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.

Not sure children take their parents to court do they 5fivestar? Parenting is not undermined at all. Nobody says most parents are not good enough but neglectful ones should be helped and the state should intervene as we know the consequences are awful.

I strongly believe special schools which have very generous staffing levels and specialist teachers are better for managing extreme behaviour and helping parents than mainstream.

where Schools get approximate funding, training and support there is no reason for the vast majority of children to be in mainstream.

Blaming children with disorders and disabilities is not fair.

Is it not possible that actually history has always had poor parents and difficult children?

Society and it’s demands changes but people rarely do

To not be in mainstream and rogue apostrophe

BubblesBuddy - there’s a case in Australia just been heard of the mother having the father charged with assault for smacking their three year olds arse for urinating on their table. It’s not helpful is it. Case got thrown out, neither parent covered in glory and the only winner there is three year old who can now do whatever the fuck he likes

But that was parent undermining parent 5fivestar. It sounds completely bonkers and not representative of what happens on a day to day basis at all.

I think some superficial behaviour was better, like children sitting in Assembly so quiet you could hear a pin drop, no squirming, whereas now there's a bit of constant whispering and wriggling, but that's mainly because when I was a kid in the 70s/80s, anyone who couldn't control themselves was made to stand outside, often kicked out to a special school, and teachers walked up and down tweaking ears of anyone who might have been whispering. In the playground, there seems to be less bullying now, more acceptance that footballers don't get to rule the place, and school buses are very different - my trip to nice private school had a punch-up most days.

We weren't allowed to roam back then either, but small shops were quieter because toddlers in pushchairs were just left outside. Supermarkets were much more noisy though as I swear every child in a trolley would be screaming. Now they are given something to hold or a snack and are quiet.
Even in the 90s loads of kids just skived off secondary school and a blind eye was turned as it made everyone's lives easier. Now schools try to educate them and on the whole the kids turn up which must be better? Yes, there were many more special schools but many of those were just dumping grounds, not even offering CSEs let alone O-level. Lots of problems when it comes to mainstreaming now but if you talk to kids about inclusion or acceptance, they are miles better than youth in my generation - and of course kids want respect to apply to them more than others - that's human nature!

I think it’s an ongoing issue starts with health visitors.... I actually had one want to hold my son after he’d had his first injection because she felt she could calm him better than his own mother, clearly just wanted to be the hero of the hour and have a cuddle but made me feel like crap and it continues .... if you weren’t a confident parent you would be scared to say boo to a goose these days in case someone took it the wrong way

Children are definitely worse behaved in UK mainstream culture. Expectations have collapsed. There are a number of factors;

Absence of meaningful discipline.

Screens used as baby sitters.

Parents wanting to be mates rather than parents.

When I was 7 or 8 I would have been expected to sit through a proper restaurant meal, no getting up, no fighting or shouting and to join in conversation appropriately and not dominate it. Few children could do that these days.

Teenagers are now allowed and sometimes actually encouraged to live entirely within a sub culture, rather than to join in with the other generations.

With tights comes responsibility I bet they have none of those and nor should they

Rights not tights

I think the problem is that a lot of parents these days don’t discipline their kids. I see an awful lot of “don’t do that” said with no conviction, followed by the kids continuing to do exactly that because they know it’s not going to be enforced. Also lots of empty threats. Plus parents are less likely to back teachers up these days and more likely to challenge their discipline. But toddlers are toddlers - they have always had tantrums and always will.

You forget what they are like. I can't remember my 10yo having toddler tantrums, but I know that he did because I remember posting on MN about it at the time. Also, you think of your own childhood through the eyes of a child and usually an older one, so you remember feeling afraid of punishment or considering actions based on certain things. As an adult you see more of a spectrum of child behaviour and the worst behaviour will stand out more.

I also think the perception of behaviours has shifted rather than the behaviours themselves. These days it's considered important to look at the root or reason or intention behind the behaviour and help the child to understand that - so parents talk to their kids about safety or wasting resources or hurting others and children tend to build these things into their understanding and base their future behaviour on such things, limited of course by their developmental activity. If something is considered to be developmentally appropriate ("a phase") it's not considered important to discipline for it as the understanding is children will grow out of it. It's seen as more of a long game. Parents tend to be more equally involved in their children's upbringing and parenthood is a considered choice for most people.

In the past it was seen more that disruptive or dangerous behaviour needed to be swiftly discouraged regardless of the reason. Mothers had more children, less choice about the matter and more to do in the home so the priorities were different. I'm not talking last generation here but certainly 3, 4 generations ago - the interim is a shift towards the more modern thinking which is why there is a mix.

Therefore some behaviours are allowed/tolerated/ignored today which would have been seen as bad behaviour to be discouraged in previous generations. If you're judging parenting/the behaviour of children by these actions, then yes you could say that behaviour has deteriorated and/or parents are too tolerant.

However I think that the shift has been positive. There are "funny stories" of things DC used to get up to (and got punished for) which most children today would never dream of doing because rather than just being discouraged from disrupting grown ups they are being taught carefully and with more context from the start. Teens don't rebel as much in the same ways today. Fewer children are hurt or killed in preventable accidents or through dangerous behaviour. Children in general see adults as being on their side, rather than being some kind of enemy, so tend to be more honest. These kinds of shifts I think are important and are leading to adults with more conscience and a better behaved world in general.

Of course there are still ineffectual parents just as there always were. But I don't think that smacking being socially acceptable made ineffectual parenting effective, it just meant those children got smacked more.

