@thesotiris 4 June 2025 more from that month

What you owe your children: Healing the world, one innocent child at a time

Your children owe you nothing. You owe your children everything. If this sounds preposterous to you, this article is for you; your children’s happiness depends on it. **One** The notion that children somehow owe their parents anything is bizarre and objectively erroneous, not to mention extremely self-centered and narcissistic. Seriously? You imagine that your children owe you anything by default? You decided to bring your children into this hostile world, here against their will, and under your personal and economic inadequacies, and all because you selfishly needed to satisfy your self-serving emotional needs.*You*initiated the action that led them here;**they had no choice when, where, or whether to be born, and they had no choice of parents either**. Children offer you more comfort, love, consolation, happiness, and self-esteem than anything else in this world. Having an innocent soul attached to you, literally worshipping you and seeing you as the actual embodiment of God, is empowering to say the least: it can encourage you to want to live up to their image of you. Sure, innocent children offer love indiscriminately, even if you don’t deserve it, but this is fine for most parents. It’s tempting to want a pet who will love you by default, without you having to improve yourself or to offer the same love back. So, tell me again how you are supposedly “selfless” for simply obeying your biological programming to have children. Tell me how responding to the easiest instinct to follow (procreation) somehow makes you a hero. Children never had the choice to be brought into this world. Not only that, but they never had a choice of parents either. Who told you you were fit to be a parent and have an innocent life rely on you totally and helplessly? Who told you you deserved such an honour or such self-aggrandisement? How certain are you that, if your children had an unbiased choice of parent, they would choose you over all the encouraging, empowering, patient, and great parents out there? Are you so sure you ever deserved those children’s absolute devotion and love, which you receive by default, no matter how shitty you are as a person? **Two** The narcissist parent says, “*But I gave my children life!*” You did what, now? There’s a specific mental illness by which the afflicted see themselves as gods. Settle down. You don’t have supernatural powers to give life to anything. You are neither a god nor Dr. Frankenstein. Procreation is a biological instinct; every disgusting insect can procreate. Not everything or everyone can be a great parent. “*But I give my children everything!*” the narcissist insists. No, you don’t give your children “everything”; you only give them the bare minimum to satisfy their survival needs (food, shelter, hygiene). There’s*way*more you could be giving, but you choose not to. If you are a slightly above-average parent, you might give your children some attention, encouragement, and all the nourishment they need to build self-esteem and thus develop an assertive, proactive personality, ready to take on early adulthood with dignity, compassion, aspiration, and emotional support. **Three** Children give you such innocent trust that it leaves them totally exposed to you. Their involuntary and absolute surrender to you makes them vulnerable to you, while they understand full well that you are bigger, stronger, and smarter than they; they are at your mercy. Yet children are too innocent to imagine the horrors you can inflict on them.**They trust you naively, with all their purity and innocence. This is why you owe children your best behaviour**. This is why you are morally obligated to treat your children way better than*any*adult with their suspicions, insecurities, grudges, and petty antagonisms. **Four** Then, the predictably psychotic straw-man and non sequitur comes right about now: “*You have to discipline children! If you are kind to them, you spoil them, and they become insufferable brats. A little spanking is good!*” First, you sound like a pederast when you say shit like that, always too ready to get physical with children against their will. Second, you are arguing from ignorance, false attribution, and one of the dumbest straw men possible. No, children don’t become “spoiled” when you are kind, communicative, engaging, and nurturing with them. Children become spoiled when you ignore and neglect them, which is actual child abuse. Why? Because you brought children into this world against their will, and you neglect their intense biological and psychological needs for attention and emotional support, vital elements for their growth. We show empathy for criminals in prisons, yet we ignore neglected children whose lives are worse than prison when isolated in an environment, not of their choosing, which gives them no freedom, no interaction, and no connection. Spoiled children are the neglected ones who were bribed by their parents to shut up and stop asking for attention. Shitty parents manage their guilt for being shitty parents by exchanging attention for money. “*If you’ll be quiet, I’ll buy you this.*” The child concedes, assuming he owes his parents for this bribery, but through time, he wonders why he is so insignificant to merit the neglect of his parents, no less, the ones who should love him the most. He wonders why his parents chose the TV or endless hours chatting with random strangers over engaging and communicating with him. This does wonders for a child’s self-esteem. Then, the child becomes confused with the undeserved bribes he receives, together with his frustrations from being ignored and forced to dislike himself, since his parents so obviously dislike him. Of course then he will erupt in temper tantrums. Of course he will descend into juvenile delinquency. Of course he will act out. What do you think spoiled brats are if not the product of bad parents, the shitty parents whose behaviour children try to mimic as a desperate attempt to be liked? **Five** “*But, I was spanked by my parents and I turned out alright.*” No, you didn’t. You aren’t alright, I promise you that. You literally promote physical violence against children, the same violence you wouldn’t condone against adults for far worse intercessions; adults who don’t have excuses to be unreasonable. It’s funny… An adult (who is out of excuses when being a jerk) somehow deserves to be respected. But when a child (who isn’t more responsible for his actions than his parents are) simply acts our, deserves violence, intimidation, and emotional abuse? We make such a big deal about “workplace bullying”, yet we ignore the bullying of children by their own parents, no less? Where is the patience? Where is the humanity? Where is the parents’ self-accountability? If you think spanking children is ok because “you were spanked and you turned out alright”, then you are the literal embodiment of proof for my argument: That spanking, and any other form of violence against children, is psychotic, and it causes a lifetime of trauma. Child abuse includes emotional/psychological trauma (shaming, threatening, intimidation, scaring, guilt-tripping), verbal abuse (berating, discouragement), and neglect (denying them the attention they need to