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Mansplaining is not explaining things to people that ask questions and obviously do not have the background knowledge to have the necessary context.
Jeez, we know, stop mansplaining mansplaining.
No, I’m a good dad.
Whenever my kid asks a question, either I explain for like 5 minutes straight, or I stop whatever we’re both doing and we look it up together.
Engage in their curiosity. Because they’ll stop asking you one day.
Look, I don’t want to be rude, and I definitely don’t want to belittle women.
But when a subject comes up that I know something about, I just have this uncontrollable urge to share my knowledge.
Even if it then turns out that I’m trying to explain the principle of a programming language to Grace Hopper.If you never had to answer “the boundary conditions of the universe” the kid wasn’t even trying.
Why?
Because there comes a moment where the explanation invariably have to speak about the limits of the known universe, usually after some sky related question
why?
Because. Now go to bed please, else you’ll be tired tomorrow.
Why?
I just said you’ll be tired tomorrow you little shit!!!
Go the Fuck to Sleep, narrated by Samuel L Jackson.
Thought it might be useful for when they get in bed
Why do you think?
Because things that aren’t can’t BE! Im…I’m just gonna buy you a tablet.
I’m not mansplaining, I’m ADHDumping, I just happen to be a man, tyvm.
That’s pretty much the opposite of mansplaining.
Mansplaining is when you’re talking condescendingly to someone, while mistakenly assuming you have superior knowledge.If that someone has asked you “Why?”, or any question for that matter, then you’d need to start explaining something completely unrelated, in order to mansplain.
As a young child my father got very excited when I asked why the sky was blue. I hadn’t realized he was an optical engineer or that that was what kind of question I’d asked. But I remembered the term Rayleigh scattering
If that were true, it would have been called dadsplaining
I love thinking that mansplaining is preparation for the evolved state of dadsplaining. This is fantastic!
Honestly, I’ve read a psychological study on this that basically concluded the it should be called “dadsplaining” because it’s based in a natural instinct of wanting to explain things to help your kids grow.
A lot of us had absent dads. I had a father, but I never had a dad. Check yourself.
So dadsplaining?
Pretty sure all dads are men
But not all men are dads, so precision can convey specific meaning.
Dadsplaining is often mistaken for mansplaining but shouldn’t be, as it’s the same as momsplaining.
Lucysplaining
In this essay, I will…
The term mansplaining was abused to death long ago. This is just beating it’s corpse.
So i avoided doing that and came up with terse explanations for nothing? I didn’t want to scare my kid off from asking questions
My strategy when I get repetitious “whys” has been to ask “why what?”
Make them process the answer you just gave them and reformulate it into a question.
If they don’t do a good job just say "I don’t understand your question, can you ask it in another way? "
Kids like the ‘why’ game because it’s easy entertainment. Just make it less easy.
I tried that too but they just said “Why <whatever I just said>”.
Oh I have not been avoiding answering questions. I’ve been holding myself to not give long boring answers.
And mine always asks “why <excerpt from my answer>”, not that easy :)
At least they’re listening and learning!
This is the way
