"Yep, your wife is overreacting for sure, but also, your tone feels a little insensitive to me. Are you ashamed of your son? Are you one of those dads who require their toddler boys to be emotionless cyborgs and do 65 pullups with Costco-sized containers of Similac tied to their ankles?"
"But let's keep this in perspective. Your wife's not going to remove "every single thing" from your home that scares your son, just this one thing. And maybe he's not scared of it, but is mostly annoyed by that noisy goddamn toy the same way I was annoyed by it when one of"
"She says keeping the car is out of the question since it scares our son so much. Noah is afraid of the vacuum cleaner (and his own shadow if I'm being honest), and I don't see us getting rid of that or giving up using it."
"My position is that Noah will get used to it if he comes to see it as just part of the household landscape. But Tara wants to return it to my parents."
A parent responds to a father who wants to keep a remote-control stunt car despite a toddler’s fear. The response criticizes the father’s insensitive tone and questions whether he expects emotionless behavior. It argues that the mother is not trying to remove every frightening item, only the specific toy. It suggests the child may be reacting to the noise and annoyance rather than the toy itself. The response implies that fear can be addressed through perspective and appropriate boundaries rather than extreme solutions or dismissive attitudes.
Read at Slate Magazine
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