"stop being silly"

When we had those graduates they were frustrating but I mostly felt very sorry for them. Being almost mid-20’s and being unable to handle the most minor or circumstances and show a little team spirit of selflessness makes a very unemployable person and they have to now deal with being unemployable because they were overly protected from unpleasantness by family/society/peers.

Oh no @spuddy4 she fEelS sOrRy FoR yOUr KiDs 😂

And of course if you take the parenting tact of validating that it’s reasonable cry about a TV show ending, they will end up having less resilience than if you take the route of not making out it’s a problem.

If someone is being silly, child or adult, it is okay to ask them not to be. It won't hurt their mental health.

I am guessing the gentle parenting means she behaves terribly and therefore MIL doesn't feel up to being able to take her out where she can't set appropriate boundaries without being called a monster by her DIL.

How does one invalidate a 21 month old?
Asking for a friend

So the OP's gentle parenting was a reason why people voted for an adjudicated sex offender who said he would date his own daughter?

O m g ............

Nobody's suggested parenting a toddler like an 18-year-old 😂

What they're saying is that deep, critical emotional pathways are laid down in the early years. From the NSPCC:

The first two years of a child’s life are the most critical for forming attachments (Prior and Glaser, 2006)

During this period, children develop an ‘internal working model’ that shapes the way they view relationships and operate socially. This can affect their sense of trust in others, self-worth and their confidence interacting with others (Bowlby, 1997)

When caregivers react sensitively to ease their child’s distress and help them regulate their emotions, it has a positive impact on the child’s neurological, physiological and psychosocial development (Howe, 2011)

Children with secure attachments are more likely to develop emotional intelligence, good social skills and robust mental health (Howe, 2011)

... There's no suggestion that OP's little girl lacks nurturing, care, safety and listening from her adults. What people are trying to point out is that this early, nurturing environment is exactly when emotional self-regulation needs to be reinforced. The other part of this same process is teaching theory of mind (consideration for others), which won't be properly established for several more years but can and should be started at her age.

No it doesn’t! I have to chop my 2 year olds food, wipe their bum, brush their teeth for them - everything changes as they get older. Whether you ‘allow’ your small child to feel the feeling (frustrated, angry, whatever) or not, they’ll still feel it you’re just not giving them any tools to actually cope with it or build resilience. It’s not just validate and that’s it, a lot of the work around supporting emotional regulation is done outside of the times they’re upset or whatever. That’s the other half of gentle/respectful parenting, modelling managing our own emotions and helping them be able to, for example, take some deep breaths and not explode if they feel angry or frustrated. Being able to verbalise what they’re feeling again without exploding, you have to learn that it doesn’t just happen because your mum told you to stop being silly.

It goes the other way too though. I’ve worked for so many bosses and managers who don’t have an ounce of people skills. Never learnt empathy, don’t know how to people manage or manage their own frustrations and just dump them on their employees. Who shout and dictate rather than leading, who bully the people that work for them. I don’t really care if other people agree with you or not, am I not allowed to disagree? Is this not a forum for debate and discussion? I do think it’s ridiculous to parent a 2 year old like they’re an 18 year old in their first job!

Yeah sorry you’re being batshit PFB to quote yourself. But if it helps I was probably the same with my first. Now with my second I’m just grateful for all the free childcare I can get. My MIL also won’t take the kids out when she has them and that does bother me, but equally I don’t think staying in for a whole day here and there harms them if they’re doing a lot for the rest of the week.

I’m increasingly beginning to think the kids who have just been brought up normally with no particular parenting ethos are going to win. I actually tried to gentle parent myself and have read a bunch of parenting books (had a shit childhood, don’t know what I’m doing and I need something to rein in my draconian instincts). But settled for something that looks like authoritative parenting instead (badly done no doubt).

Honestly sometimes we need someone to tell us to bloody stop it. I actually think it’s good for your DD to know that people have different levels of tolerance for whatever behaviour she’s displaying. The world will not always validate her feelings and it’s important she knows that.

There seems to be an epidemic of fragility in young people these days and I would focus on resilience if I were you. I validate my DD’s feelings, “I know it’s shit and boring but it needs to be done so stop whinging and get on with it”.

Having said that I would never voluntarily spend a day at home with a 2yr old because mine would have been climbing the walls and your MIL should probably be taking her to the park to run it off for her own sake.

@OrangeSlices998 of course it does. The way you parent at age 2 carries on until they are teens. There's more than one person on this thread agreeing and sharing their experiences in the workplace but yeah, I'm being ridiculous. Whatever makes you feel better I guess.

A 2 year old isn’t a 18 year old in the workplace! What a ridiculous statement. If you genuinely think letting a small child be upset about something means that in 10/15/20 years they’re not going to be able to cope with life then I feel sorry for your kids.

@EvilsElsasPetSnowman what you've said is exactly what we experience, they don't take any from of criticism at all no matter how constructive it might be because they've never been told off or told no. It's impossible to train a workforce that have meltdowns every time they don't get their own way.

