Why Jordan Peterson's Viral Parenting Advice is NOT The Full Story
So, yesterday, I came across that clip—the one all parents have likely seen. It makes its rounds on my social feed every few days: Jordan Peterson, with a voiceover, talking about how your kids are only young once. He emphasizes savoring those precious moments, especially the zero-to-four or zero-to-five age range, because once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. You’ll never have your children at that age again. It’s a truly touching clip, and every parent who watches it probably thinks, “Oh man, I really need to embrace this. I need to enjoy every single moment.
But then I started thinking: one of the biggest problems with this kind of advice—and it’s not the first time we’ve heard it—is that it often overlooks a crucial element. Our parents have been giving us similar advice our entire lives, right? When we were in high school, they’d tell us, “Study now! Work hard! Use this time to get a good job.” Then in college, it was “Study, study, study!” And once you landed your first job, it became “Work, work, work!” All this advice points to specific time periods where you’re supposed to maximize an opportunity.
While all this advice makes perfect sense and is truly beautiful—I mean, yes, I understand the wisdom behind it—it often forgets that at the very same time you’re supposed to be incorporating it, you are still learning. You are still growing. Take the zero-to-five age, for example. That’s a period when parents themselves are often stretched thin, juggling new responsibilities, and facing intense personal growth. They don’t always have the boundless energy or the endless patience to be as present as they feel they “ought” to be.
I think this is where the role of grandparents really shines. Grandparents often have that patience already developed. They might not have the same degree of physical energy, but they’ve gained a perspective and a certain calm that makes it easier to simply enjoy. To tell new parents, who are still in the thick of their own growth and exhaustion, that “this is the perfect time, this is what you must do to enjoy it,” can feel like an impossible standard. You nod along because you agree with the sentiment, but your own current capacity levels might not allow you to fully act on it.
This holds true for other life stages too. Back in high school, when you were supposed to be studying and grinding, yes, you wanted to do that. But there were so many other things pulling at you, distracting you. You likely didn’t have the same level of maturity or self-discipline to commit to it in the way everyone around you thought you should. It’s the same when you’re 22 and grinding at your first job—you’re still figuring yourself out!
So, all this got me thinking: while this kind of advice is accurate and well-intentioned, it often excludes the critical fact that the person receiving the advice is still growing and might not yet have the full capacity to act on it. What do you guys think? When people give you this kind of stuff, is it just a “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it” that you try to implement? Or is it more of a “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it… but I don’t know”? As you can probably tell, I’ve just had a long morning with my kids, and I’m pretty drained. But it really makes you wonder about the practicalities of advice, doesn’t it?
YouTube: Why Jordan Peterson's Viral Parenting Advice is NOT The Full Story