To think my friend just needs to say no to her kids?

[reddblackandblue]

I have been very close to my friend for years. She is genuinely a lovely, lovely person. Too lovely.

She’s always been very into ‘gentle’ parenting but ever since her eldest turned two, she has had these screaming tantrums that last half an hour or more and no one can do anything during this period except sit and wait for the child to exhaust herself into sleep.

Obviously, I thought this was normal so waited it out. Child turned three, four and five and still has tantrums and screams when she doesn’t get her own way. The younger child who isn’t now three is exactly the same.

I think my friend just can’t say ‘no.’ Even when something is obviously impractical or dangerous she will sit around for ages reasoning with them rather than saying no. This has meant us all standing by a busy road while the children scream, standing outside the car waiting to get in as the kids won’t get in their car seats, waiting around exhausted at midnight as the kids rampage around.

Now she’s expecting another.

Aibu in just not wanting to be around her any more? I absolutely love her. The kids? I can’t stand them!

YANBU I can't stand tantrums and wouldn't allow them from my children

People who come out with this shit need to seriously get over themselves and get their heads from out of their arses.

What iwasjustabouttosaythat said!
I have 5 dc youngest is 6 and eldest is 18. 4 of them are well behaved, listen to no, and have never really had any difficulty with them. My 10 year old ds however is the complete opposite. He would have these terrible tantrums as a toddler and behave in the ways most of you are describing, i could never take him anywhere without it being extremely hardwork and also dangerous. He also goes mad if he doesnt get what he wants and thats still to this day at 10. Speaking from the opposite side(parent with difficult child) i would dread any of my friends coming around! Ds would be so much worse, showing off or being horrible to their dc. It got me down for years and i shut myself off from alot of my friends because of it. As long as the child has boundaries then you are doing your best, and sometimes its down to personality or an underlying problem(ds is currently with paediatrician) but your friend sounds as though shes not setting boundaries and her dc will just continue to do it because they are being allowed to. I had good friends who understood how hard it was for me yet i kept my distance because i found it incredibly hard work. If it a very close friend then i would be supportive and like i have explained from my side, she may want to keep a distance herself.

There's a huge difference between managing tantrums and just not saying no to your kids.

Just as there's a huge difference between explaining reasons and understanding emotions to your child and allowing that to mean your child does whatever they want.

Gentle parenting isn't boundary free. I try and explain why, try and talk to my children about their emotions. My eldest is a very sensitive soul and we need to tease out the emotions quite a bit.

That doesn't mean rudeness or poor behaviour is tolerated.

Teaching your child consideration for others is so important, and a skill that'll help them throughout their life.

Betty - you don't 'allow' tantrums, they just happen. It's how you manage them that counts.

Five kids here and only one real, classic tantrum, from number four, who's now a happy, well-balanced accountant. Nothing I did, just I assume our bloodline doesn't throw tantrummers!

Children tantrum like this because they feel insecure. They are looking for the boundaries and they are bothered that they can't find them.

Some do. Others do it for other reasons. My db did it because of PTSD/attachment disorder. My dd did it until the age of 10- and is currently being evaluated for MH issues (possibly bipolar).

I got very good at the picking up physically and strapping into buggy (you have to wait until they draw breath to push their stomach gently back). Later on I got very good at restraining from the back without getting bitten. I was always very good at firm rules and not giving in and letting her have what she wanted. But the tantrums continued.

I knew at the time that people must be judging me and thinking I was a lax parent. I never was. I understood about boundaries. Dd just wasn't coping.

I never punished for a meltdown, nor did my parents with db. But we never gave in either. And we did our best to minimise inconvenience to other people. Sometimes that's the best you can do.

Both children grew up into considerate and sensible adults. Though as I said, in dd's case with long-lasting MH issues.

Corythatwas
Your situation is very similar to mine. Have cahms working with ds 10.

I don't understand anyone who judges tantrums.

In younger children....they're part and parcel. I just remember how awful they were.....and anyone dealing with them has my empathy.

In older children there may be SEN or other issues.

Personally, I have far more issue with nagging, whingy children who are allowed anything for a quiet life and have twigged they can basically manipulate their parents into getting their own way, and the parents of these kids who have imposed pretty much no boundaries and then make empty threats. The lunatics run the asylum and they know it....

parry45 hope CAHMS are able to help. They were brilliant with dd, really made a huge difference.

