Jaiden ate lunch alone today. Played chess by himself.

But I told his mom that he's got millions of friends across the country now who are inspired by him. Leave a comment to Jaiden below and I'll share it with him! 💪🏽 pic.twitter.com/1DTBaXGdxy

— Connor Boyack 📚 (@cboyack) August 30, 2023

Is this good for him? Does Jaiden’s mom want her son to get DMs from millions of adult Twitter randos?

Or does she want him to be a kid?

I don’t know if his mother is doing this for the clout, as the rainbow moms do. I don’t know her motives, and I have no reason to doubt that she is simply standing up for her son and defending his right to free expression. This kind of exposure on social media might feel like the only way she has to fight back against a system that would clearly crush her son’s spirit if it could. As often as not, it’s the teachers who are bringing their crazy politics into the classroom, not the kids.

So nobody wants to teach her kids not to stand up for the values they learned at home. However, in a world where small snippets of video quickly become national news stories, do we really want to put our kids out there as based, right-wing activists when they may not really understand that this will stay with them for the rest of their lives?

[This instance seems more organic than most, at least from the circumstances. AFAIK, Jaiden’s family hadn’t made him “based” on social media prior to the school’s actions against him. But Peachy’s warning still applies, especially when children get pushed as political prophets, and that happens on BOTH sides of the political spectrum. Stage parents aren’t the only people trying to self-validate through children in these circumstances. — Ed]