I was on a Dutch camping site full of positive parenting parents. Positive parenting comes down to praising what goes well and ignoring the rest. This feels unnatural, because people tend to take the good for granted and explode at everything else. So you have to make an effort for positive parenting, and that’s what these parents did – they shouted things like ‘you dry well!’ It was a fascinating and enviable spectacle. The parents hardly ever gave a shit, unless it was the mother who, when her daughter exclaimed enthusiastically that she had made a new girlfriend, replied with a sigh, “Again?”
It wasn’t until all the children were asleep that you saw a parent stepping on a tent peg, and then a heartfelt ‘Goddamn, what a mess!’ dropped. This is a law of nature: the negativity has to be discharged somewhere.