What the f* is that “good boy” or “good girl”, anyway?

Before you use the phrase again, think twice.

Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash

I know adults who are still trapped in hunting the label “good boy” or “good girl”. It was something that their parents used to tell them all the time. “Good girls don’t do that”, “If you are a good boy, we will buy that track you saw in the toy store”, “I know you are a good girl, so you will clean your room”, etc.

What the f* is a good kid anyway? Can you describe it? Can you give an objective definition? No, you can’t. There isn’t one.

Good and bad always co-exist

The concept of the words “good” and “bad” is subjective. Something good for you is bad in another person’s opinion. In fact, nothing is good or bad. It’s just is, it’s just happening. We decide to give it a characterization, according to the personality each of us has formed. But, even if we ignore that, the good and the bad co-exist. Always. They exist at the same time. It’s us who choose to focus on one or the other, depending again on our personality, our beliefs, our repressed feelings, our fears, our desires, our memories, our experiences, and so on.

Parents and the term “good kid”