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

keepingup well it was just as well then that you were never in a major car accident because if you had been you may not be here to tell the tale of 'homemade car seats' and laugh at the ridiculousness of people actually wanting to ensure that their babies are safely secured in a car

I think it's all based on outlook. Most decent parents still make istakes..if their kids then grow up saying "There are a lot of things I wish my parents had done differently but they were decent." then that's just focusng on the negative.

MY parents did things I am sure that some people would resent and remember and mull over. BUt they also did wonderful things. So I focus on the good stuff. Its a happier state of mind.

samstown my point was that there was no car seats then! I was not laughing at people wanting to keep their babies safe at all. I have always had car seat for my ds's even when there was no legal requirement for them.
What I was laughing about was that a lot of children now are completely wrapped in cotton wool and pampered. Some parent will go in to school on a rampage at the slightest thing and some kids barely see outside till they are teenagers.

I remember the teachers smacking us for no reason other than us needing to sit down. I remember being forced and I mean forced to drink off warm milk. I remember being terrified walking home from school alone in the dark.
Oh hapy days

The world maybe fucked up but its only going to get eorse when we are left with a generation of children who cant/wont work because they didnt want to/couldnt go to school due to mummy saying they didnt have to.

You cant discipline others children, (i do) in case thy get upset, so children behave as they please, i remember being bollocked by friends parents and it was terrifying, worse if they threatened to tell your parents.

And thsnks to the people on this thread who have actually grasped what i mean instead of harping on about infant mortality and abuse. I am talking about decent parents who discipline their children, say no to them when its needed even if they have a tantrum (so what), and send them to school every day without worrying whether its too hard/too tiring/too busy etc etc.

Oh and at driving dads car i remember being allowed to sit on dads knee and steer our chrysler sunbeam, cliff hanging walking in the hols, riding on your bike all day and not coming home til tea time, and being allowed to have beer when we went yo the pub ( barely drink ever now)

Mine did the best they could in the circumstances, and we have a good relationship, but they didn't believe they were worth anything themselves (very poor backgrounds, no education, literacy difficulties) and settled for the absolute minimum with us, too. Their own parents had been so minimally involved in their lives and so consumed with struggling financially they had no model for involvement in their children's lives and never put themselves out for us.

I couldn't care less about Findus crispy pancakes-based diets etc. and the complete absence of seatbelts was widespread in the 70s. But some things are harder to forgive, like my parents allowing a known paedophile priest regular free access to the house (saying no would have made things unpleasant), not confronting a teacher who was a notorious bully and who made me and both my sisters' lives hell for several years (can't make a scene), my father repeatedly refusing promotion to foreman at work that would have meant we weren't so poor ('too much hassle'), refusing a scholarship to a better local school (the one my sisters and I went to was notoriously poor) for me (also 'too much hassle' and would have made me 'get above myself').

I don't focus on this stuff a lot, but now that I'm pregnant, there are things I plan to do differently. There are things I don't want my child to struggle with.

Oh thank you mosschops30! You've just brought back another brilliant memory of being allowed to slurp the froth off the top of a pint of guinness

Yep, of course I use car seats and sometimes probably am a little worried about bringing my little one up in this world, but jee I had a fab and probably sometimes a little wild childhood and just wish it could have lasted a bit longer! :)

When i think about the next generation i wonder how their couple relationships will be. Will it be common to have seperate bedrooms? A full time counsellor to deal with their conflicts? Cooking different food cos of dislikes and sensitivities?

Oh ... and if our little one loves me and DH half as much as I love my Mum and Dad, then I'll be more than happy :)

I think this is my favourite thread for a long time Thanks, mosschops30.

but we're all obese, addicted to drugs and depressed so no we didn't turn out ok ( I am only one of the above )

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181351486558984.html

GREAT thread! Read above article (summary: we mollycoddle our children too much and it has lasting and deleterious effects on their brain development well into adolescence and young adulthood; viz, the poor work ethic and difficulty forming emotional attachments we witness in today's youth).

Good to know other like-minded parents out there who don't want to raise Ickle Precious Children who Must be Protected from the Big, Bad World

ha ha.
I remember we had to go swimming in the freezing cold outside school pool every day - everyone ! no exceptions ! (this was mid '80s)
One day a classmate asked the teacher what if it was too cold and the pool froze over ? her reaction: "i will break up all the ice so it will melt and you can still go swimming". Obviously a joke (I don't remember her ever having to 'break ice') but imagine a teacher saying something like that today ! this was the same teacher who pulled down a naughty boy's pants and smacked his bare bum ! this kid, looking back was defo undiagnosed ADHD but back then he was just seen as a little s**t.

