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 think manners were more important. You were expected to chat at the table and take your turn to listen. People would ask you about school or your activities. Nowadays children get their own way more but are neglected as they are indulged

Not read the thread but I notice it.

When I was a child No meant No.

Now with even very children No is seen as the first step in negotiations.

My nephew drives me insane. You tell him over and over and over again to stop doing something and he just laughs or explains why he is going to keep on doing it.

Screens to keep them occupied instead of learning social skills.

I think children were ' better behaved' or so it appeared, anyway, due to fear. Not brought up to think for themselves, just to do as they were told. As for a toddler having a massive tantrum on a plane, it's not surprising really - they might have slept in the car on the way there and be refreshed, not wanting to sleep, could have pain in their ears from the pressure or just be overwhelmed by it all. It's not necessarily bad behaviour. My FIL had a go at our 3 year old on a boat once for being 'badly behaved' when actually he was feeling a little sick and was really scared. The same person gave his son a sleeping pill on a plane as a toddler back in the 50s, which is unthinkable now!

*very young children

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." Socrates

Is that genuine Knitting ? I didn't study history.

I have no doubt that a thousand years from now people will be moaning about the behaviour of children and how life was much better in the past.

Yes, in my day we would not dare to do what a lot of children now consider to be normal, ignore direction, talk back, muck up etc. We didn’t grow up like meek little sheep though.

At both home and school there was the constant threat of immediate physical punishment. None of this ‘don’t make me tell you again, .... I said ......., I dont want to tell you again, how many times do I have to say it, I’m not telling you again’. Kids run monkeys around parents and anyone else in authority these days. I remember ‘the look’ from my parents. If you were out and got ‘the look’ you stopped immediately. If not the minute you got home and stepped over the doorstep you were done for . So when you got ‘the look’ you knew there would be ramifications and you stopped there and then, none of this empty threat namby pandering that goes on now. Most kids are a lost cause these days.

My daughter, who is now 49, used to have massive meltdowns and bang her head on the floor or the wall until she used to bleed. My other daughter never had one.

However I do think a lot haschanged regarding children's behaviour and I think it is to do with boundaries changing and everything being more child centred. Not saying whether it is right or wrong but that is the way it is now.

Kids have always messed about and done things they shouldn’t if they think they can get away with it BUT as someone who has worked with kids for over 20 years I will say they are definitely ruder and more entitled than ever.

People were firmer with their children and there were boundaries, strict Dos and Don'ts. Parents also smacked their children. I was regularly slapped (so assumed I must have been quite naughty at times) but I don't agree with that at all. It does not inspire love between the parent and child.

I do think children's behaviour has been allowed to get worse though. There are children with issues although there seem to be significantly more than in the past - why is that? (Genuine question - are kids labelled as being on the spectrum as a handy label or was it because there is help now where it wasn't in the past?)

But some children are not disciplined at all or if they are in the most desultory way. Kids are little princes and princesses, mum's/dad's best friend rather than the child who needs guidance by the adult. They think that everybody who is not charmed by their kids running amok are bitter and twisted. Some parents are just useless, just like you can find uselessness in every role. Or they have an air of entitlement themselves and think they can do what they like, as can their kids.

Luckily most parents are great and do try and set boundaries and instil good behaviour. It's just that you notice the badly behaved kids more.

It wasn’t just that children were frightened of corporal punishment, they also grew up in a culture where ‘elders and betters’ had to be respected, even if they were doing something wrong, and where toleration of bullying extended well beyond school.

This sometimes led to tragic consequences.

On balance I think things are much better now.

kids get away with more rather than they are inherently worse behaved

And parents are too hesitant to discipline through fear of social services involvement.

Has nobody read "My naughty little sister" or all the other 60+ year old books in which very naughty small children were seen as normal, especially if they were the youngest child...

When I watch programmes like Educating Yorkshire etc, the answering back is different. Kids didn't answer teachers back like that either in my primary in the 70s or secondary in the 80s. We had just been trained from starting school that you don't do that.

I personally was exceptionally terrible as a teen, I did every bad thing you can think of. I got away with a lot as I just lied about where I was going, who with and what I was up to. Kids are much more contactable and trackable now, I wouldn't have liked that at all.

But, I was a lot more independent and working part time (about 18 hours a week) from 13. I was perfectly capable of leaving home at 18 and did.

Parents used to hit their kids.

People didnt eat out or sit in coffee shops regularly. It was an extremely rare occurrence. And the kids were probably scared to misbehave.