I think the difference is, they weren't under adults' noses all day long. Kids used to run around in crowds left to their own devices. The bullies could hit and taunt and tease and threaten and scream but no adult had to put up with it. In front of adults, they could curb poor behaviour because they had an outlet for it elsewhere. Now they don't.

Parenting wasn't a 24/7 job when I was growing up. If a baby screamed it was put in its pram down the bottom of the garden to 'cry it out'. Small children were left alone while mothers 'popped out' to get their hair done or to the shops or to a friends' for coffee. So adults had respite more often.

And I agree with the PP who mentioned behaviour in restaurants. If I was taken to a restaurant or cafe, I was expected to sit at the table for the whole meal, use manners and join in the conversation with the adults. Now I see kids (and not just little ones - all ages) up and down from the table, rolling about on the floor, complaining that they’re bored, not using cutlery properly or at all, glued to tablets and leaving an absolute mess of food all over the table and floor when they’ve finished. It’s not ok!

25 per cent of dc coming into our local primary in a nice area have "social/emotional needs". A large proportion of these are due to poor parenting in the early days. There's a clear correlation between dc who have bedtimes than those who go to bed at 10pm because, the parents claim, "they're not tired before that". Playing fortnite a lot also seems to signal a dc with poor behaviour.

Most parents on this board were raised in the 1980s or thereabouts. Flying was common, babies weren't really left to cry it out and corporal punishment was pretty much non existent in schools. And yet, my contemporaries and I were able to sit through assembly, church and flights without the crap behaviour we see today.

The left to roam for the entire day, a good smack if you weren't doing as you were told was not the norm in the 1980s and 1990s.

I think there has probably always been a variance in how much effort people put into teaching certain things. Going out for dinner is important to me so we have put effort into trying to teach our toddler how to behave in a restaurant. We are quick to remove if we get screeching as we think about others, there are no screens and we spend a lot of time talking and entertaining. There are other occasions where I do give in for an easy life. Parents will be picking their battles all the time and will have more energy to deal with some situations than others.

My toddler does things I wouldn’t have done in the 80s so I think the posts about being more visible are right. Mine is generally quite good but she has her moments like they all do. I love the fact that a previous poster didn’t think they ever tantrummed- it is totally normal at that age however well behaved or clever.

I think expectations have changed tbh.
Until recent past children were seen and not heard, I remember this attitude from the 60's and 70's.
It seemed to decline during the "loads of money" culture, which speaks volumes.
Children are spoiled and ruined now with their high expectancies, bad behaviour is expected and tolerated, whereas children used to be socialised by prents. Most parents are too busy now and expect teachers or child minders to socialise their children.

blueskiesand forests no, nothing like that. I think she saw him as a ‘cool uncle’ type figure and was upset that he’d been hurt by EXW (who she didn’t like).I did question it when we left (to DH) and he said he thought she might have some SEN but wasn’t sure if she had a formal diagnosis. It was more the actual words used than the sentiment that shocked me, but I was also a bit shocked by the others lack of shock, if that make sense.

whosafraidofabigduckfart Considering the Declaration of the Rights of the Child was created in 1959 I'm amazed that you think children only now have individual rights.
I had to read this along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (I could have the title slightly different). I can't deny anyone these rights, nor can I see them as entitlements as long as they apply to all people equally. It's a good read and worth remembering why these declarations were created in the first place.

www.un.org/en/index.html
'Declaration of the Rights of the Child
In 1959 the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which defines children’s rights to protection, education, health care, shelter and good nutrition.'

I was a child in the 70s and 80s.

We his bad behaviour from our parents - not just our own, but that of other children.

It'd never have occurred to me to tell my parents about bad behaviour I witnessed from other children, even when I suffered because of it. There was some kind of honour among thieves type children's unspoken pact.

Bad behaviour happened when parents weren't looking, mostly, and parents didn't want to know in those days. Very much head in the sand/ kids will be kids as long as it doesn't bother the adults.

When I got drunk and misbehaved as a mid teen I made sure my parents wouldn't find out, rather than not doing it. As siblings we protected our parents from finding out about what other siblings did, so they wouldn't worry. That was normal then.

I went to a private school and got very good grades, but my behaviour in some lessons was shocking - I used to lie on the desks in one lesson I remember, I had an overdeveloped sense of injustice and refused point blank to do things I thought were unfair even when punishments snowballed. I walked out of some lessons and went and sat outside on the grass, for no good reason. I think partly because my grades were good and partly because I was a model student in certain lessons, and because I was always verbally polite, my parents were never even called! I think schools call parents in much more quickly now - things used to be dealt with between school and pupil unless they were suspension level serious. There wasn't the opportunity for parents to back kids up! I knew my parents would have sided with school, but it wasn't relevant as pupils didn't have parents between them and school and didn't tell their parents if they were in trouble!

I think the double edged sword of everything being out in the open and parents having vastly more involvement in their children's lives, as well as children being physically with their parents and in adult spaces far more, is the biggest change.

Now we want to know what our kids are up to even if it's inconvenient! This has obvious pros safety wise but also cons in that once hidden behaviours are out in the open, and children are less self sufficient and more dependent, which has a vicious circle impact - parents want the openness but to maintain it condone and overprotect, I suspect.

I grew up in the 70's and things like eating out or flying were not commonplace in my circle. School aged children were off doing their own thing and largely kept out of adults way. I think there is less opportunity to let off steam now which may cause more conflict.
My son has behavioural difficulties due to disability and they would have been no different 30 years ago although he may have been more hidden from the general public.

Hid not his