Where children really better behaved in the past or do people remember with rose tinted glasses?

[username5555]

This is inspired by a video online whereby a toddler was having a massive tantrum on a 8 hour flight.
A lot of the comments underneath basically were how terrible a parent the mother was and how in their day the child wouldn't have dared behave like that.
What is the alleged difference? What are we not doing that we did then? Or do people only remember the good parts and forget their children also behaved like that.
I personally as a mother of a toddler found the comments awful. I suspect the mother was not having the time of her life either.

I think as children get older, behaviour definitely isn't what it used to be. Just from talking to teachers and those working with children it's clear to see. Children grow up with a have it all attitude. They want to see something, it gets streamed straight away, want a song? Download it instantly. Apart from that there is the constant screen time. Children are so used to flitting from one thing to another bevause everything is instant.

I think it's that kids get away with more rather than they are inherently worse behaved. If I'd been allowed to ride a scooter in Tesco I'm sure I would have just the same as some kids do today for example

Rose tinted all the way, kids are great and terrible! Twas ever thus.

Oh, and the comments are either from trolls or idiots. Tantrums with DCs is par for the course, most of the time you can remove them from public view and calm them down. But not always, as every parent should know!

I think in the past people were more willing to tell a child no and to be stricter with discipline. I don't see many parents these days telling their child they can't have something and many people think that tantrums are normal. I never had a tantrum as a child. Firstly I didn't see the need but also I knew it would be neither acceptable nor helpful.

I think what is considered acceptable behaviour has changed.

Kids aren’t disciplined nowadays. Parents let them do whatever they want. Teachers and police have no power. It’s hardly unsurprising that kids misbehave knowing there will be no consequences.

Anyone who says a parent is to blame for a toddler tantruming is a colossal idiot. Toddlers tantrum. That is what they do. There is no parenting gold to stop this ever happening.

We had much narrower bandwidth 50 years ago. Seriously, a book is about 700kb, a b&w TV program about 100 mb. Fireman Sam on a 55" UHD is well over 4gb. That's got to do something to the brain.

I think there are a lot of factors. If you talk to some teachers they will claim behaviour now in schools is dreadful. However, I recall poor behaviour which was dealt with by simply removing the child from education. So it wasn’t as present.

I suspect the issue is now that schools are expected to deal with the issue more and that parents don’t hide away.

Also, when I talk to my dad about the way him and his peers behaved it is genuinely shocking. But he says it was just “devilment” rather than how he perceives the behaviour of today’s teenagers.

Also, what to people want to happen to a tantrumming toddler?

I never had a tantrum as a child

You can remember when you were one and two years old then, can you? if so then, gosh you are right. You are special.

Parents used to hit their kids for misbehaving. And parents generally cared more about what others thought. Lots of people can't be bothered with/don't know how to apply any other methods of discipline. They've been told not to smack their kids, so don't discipline them at all and the kids do as they please. Obviously, not all parents.

I would never have gotten away with half the stuff I see kids do nowadays.

Lots of parents are definitely softer now, there was a thread recently about a child being badly behaved & the op kept saying I ASK them to stop doing... I do ASK them to sit down...when my daughter was naughty I TOLD her to behave & my mum just had to give me THELOOK!
My Dd is a young teen & when I hear how kids in her class carry on I am quite surprised - I know School was much stricter when I was a pupil

Not sure how teachers and the police have any kind of influence on a tantruming toddler.

I think that children were ‘better’ behaved but I’m not sure that we want a return to the ways in which some of this was achieved

I don't think many toddlers went on flights years ago. No one I knew had been on a plane when I was young

I think what is considered acceptable behaviour has changed.

This.

You see it all the time on MN. Eg Posters saying “well of course children can’t be expected to sit through a restaurant meal without a tablet to watch”

It’s nonsense of course.

Children can be taught to sit through a meal nicely but these days it becoming increasingly socially acceptable not to bother and just to hand them a screen.

Children today aren’t any less capable of sitting through a meal than children 20 years ago, it’s the parenting that’s changed.

I never had a tantrum as a child. Firstly I didn't see the need but also I knew it would be neither acceptable nor helpful.

I have worked with kids on and off 30 years and behaviour has changed and sometimes not for the better imo My own are in their 20s and they and their friends would not have behaved as some kids behave these days. My friend gave up childminding school children last year because she couldn't cope with behaviour of the children AND parents who were more entitled than the children. Saying all of that a toddler on a plane upset probably couldn't be helped.

I wasn’t smacked as a a child. By the logic of some people I should have been an unruly thug

I asked my parents and they said I never had a tantrum. We think it's 'normal' now but that isn't necessarily the case. The pp who mentioned scooters in Tescos is spot on. The fact that this is even considered remotely ok shows parenting is much more permissive now. Also things like constant snacks being provided now when we were expected to learn to be hungry and not complain.

You can go back thousands of years and find records of people complaining about the youth of today and how it wasn't like that in their day.

And the OT biblical proverb about 'spare the rod and spoil the child' only exists because there were desert people of the time rolling their eyes about badly behaved children and muttering 'if only their parents beat ..... '

My parents will tell me that we were all perfectly behaved. I remember differently though. My brother was dreadfully disrespectful at times. Rose tinted glasses

No, @passthecrisps if parents have other methods it's perfectly possible to raise a well mannered child. But my point is that a lot of people used to hit them and they haven't been given the tools to discipline without that. Some people will work it out for themselves but many don't.

I'm 60, my sisters 10 years older than me, my mother would be nearly 100 now. We didn't dare do some of the things children/teenagers do now because there would have been really nasty punishment if we did. Physical punishment was much more the norm, along with humiliation, especially in schools. And we were much more dependent on our parents. But kids still did what they could get away with, including bullying (just something you had to learn to handle), sexual harassment (girls just had to put up with it, that was Just Boys, and if they got the wrong kind of attention it was probably their own fault), shoplifting (Woolworths pick n mix/makeup anyone?). Kids are the same, circumstances and consequences are different.

I don’t want anyone to hit their child, but when I’m sitting in a coffee shop I do want parents to keep their child under control -that means sitting down, not wandering around annoying everyone