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

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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 was having a similar conversation with my DH the other day when we were on a walk with our 6 and 8 DSs. The older one was dragging feet and a bit and saying “can we go now” and “this is a bit boring”

DH asked if I had been like this as a child and I truthfully said yes, but when I did behave like this I got yelled at by my dad, or a smack so I have loads of memories of days like this being ruined.

On the other hand DH and I decided to lightly mock DS for his “boredom” in the style of Kevin the teenager, took the time to chat to him, gave him a few fun challenges (how many squirrels he could spot, how quickly he could run up a hill etc) and he soon snapped out of it, was back to his normal nice self and hopefully won’t have that day’s memory spoilt by being shouted at.

I think children were often scared back then.

I wouldn't dare step outta line because I was punished

@Sallygoroundthemoon bollocks you never had a tantrum!!!

Dont get me wrong my 6 almost 7 year old is no angel but he takes a telling and knows when he's over stepped the mark sorry mum and cuddle...

I'm not expecting my kids to be angels i would just like to be able to go to a shop without having to leave as soon as i step in it because my ds2 kicks of.

certain family members don't want him around there house now either snd he doesnt listen and asks for biscuits etc as soon as he goes in.

thankfully my little baby boy whos one is much like my older ds cuddly little boy very michevious hehe but even he takes the meaning of no for 1 minute haha xx

In some ways but the kids at my teen dds' school are much more better behaved than at my school by all accounts. Maybe it's just better class management but there's far less low level disruption.

I disagree about children having more respect for teachers in the past.

If we misbehaved (ie spoke) in class in the 70s (girls' grammar school), we would have a board rubber, pen or chalk chucked at us, or we would be made to stand on our chair (at 13?? fgs).

Yes, we 'behaved', if 'behaving is keeping quiet, not being allowed to discuss or debate, and having all creativity quashed.

But respect?? I had absolutely no respect for any of my teachers.

All the teens I know are a damn sight better behaved than me and my friends were. And under much more scrutiny.

I do think parenting tends to be gentler than it used to be. I don't think that's a bad thing. A caned arse never made me better behaved, it just made me slyer so I wouldn't get caught. And of course, meant that heading to my teens I detested my parents and wouldn't listen to a word they said.

What sort of arse sees a padding kid and decides to whip his phone out and film it anyway? That's worse behaviour imo.

I agree with everything clash said

And me.

I think that middle class children (the MN main demographic and what I can comment on) are definitely less well behaved.

I (and all my friends) were quite wary of friends’ parents and always addressed them as ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’. We would never have dreamed of arguing with them or not saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Now children think nothing of telling adults exactly what they want or interrupting them.

There was the idea that any adult would tell off a badly behaved child and be listened to. Nowadays other adults would more likely take the side of the child.

It is very much cultural. In other cultures young people are much more respectful.

Today's parents, IMO, spend as much if not more time interacting with their phones than with their children. Is it any wonder that so many children don't know how to behave?

Screens are also a lot of the problem, both parents and children.

A discussion similar to this popped up on my FB today. Some of the behaviour we are seeing currently where i live is disgusting - think physically & verbally abusing shop staff, terrorising library staff so they lock themselves in etc etc - and whenever anybody complains there are always excuses. 'There's too much development in the area' or 'there is nothing for them to do' you get the idea.

Consequences have definitely diminished in my opinion. I grew up in an area patrolled by RMPS who were not at all scared to clip your ear if you were a gobby shit. Did it work? Absolutely! Because it was backed up by your parents who also bollocked you for getting into trouble in the first place. All i seem to see here is excuses being made & other people being expected to put up with thuggish behaviour. Obviously some of my examples are extreme.

Toddlers on planes however? A toddler has no real comprehension of wtf they are experiencing...could have been hurting because of pressure change as one example of why they were tantrumming!

Maybe it was just my upbringing but we were definitely worse than the teens I know. I spent most of my time riding round council estates on a motorbike evading the police. Know plenty of school friends who ended up in prison or dead before they even left their teens.
Kids today work hard at school, the poor buggers have to, as we have made financial independence so hard for them.

Not sure it's changed.

I listen to my mum and aunts etc talking about their secondary school days.

What they got detention for that was considered 'high jinx' would get exclusion nowadays and and assessment for route cause of behaviour.

I think somewhere along the lines behaviour did get worse. But I don't recall the number of bad parents being higher amongst my generation than remember from when I was a child. There's always been parents who's angels can do no wrong - but who kick off if someone wrongs their angel.

We hear so much nowadays about these super academies and zero tolerance behaviour policies with isolation booths.