My friend's child is like this. I don't see her any more as the constant attention seeking and tantrums are too much to bear.
The child is never told no, if someone else dates say no, his mother rushes to back him up ( examples: being told to stop pulling a rattan chair apart in a restaurant - " it's loose anyway, someone's child has already picked at it", kicking my OH and being told to stop, so throwing an epic tantrum, running over to park flower bed and tearing up the plants - gets bought an ice cream, hair stroked, cooed over, being told to stand up on an escalator " don't tell him what to do, he's fine sitting down").
The mother seems to have cast herself in the role of indentured servant. I watched in amazement as she walked up and down the garden, taking imperiously waved breadstick from child, dipping in hummus, taking it back to the child.
She also wants to keep him infantalised for some reason, still in nappies starting school ( only toilet training when school requested it ), still given drinks in a baby bottle at home, doesn't get put to bed, she lies him on her lap with his special blanky, stroking his hair, cooing over him until he falls asleep, then carries him up, undresses him, brushes his teeth for him.
This child is 7 now, whines, whinges and tantrums constantly, has no friends and is incapable of doing anything for himself.
He's a "lovely little boy", apparently.

He's a big baby, by the sounds of it.

The Chinese call it 'little emperor syndrome' after the one child policy resulted in a generation of indulged children....

missmarples , that is it exactly. OH and I refer to him as "Timmy", the Spoilt Bastard character from Viz comic as that is exactly how the pair of them carry on!
A lot of the tantrums are due to her failing to do his bidding fast enough, or to a satisfactory standard. If he says jump, the only correct response is "how high?".

I knew a kid like that when I was growing up weeds, he was a horror. Funnily enough the same story with still being in nappies and still being babied at age 5 or 6.

Funnily enough his mum wasn't insistent though, she was just a lovely gentle floaty wafty woman who flim-flammed around the whole time calling everyone "petal". She was my mum's friend and we all used to go on holiday together. My mum was definitely not a gentle wafter back then, and used to get stern with "Timmy" when he misbehaved (for instance when he kept kicking the back of her carseat when she was driving). His mum just seemed to dither and didn't at all seem to mind someone else disciplining him for her, but he would scream and cry and run to his mum and hide in her lap at the slightest hint of a telling off. It was obviously a terrible shock for him. I just feel sorry for him looking back, we all despised him, and it really wasn't his fault. I am told he fared very, very badly in school.

Sorry, to clarify - I mean, I don't think he was babied because she wanted him to remain a baby, so much as that she'd have tried toilet training, and when he had a tantrum she'd have just backed off and said "poor petal doesn't want to use the potty, never mind", resulting in the poor kid going to school in nappies. Totally ineffectual, and "Little Emperor" is the nail on the head.

Yes, I imagine for him, school is a never ending nightmare of ill-disciplined staff refusing to do as he tells them and, horror of horrors, paying attention to other children rather than devoting themselves to his exclusive service.

I know someone who parented like this. “No” was never said with any meaning. There were never any consequences of bad behaviour.

The child is nearly 13 now and an utter nightmare, along with being a serious school refuser and having considerable anxiety issues.

Reaping what was sowed.

My children had tantrums but they didn't last long because they weren't rewarded. Children let out their frustrations in a tantrum when they are overwhelmed in an emotion. It's normal, especially when they can't express themselves verbally so it's daft to 'not allow' them. If you scare a child they will turn their feelings inward.
Just learn how to manage them for your child's sake!

Gottagetmoving Fri 01-Jun-18 16:46:11
"My children had tantrums but they didn't last long because they weren't rewarded."

That's pretty much what my mother used to say after 5 years of bringing up my elder brother. Tried tantrumming, didn't get what he wanted, stopped.

Then I was born and she was treated to the joy of a child who isn't going to stop tantrumming because of not being allowed x because x was never as important to them as showing their parent that they don't like being dictated to. Basically, to me life as a toddler sucked; I wanted to be the one making decisions and you can't let a 2yo do that. I stopped the moment I got old enough to have some kind of control. But not before. That was never going to happen.

Then db2was born, who was so laidback he could rarely see the point about tantrumming about anything. Not much parenting required there.