Kids were sent out in the morning and told to return at sun down. All ages.

speaking to my older relatives the thing that stands out is children didn't seem to spend much time with adults doing boring stuff.
For example they'd just wait outside a shop rather than go, eating out was rare, mums didn't go out for coffee and lots of mums ended up on Valium anyway so it cant have been that great.

The other thing was children seemed to play out from a very young age with limited adult interaction.

40 yeas in teaching showed me that behaviour is getting progressively worse.

I was born in the 1950’s. Ordinary people like my family couldn’t afford meals out in restaurants or even “short haul” flights, so toddlers weren’t seen there.
We children were sent off alone every day to play in the woods and park or in the streets - we didn’t see adults until mealtimes. We ran off our energy in physical games of chase, football, tree climbing etc, so were tired by evening and went fairly willingly to bed.
Our families couldn’t afford fancy toys or consumer goods, so we knew there was no point whining for them. We watched the BBC on black and white tv, so no adverts pushing such items at us. We didn’t even have a landline phone let alone a mobile and the internet was still 30 years in the future.
Discipline was savage. Teachers beat, caned or belted children, who were cowed into good behaviour. Ditto parents - my father hit me and dragged me down a staircase by one leg. I’m not by any means advocating such methods, but modern parents don’t seem to have learned successful non violent ways of replacing them.
I raised my own kids in the 1990’s, with the help of a good village school and church, where high standards of behaviour were expected and consistent. If kids misbehaved or were rude, their parents marched them round to your house to apologise in person.
I think too many modern kids rule the roost in their homes, expect instant gratification, and are bored and restless from lack of fresh air and exercise. Parents are trying to be their “best friend” instead of source of authority.

I completely agree with the pp who've pointed out that adults - ALL adults - were once considered to be authority figures and children were expected to defer to them (and I'm talking about my childhood in the 60s and 70s).

You could indeed expect to get scolded by a random adult if you did something 'wrong' and the difference was that your parent most probably wouldn't fly into 'how dare you tell off my child?' mode - they'd be more likely to agree with them and uphold the telling-off.

I really noticed on the recent 'School' TV series (which was grim and upsetting in many ways) how many of the parents just shrugged when their child behaved appallingly at school. The behaviour of some of the children (obviously not all - there were many delightful children on there) was unbelievable yet some (again, not all) of the parents didn't appear to think they might have had a role to play in telling their child it was unacceptable.

I'm sure there have always been tantrums, though

toddlers tantrum and always have.

but I do think children are allowed to much freedom to misbehave.
In the old days you were taught to respect your elders. that did help a bit as meant children didn't think the world revolved around them

I do think behaviour in older children has changed, in some ways for the better and some for the worse. But the world has also changed so much even from me growing in the 80’s and 90’s. There have been massive changes.

Programmes like Educating Yorkshire are heavily edited to show the interesting bits. If it was an hour of watching children essentially coping and engaging well with their learning then it wouldn’t be very watchable.

I agree that children are expected to do things that previously we simply wouldn’t expect.

I don’t know a single parent who doesn’t engage with poor behaviour of their child because of social services intervention. Unless that parent wants to beat their child

I think what is considered acceptable behaviour has changed.

This x1000.

I've worked in schools for years and I think there's been a definite decline in behaviour in the last 6/7 years. Many parents (not all) just don't seem to want the hassle of disciplining children. Schools are so limited - parents at my school will often 'forbid' the teachers to give their child a detention - they fight the school every step of the way, so it becomes incredibly difficult. You have the parent and child v school, rather than a partnership.

Some of the behaviour/bad language/extreme tiredness through lack of sleep I see every day worries the hell out of me.

Also the point about kids being allowed in more adults space now is also very relevant. Parents want to do stuff themselves so they cart their children there as well. Parents behaviour has changed too.

I was listening to the radio just before Christmas. It was a call in and the woman caller said she was going to Fortnums and Masons that afternoon with partner and 3 year old child for afternoon tea. The host expressed surprise at that with a three year old, wouldn't the people who had paid a lot for the experience be bothered by the small child but the caller said it was their tradition to do this (!?), and if the child misbehaved so be it, we were all children once....her smug air of entitlement was quite abhorrent.

Hopefully her child was well behaved but imagine if you had saved up for that treat and a child was behaving badly, it would ruin the experience. Not everywhere is suitable to take a child.

I hate to tell her but she almost certain,y did tantrum as a toddler...it’s part and parcel of normal development

It might be classed as normal development but it's by no means a given. None of my children had tantrums. I consider myself lucky.