Honestly I worked in customer services as a teen and student, it’s not always easy and rude people are a PITA but they’re also part of life. Dealing with difficult people is a brilliant life skill to acquire. One of my DH’s relatives started working in Tesco at age 17, and walked out after 3 hours on her first day as a customer was a bit rude to her. She is now 19 and can’t find a job as she “won’t work with people” after her “horrible experience”. Ridiculous.

In my last workplace we used to have a six month paid graduate programme for Uni leavers. The point was to give them experience of the workplace, in-roads to permanent roles and also for us to get support for ‘menial’ jobs. We eventually stopped it after wet wipe after wet wipe came through our doors. None of them could handle constructive feedback - eg “Just to let you know, you have to do that task using X not Y. Don’t worry about it this time but next time make sure X is used please”. They’d have a total breakdown, one girl even walked out after I corrected her writing (I was approving of hat she wrote) and I’m embarrassed by how many calls we got from their mummies saying they can’t come in as they’re just not feeling up to it. Not to mention the total offence taken at the expectation to do menial tasks like prepare meeting rooms, make coffee, running to the shop for supplies etc. They come out of Uni, never having been told no and always having every last feeling validated, horrified at the thought of not immediately being given senior decision making type tasks while people higher up move chairs around a room. They didn’t get that everyone who starts out has to do menial tasks. And they largely weren’t nearly as smart as they thought they were.

And to think this is the generation who will take care of us in our old age.

@OrangeSlices998 maybe because I don't have time to "ride it out". I can imagine the customers when I tell them hang on for 5 minutes because my staff are riding it out in the warehouse because they don't want to go on checkouts so please be patient. They are getting paid for their time and that doesn't include them having a moment to validate their feelings every time they don't want to do something. You all keep raising these entitled, delicate kids but I'm telling you now you are setting them up for a huge shock when it's time to stand on their own two feet and they can't bring their mother to work. The world is a tough place and they are going to experience a lot worse than being called silly.

🤣🤣 @desperatedaysareover

I am lying laughing at that Windsor Davies gif. When we got a skint knee or a bruise or whatever and were crying my dad used to have a long hard look at the ‘injury’ then come back in with a carving knife/ hacksaw and offer to chop off whatever it was that we’d scraped. I vividly remember running away screaming from the secateurs, God help me.

Not best practice really is it but we are all very good at withstanding pain to be fair to him 😂

Yes - but I took mine out even if just for a run or walk around the block.

But I do agree - this doesn’t sound like it’s working and if MIL is struggling then it isn’t fair to rely on her.

Generations of kids have been told to stop being silly. I was, my own kids were. You are making far too big a deal about it.

What are very high gentle parenting standards (I dread to think).

The word that wasn’t allowed in either mine or my parents house though was stupid. No one was allowed to be called stupid, which I think is a good rule. Silly is pretty mild.

Hey OP, I worry about this at times too. Especially as my own Mum is no nonsense. I had therapy a while ago and I aired something similar to this.

The therapists words stuck with me - 'YOU are the buffer between your children and your parents'. Their words/actions don't impact anywhere near as much as you think. The bond and attachment is with you. If that is strong then the rest falls away.

I think this can apply to your situation. Equally OP - your DD is going to face a mean world. She's going to get shouted at by teachers, have to deal with angry bosses, she'll have falling outs with friends etc etc. Having everyone around you subscribe to your way of parenting doesn't teach her to cope with the world.

You are her safe place, but other people in the world aren't quite so kind. A grandma calling her silly is a drop in the ocean considering.

Basically you choose how to parent her but to want control over how everyone else in her life has a relationship and interacts with her - is damaging to her development and isolating.

I spent a lot of time with my grandad as a child. My gm had passed at a youngish age. I followed him everywhere. He gave me tasks, mostly got on with his life and l joined in. There was no gentle parenting just presence. As l grew older it was one of the strongest foundations of my life. Him just being there, noticing me, giving me responsibility at a very early age helping with tasks all combined to give me a solid core alongside that of my parents. Kids know when they are loved. If she an happily join in gms life one of two little hiccups won't destroy that.
And as an aside being in her 60s is not too old to go outside, plan adventures..she is not 90!!! Children are like puppies..they need to be walked or they do get" silly". Encourage her out. Leave a warm coat, hat etc and say these are for her walk grandma.

spends about half an hour gently discussing why they need to leave the house with 2 yr old GS whenever they go anywhere and validating any objections he raises
good lord that's tedious, it'll be fun when he's a bit older and arguing about everything

I think it might help if you were crying over having the blue cup and not the green, despite choosing the blue cup when offered.

Two years get themselves in a tizzy over nonsense.

I'm more of a 'both cups are the same size and the juice tastes the same ' parent. In those circumstances being told you are silly to cry about it seems fair enough.

I'm sure she comforts her for real distress and doesn't tell her to stop crying if she's cut her knee.

I live next door to a childminder. She is brilliant at diffusing toddler tantrums with clear simple instructions and choices, not a discussion of their feelings. I hear parents outside negotiating with them forever over stupid things and it doesn't appear to help.