And finally db3 arrived, complete with a traumatic babyhood and attachment issues. There was never going to be anything that was as important to him as living out the pain inside him. You could have fed him an entire sweet shop with a toy shop for afters and it wouldn't have stopped the meltdowns.

Dd was in the same category as db3. They both knew there was never the slightest chance that a meltdown would get them whatever had triggered the outburst, I don't suppose it happened once throughout their entire childhood, but once the pain had built up to a certain level it needed that release.

What I think I'm trying to say is that no two parenting experiences are the same. Some techniques make sense, like never rewarding a tantrum, but just making sense is not a recipe for immediate success.

If you've got a child like me, you may just have to grit your teeth and ride it out, remembering that an age of responsibility is just round the corner. If you've got a child like db or dd, then you will also grit your teeth, but with the added realisation that simply bearing it in the best way you can may be giving your child the only chance of survival they have.

'If you scare a child they will turn their feelings inward'

And they will have the therapist bills to prove it (best case scenario). Not even slightly kidding

I feel for you OP. I have a close friend who is lovely. She has 6 children between the ages of 17 and 4; 4 girls and 2 boys. There hasn’t been a shred of discipline from her in the 12 years I have known her.

I have babysat on numerous occasions over the years, and have managed to convince the girls that doing as asked is better than not, as far as I’m concerned.

I have however refused to sit for the boys ever again. They have always refused to do as asked, but are now getting older and to a size where simply carrying them upstairs is no longer an option. The final straw was three weeks ago - when they screamed, kicked, punched and started destroying their toys and the bedroom furniture simply because they were asked to go bed. This carried on for the entire 5 hours. They were still going on at gone midnight.

They are known throughout the village as being feral, uncontrolled and a danger to themselves and others. I would hate to be their teachers.

I have tried to help her build a routine, as have her parents and MIL - but to no avail. In fairness I think she’s just reached the point of giving up, but it doesn’t help.

I love the way MNers are judging people because they themselves handle tantrums differently/have children who don't tantrum.

OP your friend needs a new technique to deal with tantrums because that way isn't working. There are a number of parenting courses available but broaching the subject might be difficult. The courses don't assume the problem lies with the parent, but that there are new techniques to try which the parent may not be aware of.

I have 2 DDs. Parent them identically. No question of 'rewarding' a tantrum. They get ignored or punished depending on the trigger/severity/reasonableness.

DD5 escalates and escalates till she's uncontrollable. DD2 has a normal 2 year old protest then falls into line. It's entirely personality rather than parenting. Parenting will influence how they respond but only to a certain extent. The rest is about management of the behaviour.

Parents who equate all tantrums with bad parenting are judgey and unhelpful.

Some friends of ours never said no to their children. We had not seen them with children for a while and was invited over to a BBQ in their garden. During the BBQ it becomes obvious that their barely 15 year old DD was in the shower with her boyfriend (the window was open). Turns out she had been in a relationship with him a year. As they never said no they had also not said no when she wanted to have "sleepovers" with him very early in the relationsship. When she was 16 she got a boyfriend from a Eastern European country that was not exactly known to be safe and they let her go on vacation with him and his family there for 3 weeks even though she had at that point only dated him for a bit more than a month. And we had thought her tantrums were bad .....

Marmalade I do think in Op's examples the friend is handling tantrums badly. Sitting by a car for hours reasoning with them to sit in their seat, letting them tear about the house til midnight because they're threatening a tantrum about bedtime.. this poor woman must be so stressed and exhausted and seems to be afraid to take control.

I suppose it's easy to judge as an onlooker but it sounds like a miserable existence for her and not much fun for the rest of the family.

@ILostItInTheEarlyNineties yes I agree that's why I said she needs a new technique.

The other posters piling in are not always living in the same world as me.

I'm wondering if she has a "technique" at all She's probably at her wit's end but doesn't know how to change things.
I don't know anything much about "Gentle Parenting" but it can't be this surely. There must be more to it than never saying No and letting them call the shots. That's just "Not Parenting".

I agree that it'd be near on impossible to broach the subject with this friend though. It's going to be taken as criticism.
If you have dc it might be possible to open the conversation by saying how you yourself are struggling dealing with
tantrums and hope she agrees ...?