What are your unpopular parenting opinion?

[michellet86]

There is no right answer to all t he parenting chive we make daily. I'm interested to hear everyone's opinions

Mine is that you don't need to rush your kid to A&E for anything unless it's life, limb or loss of eye sight. A&Es are already packed with kids who don't need to be there

1.Screens aren’t that bad.
Shock-horror I let my child play PlayStation games that are violent or older than her actual age.

2.Your child doesn’t need to be doing something every minute of the day and it’s important to have down time and become bored so they can learn to entertain themselves.

3.Ear piercing for babies and young children is just cruel, not matter how ‘cute’ it looks.

That parents should be just that, and not try to be their childrens' friend instead.

While some small everlap is acceptable, these are still essentially two completely different roles.

@Iam4eels with respect in my personal experience it is sadly very true.

I know of at least 3 children who've been given a diagnoses without any kind of neurological scanning. Behavioural assessment/observation only.

That not making your kids wash their hands before eating when they've been in the park or similar is really disgusting!

When I see ableism I'm going to challenge it in the same way I'd challenge racism, homophobia, sexism, and so on.

Part of the reason so many disabled people struggle is because so many people take the attitude that they're making it up or that it's not as bad as they make out or that it's just an excuse for laziness.

Neurodevelopment conditions are a disability and making shitty, ignorant comments about the reasons for a child's disability such as bad parenting, poor diet, laziness, etc deserve to be challenged.

Watching TV to unwind and chill is fine.
Siblings should not be expected to go to parties. Parents only stay if necessary. Children better behaved without parents and they just get in the way.

I don't think parents should take money from children living in their houses. I think it's a mean spirited thing to do and harks back to a darker time when children were born to work and help support the family. They didn't choose to be born, you're the parent and you should be providing, even if that means going without. Children do not owe you anything whether they are 4 or 40.

If they have a diagnosis then they've met the criteria for it. You have no right to comment on the rights or wrongs of it unless you're their doctor and/or have had sight of their medical records.

Interesting in P. Walkers book about surviving CPTSD he does indeed attribute many conditions within the DSM-5 to childhood trauma due to (want for a better word) shitty parenting. Approx 80%

I can assure you I absolutely wanted yo go to my nieces 1st birthday parties. Both were just family though and a lush little get together.

@Iam4eels I guess we'll have to agree to disagree there.

Genuinely sorry that I've triggered you, however it is my very well foundered opinion based on what I've seen in real life.

I also resent being called ableist. That's unkind. I'm far from that.

No hun.

You are not a doctor. Just because YOUR ND kid presents differently does NOT mean that "half" of the others just have shit parents.

Mostly the shit parents are the ones who are prejudiced in some way. Just saying.

My unpopular parenting opinion is that ipads shouldn't be used to keep kids quiet.

You've chosen to have children so bloody well talk to them, engage them, teach them to behave in public and yes, let them be bored and learn how to entertain themselves.

There's far too many children these days who spend their lives glued to an ipad and because they're on YouTube so much they end up speaking with an American accent. If you have kids be prepared to engage with them but also let them make up their own entertainment without the aid of constant stimulus.

@toocold54 I hear you!

Parents need to stop using snacks as a babysitter, it's teaching your kids to comfort eat from a very young age.

Parents should stop putting their children's photos on social media, just because they get a kick out of all the 'gawguss hun' likes and loves. They'd be the first to complain if someone splashed photos of them over the internet without permission.

Obviously this is the place for unpopular opinions but it makes me sad that posters seem to associate ND with “naughty”. As someone who has a child with suspected ND it’s amazing how many times I’ve heard people be shocked and say “but he isn’t naughty!”. Yeah, ND is not “naughtiness”.

Children are not wise and much child-led parenting is borderline neglect.

The opposite occurs with teenagers who, while also notoriously unwise, need a lot more responsibility and freedom than modern living currently allows in order for them to gain wisdom.

Parents will want to diagnose their kids with anything these days.

Dinner, take it or leave it. No harm ever came to a child that missed one meal.

Look at your children when you’re talking to them not your phone.

Restaurants and pubs aren’t playgrounds.

If you give your child a choice and they pick one, don’t then question their choice.

Just because everyone else is doing it/has one isn’t a valid response to sex, drink, mobile phones, piercings, the list goes on….

The best and worst thing about parenting is other parents.

FFS.

Always ends the same way: once one bigot has opened their gob the rest show up and feel entitled to spout shit too. Gross.

Your ableism isn't an 'unpopular opinion,' it's factually incorrect hate speeh, hun.

My unpopular opinion is that we have swung the boundaries and limits we give our kids too far back from the last generation and we are way too permissive with them.

Yesterday I was out with my dog and a very small and very cute, adorable toddler was walking over towards what was clearly a very upset, distressed and flustered dog whose owner had nipped into a shop an tied him to a rail. The parents were completely encouragingly letting him go over to the dog and were completely oblivious to the risk. On the way over he spotted my doggo and 2 times the child picked up very small stones to throw at my dog’s face and threw them. I just moved the dog away to avoid him being hit but the parents just watched on devotedly. The 3rd time I had walked a distance away and the child followed my dog again and his two idiotic parents followed to where I was and the child had two handfuls of gravel and finally I had to say to the toddler, by far the most sensible up in his family from what I could see, that my dog doesn’t like to have stones thrown at his face and that wouldn’t be a nice thing to do and finally his parents stepped in and took him away. How my eyes rolled. Very cute, inquisitive child, dumbass clueless parents.

Allowing boyfriends or girlfriends of your teenage children to go upstairs or into your teen's bedroom is asking for trouble. You need to be very strict about access to rooms beyond the kitchen and sitting room in your home.

Giving alcohol to teens is a terrible idea.

That sleep training isn't cruel and a few nights of crying is better for a baby than having a parent run ragged, depressed and hating life due to sleep deprivation.

Agree, @Mardyface