I have nothing but respect and love for my parents, they did the best they could under the circumstances, and with four of us I feel they did good.
Even today with mine two when I need good, solid no nonsense advise my mother is the first person I would call.
"Old is Gold" in many respects, people of my parents generation had a more nonchalant approach to child upbringing, they managed to be parents but individuals too, they didn't stress about every little micro detail, they knew how to let go.
I started parenting first time seventeen years ago and then again about six years ago, both them I parent the same, lovingly, fair, but strict with no nonsense thrown into mix.
As a child I remember being corrected not only by my parents but also other members of family, in today society unheard of, Why?
IMO, I effectively parent my children, I say no and I follow through, I don't indulge them, and if they are pressing the wrong ones I tell them so.
There is a lot more to parenting then, How long one will BF?, What kind of a car seat one uses? If you used reusable nappies? What is the safest/most expensive buggy on the planet currently? and so on.
IMO, Majority of us consider ourselves to be very good parents, we must have picked it up from somewhere, How about from our own parents?

this was the same teacher who pulled down a naughty boy's pants and smacked his bare bum ! this kid, looking back was defo undiagnosed ADHD but back then he was just seen as a little s**t.

(heresy alert)

One wonders if the occasional smack was more effective than all the drugs and treatments they get shot up with these days.....

brightnessfalls i have a lovely friend who gets up sorts her sons clothes takes them breakfast in bed before making sure they look tidy and sorts them before they leave for ermmm work THEY ARE 22 and 19

YANBU

The world has def gone a bit mad and I think a lot of it is a kind of competative parenting ie my child was bf til he was 5, co-slept til he was 10, has only ever eaten organic vegtables and is disciplined by me giving him unconditional love

Do I win a prize?

No, you win a disrespectful know it all so a so teenager, that has no boundaries and you daren't question cos he/she frightens you.

Well the sort of care we received as children affects the care we give our own, right? So maybe the way we were brought up has made us into the mollycoddlers we (generally) are.

my mum is a teacher and says this is totally accurate
www.humourlaughs.com/2012/01/06/in-50-years-a-lot-has-changed-in-schools/

I think if your own parents weren't very good and you don't think you turned out ok as a result then it's only natural to realise that how you are with your kids is important.

I agree there was less paranoia, but I reLly don't think all parents are paranoid now. I've not read the entire thread, I take it someone has pointed out that times have changed too?

I had a c64 not an xbox, you could only play it for 20 mins once you'd spent an hour loading the cassette.

Cbbc was a 2 hour daily slot with a few programmed suitable for each agegrouo, not an all day channel with a baby channel tacked next to it.

There was no McDonalds in my large city until I was 15, there was 1 KFC, 1 BK, 1 Pizza Hut.

Rides outside supermarkets were 10p, max! (that's BIG 10ps), even allowing for inflation, that was cheaper then today.

Kid's clothes made us look like, well, kids, not Jordan on a big night out.

Kid's makeup existed, was made by tinkerbell & stayed put for all of 5 mins.

Kids toys were better quality in general & priced in such a way that they were affordable, but special. Not on shelves at Tesco all year round.

SATS didn't exist.

The Internet & therefore abundant pressures of 24 hour social media, parenting forums & endless bloody articles about obesity, behavioural problems due to bad parenting didn't exist or proliferate.

I'm not saying parenting was easier then, but it was easier to say no as there was less to say no to. There was also a lot less scrutiny on every action a parent took.

I have worked with children since i left school (16) so 20ish years and they way parents parent have really changed in all that time and you can see the difference in how parents react and interact with the Littlies they are much more precious these days ,

I have been working with DCs for much longer than this and I wouldn't say that it was true at all. It is about the same, except that back in time parents tended to have more time, they were less stressed.

It's swings and roundabouts-some things are better and some are worse.

I wouldn't like to be a DC now-they have far more to worry about. When I was 7yrs old it hadn't occurred to me that I had to do well at school to get a job, I did well at school because I loved learning-a job was way, way in the future. It didn't matter what I wore-no one had designer gear-my mother made most of my clothes. I could go out to play and come back for tea. I walked to and from school on my own.I went to the local shop on my own There were no computers, we all watched TV together and there wasn't a lot of choice-I always preferred reading.

I have been reading some rather old literature lately and I think it's a total myth that parents in previous generations didn't bother about books and theories and whether they were getting it right. Think of Anne of Green Gables and her Morgan book on childcare and how she agonised over whether it was right to pick up her crying baby. And in another of the books she has just been reading an article where the author states you must never kiss your little boy because of the Oedipus complex (though she doesn't believe in that one).

Our parents worried too. But by the time their little children have children of their own, they have forgotten. They are enjoying their new position of calm sages so much they push those other memories away.

I keep catching my own parents on this one: "we never fussed about this"- "ah but mum, I remember your being in tears over this", "I remember overhearing dad and you".

My own children are only in their teens/pre-teens and I am already developing this sense of serenity when contemplating toddlers. It is very enjoyable. One day I will feel serene about teenagers too

One thing I do think has changed, and that is what is socially acceptable to let on outside. A mother of 30 years ago might well have had her heart in her mouth regarding the school trip, but she would have tried to keep her fears to herself so as not to be laughed at by the other mothers. Perhaps a bit more social control in this area wouldn't hurt.