develop self-esteem and healthy personalities). You owe children the attention they need. You decided to bring them into this world. They didn’t get to choose whether to be born, and they never got to choose parents. Yes, you owe them big time. **Six** This is why the human world is broken: We consider it moral, vital even, to use physical violence against children for absolutely no crime at all, when less violence against adults for greater crimes is considered immoral and punishable by law. Are we sane as a species? Innocent children deserve physical and psychological violence for no crime committed at all, while adults, without any excuses or exonerating circumstances at their age, are respected and protected by the full might of themonopoly of violence of the state? https://sotiris.substack.com/p/a-threat-based-civilisation-is-not **Seven** **All that violence, intimidation, and humiliation teach an innocent child is to disrespect themselves and to fear you**. They learn that violence, intimidation, and shaming are the only way to get people to adopt your preferred behaviours, and that whoever has the power gets to impose their will on others. So, whenever they get a perceived position of power, they become abusive to others, too. They don’t understand that**reason and incentive**are the only meaningful ways of promoting a behaviour. They never learned that from their parents. And because they were silently abused by their parents, children don’t have the self-esteem required to defend themselves and stand up for themselves when threatened. Good job sabotaging your own kids! When the parents (the only two people who are supposed to be the biggest fans and protectors of a child) choose to use intimidation, violence, and psychological abuse against that child, then, guess what: The child will grow to have no self-esteem, no reason to feel confident, no place of emotional safety and support whenever things get challenging in life. Sound familiar? We live in a world of people who are both vicious abusers and subservient weaklings at the same time, depending on their circumstantial position of perceived power. Where do you think we learn this dynamic of submitting to power when we don’t have it, and imposing our will via force when we do have power? Where do you think we learn to use threats, rather than reason and incentives, to get people to do what we want? And where do you think we learn to be arrogant, to expect people to do what we want them to do just because we say so, rather than have the humility to let people decline our preferred behaviour? If they decline, then obviously we couldn’t provide enough reason and incentive for them to adopt it. Nobody owes you anything, least of all your children, to whom you owe your everything. **Eight** To clarify, when I say ‘getting people to adopt your desired behavior,’ I am referring to actively initiating action to influence or change others’ behaviors. Self-defence, however, does not fall under this definition — it is merely a response to harmful behavior, not an attempt to shape or instill a new one. When someone initiates a threat against you, you can still use reason and incentive to fend them off, but violence in self-defence is still an available and moral last resort. Using reason and incentive as your default in life does not mean that you abandon the unfortunate but necessary final resort of defensive violence. But children cannot act in self-defense against abusive parents. If anything, you are more likely to stand up for yourself and defend against aggression when you grow up in a positive, empowering environment, where your parents respected you enough to value your self-sovereignty. Children mimic their parents: If parents show respect to their children, then those children will respect themselves and others. If parents abuse their children, then those children learn to take abuse without standing up for themselves, as is the case with a helpless child facing an abusive parent. Only with self-esteem can you truly defend yourself. And you learn self-esteem from how you are treated as a child. **Nine** At least, respect the fact that you had children to satisfy your emotional needs. You never got to meet those children before their birth — your children didn’t exist when you decided to have them by simply following your biological programming. So you didn’t do it “for them”, since you didn’t know them; you did it for you, you, you.**You thought you were good enough to bring pure, innocent life to the mercy of your inadequacies**, to worship you by default without having to earn that worship. Respect that, at least. Respect your children at least half as much as you would a random stranger on the street. You owe them that much. **Why it's NEVER OK to hit children** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-its-never-ok-to-hit-children **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **January 13, 2023** Hitting or spanking children for “discipline” or “to teach them” something (whatever that means) is never effective and never moral. And yes, I am absolute with this. And I don’t accept the absolute and self-defeating statement that “nothing is absolute”. **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-its-never-ok-to-hit-children **I asked AI about the 'child abuse - war' connection** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/i-asked-ai-about-the-child-abuse **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **April 21, 2024** When I asked several AI engines to expand on the association between child abuse and war, they came back highlighting a distinct correlation, as well as causal links between the two. Not only did the replies demonstrate clear correlation, but they also laid out the causality of the relationship between child abuse and war. **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/i-asked-ai-about-the-child-abuse **The cycle of abuse** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-cycle-of-abuse **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **Feb 5** Abusive people are that way because they have accumulated internalized trauma, enough so that they have identified with the humiliations of their past. This is not an excuse; it is an explanation. **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-cycle-of-abuse **How school damaged your mental health [part 2]** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-school-damaged-your-mental-health-f86 **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **March 30, 2024** In part 1, I argued that state schooling damages your mental health by depriving you of your sense of self-ownership. It does so by forcing you to follow specific curricula, and twisting your innate self-discipline into submissive involuntary obedience **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-school-damaged-your-mental-health-f86 **The shaming fallacy [Part 2]** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-2 **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **Mar 24** Sanctimonious moralists and smug pontificators take to the internet to promote shaming as a “last stand for morality,” or - more accurately - a desperate attempt to push their brand of desired behaviour as if theirs were the one and only. **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-2