post to the latter definition.<\/p>\n

Overall, the author has a nice message and if you do want a romantic son you’re in luck because she’s shared her secrets with us. Basically all you have to do is “Create the setting”, “explore the backyard”, “teach him art”, “travel to historic sites”, and “respect imagination”.<\/p>\n

With the exception of “travel to historic sites”, most of these are just common sense, no? I mean, we’ve gone to historic sites, but nothing quite as thrilling as the author’s trips to England to visit the ruins of Camelot. Mostly these elicit boredom, something I expect will change as my daughter gets older. Not everyone can pack up and go to see some English ruins or the Antebellum south though, but I doubt your child’s sense of wonder will be ruined if you can’t afford to make it to Graceland<\/strong> this year.<\/p>\n

Other than that, she makes a good point. If you teach your kid to appreciate the world around them<\/a>, chances are they’ll eventually grow to be a person who isn’t completely awful, to everyone’s combined benefit.<\/p>\n

I’d like to point out, though, that it isn’t just boys who benefit from lessons in not sitting on the couch and becoming slowly jaded by the onslaught of dark life lessons taught to them through the television and computer<\/a>. We should be doing this for all kids. I do appreciate \u00a0her desire to want her son to be an kind and fully functional adult who is capable of maintaining relationships with other people, a welcome change from the never ending stream of “stay away from my son with your whorish tube tops and evil vaginas, ladies, he’s taken!”<\/a><\/p>\n

Ultimately she signs off by saying, “My son is 25 now. When he tells me about his rich conversations with his girlfriend and how they explore ideas and cities together, I think the lessons had a lasting effect. He continues to see the romance all around us.”<\/p>\n

That’s a sweet thought, and she’s probably right.<\/p>\n

(Image: Studio 1One<\/a>\/Shutterstock<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is so much involved in raising kids-just when you think that you’re off the hook because you’ve kept…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21346,"featured_media":125547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[254],"tags":[276,5656,5726,5826],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":254,"label":"mother and son"}],"post_tag":[{"value":276,"label":"imaginative play"},{"value":5656,"label":"raising boys"},{"value":5726,"label":"raising sons"},{"value":5826,"label":"romance"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/mother-and-son.jpg",500,333,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Theresa Edwards","author_link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/author\/theresaedwards\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":254,"name":"mother and son","slug":"mother-and-son","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":921,"taxonomy":"category","description":"Mothers and sons should have a special bond. Learn tips, get advice on how moms can be integral in the life of their son\r\n","parent":3,"count":23,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":254,"category_count":23,"category_description":"Mothers and sons should have a special bond. Learn tips, get advice on how moms can be integral in the life of their son\r\n","cat_name":"mother and son","category_nicename":"mother-and-son","category_parent":3}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":276,"name":"imaginative play","slug":"imaginative-play","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":276,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":12,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":5656,"name":"raising boys","slug":"raising-boys","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5737,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":12,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":5726,"name":"raising sons","slug":"raising-sons","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5807,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":5,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":5826,"name":"romance","slug":"romance","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5907,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":13,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21346"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}