Positive parenting: advice from Care and Feeding.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. I am a firm believer in the principle of “your child isn’t giving you a hard time—they are having a hard time.” I follow Daniel Siegel’s Whole-Brain Child advice in managing behavioral issues, big feelings, etc., and I have always and consistently done the “validate, listen, reflect” process with Alice. But here’s the thing about thoughtful, intentional, reasonable, “positive,” and gentle parenting: Sometimes a parent, like any human being, just reacts. To be clear, we have never deliberately hidden this from her, but she has never expressly asked about it, and there’s no good way to randomly segue into “By the way, your dinner used to be alive.” She avoids eating chicken and turkey, and we’ve realized this might be because they’re called “chicken” and “turkey.” She does eat meats that don’t have the same name as their source animals, such as bacon, steak, and pot roast, but it’s clear from her comments that she doesn’t have a lock on what they’re made of. Charlotte’s Web, which happens to be one of my all-time favorite books, doesn’t exactly do the thing I foolishly hoped I could find and recommend to you, but it might be a way in to having this conversation before your child raises the question herself, and it’s also a wonderful way to spend some time every evening before bed.