To think that our parents never parented like this and we all turned out ok?

[mosschops30]

Honestly every day i log onto MN and there is always some variation of the following:

Ds doesnt like school, should i keep him home its making him anxious
MIL fed dd fish fingers and i am furious
Dh said the house wasnt clean is he emotionally abusing me
I think my ds should fo half days because hes tired
Can rides be banned from supermarkets, im thinking of a petition
Im disgusted that ds was playing with a toy gun at friends party

Yada yada yada la la la
Really? Can you imagine any of our parents doing this, i couldnt even get a day off with stomach ache, let alone feeling tired, a vesta curry or crispy pancakes was considered the height of sophistication, we watched Nightmare on Elm Street at age 9, and apart from the knifed glove i have in the airing cupboard it didnt do me sny harm, parents wouldnt question the school on hours or teaching skills.

Honestly it just makes me i think people have too much time

I was forced to go to school by my parents even though it made me anxious. Thirty years on I am too anxious to leave the house ever, despite being a Free Reader.

Also, once I was playing with a toy gun and it went off and killed someone... turned out it was a real gun.

Therefore YABU.

I agree with some things but am with CalinDana over the school issue.
I too went to a junior school which handed out physical punishment like sweets. There was one particular teacher and she made me feel physically sick I was so scared of her. She dragged my friend across the hall by her hair to take her to the head because she had mentioned something about her sewing to her mother!

YABU - "it never did me any harm" is not a valid argument for anything.

I have never seen a thread on MM complaining that someone smiled at a baby on a bus, any chance of a link, or did that thread never actually happen?

Yep it did, I remember it well!

I'll be fucked if I can be bothered trying to search for it but if you can, I'd start looking at around a year ago.

And go back 10,000 years, or even to other parts of the world now, and things were even worse - yet oddly enough kids survive.

Except for the ones who died of course.

Or wait, did you miss the memo? Apparently there's something called INFANT MORTALITY and it is MUCH LOWER in the First World today then 10,000 years ago or in the Third World. Hope this doesn't ruin your little rant.

Oh Feminine! You've brought back great memories ... except I was lucky enough to drive my Dad's Cortina!

Obviously I sat on his knee. He's not that stupid to let an under 10 drive his baby alone

Obviously the children who died of preventable accidents in the days before the Health and Safety brigade are not here to tell us about it.

They are dead.

But it's like anything these days, there's so much scaremongering going on around parenting. Take one of the threads today about the poor woman who received a letter saying that her child was (barely) overweight! If my Mum had received a letter like that she would have thrown it in the bin. Parents parented, but these days we are told by soooo many different sources (teachers, health visitors, doctors, through the media) that we're all doing it wrong. How on earth are we supposed to make our own decisions?

I am trying to be a good parent. But a lot of what I do is tailored to what I've been 'advised' and what I've heard. I've never given my 30 month old DD a Fruit Shoot and why? Because apparently they're the devil's work!! But are they really? Is it going to kill my DD to have the odd bad thing? As kids we didn't have much money so we had the basics when it came to food. I used to buy myself a Pot Noodle and a can of Coca Cola as a treat at the weekend, with my pocket money (£2 from the age of 12-16).

There are a lot of parents that are comfortable with what they're doing. I would love to be one of them. But I always feel these days that wherever we are and whatever we're doing, we're being judged by others about our parenting. It's the toughest job in the world and no-one intends purposely to screw it up or do a bad job. But when you try and do what you're supposed to do and aim for perfection, we're all going to screw up eventually...

Anyway, that's enough waffling. I need to get off MN and get back to doing some work, before I go and feed my DD her ration of a small healthy portion of dinner!! (Followed by as much cake as she can stuff in her mouth!!)

The OP is simply having a smile at how ridiculous some things have become RunnyGrobbles

I used to sit on my dad's lap while he was driving and steer.

I also do go a bit at all of some of the PFB nonsense on here.

As much as I do think some parents are over protective these days, I hate this whole, 'I smoked 20 fags a day from age 2 and rode on the back of Dad's motorbike with no helmet and Im ok' sort of attitude.

