Adult Supremacy - Blog Posts

Unpopular opinion:

The whole "adults can't be friends with kids, it's just grooming lite™" is a product of adult supremacy. By saying that adults can't have healthy relationships with kids unless they're family/students, and adults can only be mentors not friends insinuate that children aren't individuals who have intellect, autonomy, agency, thoughts, and feelings of their own. It insinuates that adults always have to impart something, that kids never be equal, that kids can just *be* around adults.

When I was a 12th grader, i was friends with kids from kindergarten, 3rd grade, and 7th grade. How was i friends with them? I treated them as equals. I respected their opinions and views. I didn't advice them, didn't make things about me, didn't treat them like mindless dolls. I had discussions with them about religion and feminism that they initiated. I talked about their friends and my friends and the things we like. I never spoke down to them, never demanded that they speak to me in a certain way, never felt offended when they talked to me as an equal. Told them not to refer to me using age-based terms. I asked them doubts when I didn't know the meaning of certain words they used or what they were referring to. I respect boundaries - spoken and unspoken. Never told them certain things "aren't meant for children, you wouldn't understand", instead I told them that I didn't know how to explain certain things in a particular to help them understand. I changed the onus.

The first step to dismantling adult supremacy is realising that children have things to contribute, that they have a whole ass personality of their own. It's realising that all concepts such as boundaries, consent, peer pressure and so on that apply to adults apply to kids as well.

Remember: equal doesn't mean the same. I wouldn't talk about sex in front of my friend who's uncomfortable with sex related topics. I wouldn't talk about gorey R rated films with friends who get squicked out by them. So why would it be hard to not mention such topics around children?

Unless kids have examples of healthy relationships with adults, how can they identify unhealthy relationships? If what they see and learn is that relationships with adults mean listening to advice and preaching, always being treated as unequal, then how are they supposed to be empowered? How are they to believe that they are their own person and do have a voice and a place in this world?