This month, we’re celebrating parents and what an amazing job they’re all doing. We’re going to be featuring some of our fave parents across the month who inspire us to keep going! This week, we sat down with Scott Stuart and picked his brain on parenting in 2021.
Scott Stuart is a best-selling children’s book author who is committed to creating content that empowers kids. His books have appeared on numerous best-seller lists, as well as being shortlisted for ABIA Children’s Book of the Year and CBCA Notable Picture Book of the Year. His empowering messages have been seen over 100 million times on social media and he is a leading voice on fully accepting and empowering our children, exactly as they are.
Here, Scott gives us some tips on 2021 parenting. Read on to find out more!
1. Undefining Masculinity
“You are not your past. My entire vision of masculinity has changed over the last decade, and I am so thankful for it. I hope that at the very least, I can help by ending some of the generational conditioning that I grew up with.
I was brought up to believe that anything “girly” was wrong. I was the captain of rugby and anything feminine was to be avoided. When my brother asked me to go to a dance class with him, I thought it was ridiculous. But I went.. and I fell in love with dancing. I got made fun of, a lot, but I stuck with it and eventually became a professional dancer.
Then, my son came along and I thought I knew how to help him grow to be a modern man. Then he fell in love with Elsa and he challenged everything that I grew up believing. I was afraid of what people would think of me, letting him dress like Elsa. Now I know that a man can be more than the tiny, rigid definition of masculinity that we force upon ourselves.”
2. Gender Stereotypes
“Almost everybody wants to break down gender stereotypes for our daughters, but they don’t exist in a bubble. It’s almost impossible to create an environment that supports the breakdown of those stereotypes for our daughters, unless we also break down those stereotypes for our sons.
For years, my family thought that me letting my son dress as Elsa was wrong. Sometimes it would make me question my decisions as a Father, but then I would see how happy it made my son and it reminded me that I’d made the right choice.”
3. Teaching consent
“When I would be tickling my son, I used to keep going if he said “stop”. Now, we have a really hard and fast rule that if he says “no” or “stop”, we stop immediately. It actually hasn’t removed any of the fun at all, because he’ll say “stop”… “okay keep going” or sometimes he’ll say “stop”, because he means it. Since we started doing that, if we tell him to stop doing something or say “no” to something, if it’s about bodies or safety, he stops immediately.
I also started asking my son if I can hug him, rather than just grabbing him and enveloping him. To be honest, it felt pretty weird at the start, but then I realised that I’d really like him to ask other people if he can touch their bodies. So it went from weird… to pretty damn easy.”
We love these simple parenting tips from Scott! If you want more, follow Scott on Instagram at @scottcreates, because there’s plenty more where that came from!