The fact is that not all kids did survive - the infant mortality rate is the lowest its ever been. My MIL is always going on about how in her day, there were no such thing as car seats yada yada, but seems to ignore the fact that, relatively, a lot more kids died in car accidents back then.

And just anecdotally, 2 of my cousins used to love watching horror and violence films when they were 9 years old. They are now both in jail for GBH.

I don't think they all turnud out ok. Some had freaky accidents, some were bullied for years, some are having breakdowns now.

But i agree about your examples and that perhaps we overdoing it now.

runny - there's a difference between doing the neccessary to ensure children are healthy and safe, and turning parenting into a paint-by-number project that has to be completed perfectly in every way.

And whilst 'it never did me any harm' is not an argument for anything, it can be an argument against banning things, eg 'My mum let me ride my bike in the park with my friends, it helped me learn independence, get really good at riding and it was great fun. And it never did me any harm' is a perfectly valid argument IYSWIM.

Surely the best way is a happy medium between the two. There was a lot of neglectful/abusive parenting around in our parents' generations in just the same way as there is a lot of overly precious parenting around now. There are elements from both that are desirable.

For example, I think there was a lot of good in the way my parents allowed me so much more freedom than any child has today. It encouraged my independence and gave me a much greater sense of personal responsibility. OTOH forcing left-handed children to write with their right hand and a tendency to think that all dyslexics were either lazy or stupid, which were also common at the time, is not so great, no matter how rose-tinted the specs.

The Victorians may have bred stoic, adaptable adults, but there was a lot of misery around at the same time and I'd not sure I'd want to go back to that. Children regularly died, either through disease or industrial accidents.

The food thing is a funny one. Processed food has never been so readily available as it is at this current point in time, and coincides with a period in history where children have never had less physical exercise. Nowadays we decide to 'do' exercise, whereas a generation or two ago exercise was much more a normal part of daily life as more people walked (few parents chose schools out of catchment for a start), children generally had more freedom to play out, and games consoles weren't as ubiquitous as they are now. Obesity is on the rise on this country, so I don't think it's being overly precious to be concerned about what your DC eat. That said, I allow mine to eat all sorts of rubbish because their typical diet is very healthy and we lead a very active lifestyle.

My ds is 17 now but for the first couple of years of primary our Wednesday treat was to go to McDonalds for a happy meal and a fruit shoot, and he had plenty of chocolate & sweets and is now fit as a fiddle and has no fillings.

I agree that on MN there's too much over parenting and apprehension on many aspects of a child's life.

roll on summer newmummy i maybe out with my jam jars and get cracking on it put a fancy label on somebody will buy it

I was never allowed to sit on my a parent's lap and steer the car. Oh how I begged!
I was however allowed to climb trees. Do elf and safety allow this these days? I fell out of the tree but it was one of my happiest memories strange child.

(Showing my age here) Dr Spock said in his "Baby and Child" that most people turn out well in spite of their parents, rather than because of them. I found it quite comforting as a neurotic mother.

YADNBU - I completely agree!!

I also think this ALL the time at work when in meetings people have to leave their mobiles with ridiculously loud ring tones on because their child coughed this morning but they still sent them to school

I do agree with the safety aspect though being serious for a second we do need to be safe just not with cotton wool round them ,

I remember the one, can't be arsed to search for it though

Ditto Nightmare on Elm street and Findus crispy pancakes. Infect I had a lifesize poster of Freddie Kruger on my wall next to Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, I was about 10, how weird is that, my 10 yo wouldnt sleep for a week with a lifesize Freddie looming over him every night. What was I and more to the point my mother thinking

Or wait, did you miss the memo? Apparently there's something called INFANT MORTALITY and it is MUCH LOWER in the First World today then 10,000 years ago or in the Third World. Hope this doesn't ruin your little rant.

Yup, and it came down due to not feeding them fish fingers, petitions stopping rides outside shopping centres, emotional abuse from not vacuuming and parents removing anxiety at school.

Or maybe it didn't....