rolf wrote
Regarding being honest I agree, and I believe that am honest by default, however my main issue is: when do I walk up to people and give them my honest opinion, and when do I just mind my business?
I'm glad you asked! It's generally minding your own business by default unless asked. What I generally do is assess whether my answer/opinion would be to someone's expectations (judging by the conversation) and if asked, make sure that the person knows that you're giving your full honest opinion. Believe it or not, this normally reduces the
shock from your answer as you prepped the person you're conversing with.
The above applies to people you care about. The random folk you converse with, well, I generally don't care about their reactions, so i'm forward with them. (which is why many conflate honesty with aggression/rudeness/arrogance)
I'm a bit surprised, by the way, that you would not be honest with kids. I know they can be very annoying at times, and maybe they should know when they are annoying. However yes they're kids so you gotta keep that in mind and treat them as such, eventually they will (hopefully) learn to behave and grow into adults. The feedback that you are giving them would help the process.
It's a little bit more complex with kids as your words can be quite destructive. Unlike grownups, kids have not become fully attached to ideologies and thus you can avoid being completely honest by simply putting them
on track[1] to figure things out themselves.
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[1] by on track i mean what I believe is the proper track as a parent not a brainwashing track