This leads people to think behaviour must be sooooooo bad they are needed. The reality is most of the times I've known them used are for things I know me and my mums/aunts etc would have been told off for and at most given detention for.

I will add all my mums and aunts etc have good jobs and are MC despite a WC upbringing.

Lots of reasons why.

Rose tinted glasses are definitely a thing but there's a few phenomenons that I've seen.

1. Parents who can't cope with their child being anything but happy. If the child cries, tantrums, sulks... the parents fall over themselves trying to get their child out of that feeling. It's healthy and fine to have feelings like anger and I think it's important to cope with it at age 2-3 because you go to pre-school/nursery/school and your parents won't be there to stop those feelings. Tantrums won't stop but by the time that kids go to school, they need to deal with emotions within the same tolerance levels as their peers or they are going to struggle with friendships.

1. Bad parenting - parents who think that "Keep off the Grass" or "Don't Touch" signs apply to everyone but their child. They think it's ok for their child to scoot in shops and don't stop them get in the way of people serving hot drinks and food. They allow their kids to watch screens without headphones so other people have to listen to Peppa Pig.

1. Fewer adult only areas. Toddlers on planes or in restaurants were not the norm.

1. Parents are scared of being judged/reported to SS so struggle to discipline in public. People are scared of confronting bad behaviour because the media gives us the impression that we'll be mistaken as paedophiles if we are make, find ourselves filmed and shamed on social media or stabbed if the child is a teen.

1. People who need help think that their kids will be taken by SS if they need help. Austerity means that getting help from a professional or school is really hard. Only those who are severe, pay private or push hard and strike lucky make progress with finding a diagnosis or solution.

1. I think that technology like Internet news makes it feel worse. When we were kids there were no camera phones, CCTV, dashboard cams and Internet so we only knew about crime that was local or happened to someone we had a connection to. Now you can find footage of all sorts of crimes with a few clicks.

@goldengummybear

Do you think another reason-for older children-is that children are simply more intelligent/better educated than previous generations and that this has naturally led to a refusal to blindly accept authority?

I think this may be a good thing, as it means that many of them want to know a reason/the thinking behind a request-whether it's to go to bed at a certain time; sit quietly in a restaurant or follow a uniform rule.

This generation is an intelligent one and that means that rules have to be explained to them and, if the explanation passes muster, they will usually comply.

Sadly, some people see this as bad behaviour and it isn't-it's a demonstration of a healthy, thinking, uncowed mind.

It is natural for children of all ages to push boundaries, depending on what those boundaries are, depends on how they behave. Parenting is so much harder now than it was 26 years ago when mine were small, I wasn’t scrutinised like parents are nowadays so I could parent pretty much how I wanted to, now it wouldn’t be that simple.

I think so. I think our kids see us questioning professionals like doctors and teachers unlike our parents who would generally assume that these professionals knew what they were talking about. ( I'm not advocating that they get abuse or anything like that btw!) My kids have seen me go into school, ask questions and have teachers make changes that benefit them and I'd like to think that when they are adults that they will be polite and negotiate things like me. Sometimes rules and procedures aren't fair for all and need adapting and updating.

Totally agree!

I've been a parent for 33 years, with my youngest just having turned 12. The world is different now. The way we parent is different and the what society expects of parents is different.
I think what's different the most is judgement.

Back in the 80's if your child fucked up you were told very clearly by everybody around you. You were told how they would deal with the behavior and then felt free to do as you please pretty much with the onlookers permission. If they were good people also clearly told you. Children got that reinforcement from the cimmunity.

These days if your child fucks up nobody tells you they just glare at you like your a piece of trash who gave birth to the devil incarnate. If your children are good you get ignored. So because we now ignore the good children we only see the bad. And because the bad aren't getting told they are bad, they are just getting glared at and shunned I don't think parents are learning what are socially acceptable ways to get their children to be quiet. Do you yell at them? Leave them? Hug them? Hit them? They don't know because they don't they know how those watching will react to their response. So they just take the safest route and give the child what they want to make it stop.

My first two children grew up in the seventies and the third in the nineties. There was a definite change in child rearing practices between the two.
When I spoke of my childhood I didn't mean it was better, just different.
I agree with the poster who said there was a certain security in knowing the adults were in charge. I suspect some of the behaviour we see today is because children are being offered choices they are not ready for.

Yes. They was more disciplined. You can't discipline a child anymore without social services and child protection being on your back and that's why they've run riot, thinking they can get away with anything and everything! = more distraction at school and higher crime rates.