To think "lazy parenting" is usually just inexperienced parenting?

[PuffedupPufferFish]

I have a 2yo DD so I am currently reading lots of stuff about parenting toddlers. In the past few weeks I have read various things described as lazy parenting - not being able to stop toddlers interfering with Christmas trees, not always being able to get toddlers to keep to quiet in certain public areas, not being able to always get toddlers to walk nicely alongside you etc.

I'm not denying that some parents are lazy and just leave their children to it, but I think most people really do care but are just inexperienced. I feel like I try so hard to get my DD to behave appropriately and lots of things she's so good about, but equally lots of things we have real struggles with. I am sure it is partly my parenting, but honestly I don't think I'm being lazy. I am just inexperienced, and have never done this before! You can read all you want but advice is often contradictory, and doesn't prepare you for the real thing. And I just feel like I've got a good response for a certain behaviour then everything changes.

It's just so demoralising and unsupportive when you read "parents whose children do X,Y and Z are just lazy parents" when I am trying so hard but obviously not always getting it right. I can't help thinking people who say it either had super chilled children, or took to parenting much more naturally than me or are on a second/third child and have the benefit of some previous experience (and their rose tinted spectacles on while remembering their first child).

I guess I just wish parents could be a little kinder to each other sometimes.

OP I agree with you that the 'lazy parenting' sneers are unhelpful, but equally I don't think you're being very kind to yourself either. The reason your toddler plays up sometimes is not because you are 'inexperienced' or not 'getting it right' but because she's 2! You can try and try and try and try and try to get a 2yo to behave in the way you want them to but at the end of the day they're still toddlers, not 1920s debutantes being presented to society.

I saw lazy parenting in the outpatients waiting room last week. Parent on a green block type game on her phone while 4 children ran riot around the waiting area. She periodically looked up to shout and threaten them then went back to her game. Definitely lazy parenting.

I do agree that those trying but not necessarily succeeding should be given credit though. I smile at parents whose children are tantruming to show I'm not judging them I'm emphasising with them.

If it takes an hour to get home and my kid is being a nuisance in a coffee shop (he’s 2 and when we queue up he loves to lie on the floor as a sort of silent protest at not getting to eat immediately and then when we’re at the table it’s a constant battle to make him stay in his chair and he wants to go to toilet every 3 minutes but it’s just a ruse to get out of the chair) I’m going to stay until they’ve eaten because do you have any concept of how hungry they’ll be by the time the get home??

If it’s lazy not to take them on an hourlong bus ride while they get more and more grouchy due to hunger because seeing toddlers lie on the floor drives you batty just think how the poor bus patrons will feel.

I think a lot of people use the term 'lazy parenting' to describe parents who do things differently to them! There are some things I just don't care about, and while I appreciate that other people do, I actively choose not to prevent my kids from doing certain stuff/make them do certain other things. I have my priorities, and just because they differ from others' doesn't mean I'm lazy.

I think a lot of it to do with realistic expectations for a child. My almost 2 year old is learning to talk. Loudly. Say I took him to church or coffee shop and expected him to sit quietly for 1.5 hours, I would say that was a fairly unreasonable expectation of a child his age. Its the same when you see kids who are clearly overtired and their parents expect them to behave during a late family meal. It's unreasonable and setting yourself up for failure. I would absolutely expect your 2 year old to be exploring the world, including Christmas trees.
I think if your child is causing an absolute commotion and being dangerous (running back and forth in coffee shop where there is risk of scalds, or pulling the tree over) and you don't intervene because you are too busy having your coffee then that would be lazy parenting.

Also, if it makes you feel better, my last trip to the doctors included my son finding a suspect stain on the carpet and repeatedly shouting throughout the whole waiting room "Mummy...poo poo!' and laughing hysterically for 15 long minutes.

I used to think children were shaped by their parents. Which they are to some extent but they also come hardwired with behaviours and attitudes. Ds sleeps well and will eat anything, how smug am I? Not at all had nothing to do with me! No sleep training method, no routine or plan he just goes to sleep. Same with food. He’s gobby though, and no amount of practice of social grace will prevent him busting into the middle of my conversation in public to tell me anything.
As long as your trying you’re not lazy. (Sage advice, maybe I’ll write a parenting book)

Difficulty is there’s no rule book in these situations.
My ds this week, see my user name, thoroughly embarrassed me in a supermarket queue.
We’d been at soft play he’d had a good run round. He’d had lunch he’d had a drink. He knew we were heading to grandmas that afternoon which he loves.
So I thought yes, I will chance it. I will scoot into Lidl for two items for tea. How bad can it be?
Turns out it was terrible. He started to get really irritable waiting in the queue, pulling things off the belt, touching the woman’s trolley in front.
So I grabbed his wrist to try and contain him and he wriggled it to get away and because he was pulling away, he started screaming that I was hurting him.
People around us started to get involved, the woman behind going oh poor boy sympathising with him!! The woman in front tutting. A kind man behind asking if he could help.
But the heat in the shop and all the extra stimulation of other people getting involved and I knew he was going to blow and i just needed to get out of there.
So I literally abandoned my stuff, and frog marched him out kicking and screaming.
I was red faced. I dare say some people think I was heavy handed. I dare say some think that I had no control over him and was a lazy ineffective parent.
But I just knew there was no containing him at that point he was about to blow into full blow tantrum in a small confined busy and hot space.
So I opted to leave.
Happy to take any other advice on dealing with these situations, but I think we are all just dealing with things the best we can.

I think things like whether your 2-year-old will walk along nicely with you all the time are often down to the individual child. When you’ve have more than 1 you often see how the same parenting can still lead to very different behaved toddlers/children. My youngest is definitely a lot more prone to tantrums in the shop and not wanting to walk along next to me. Also pushing boundaries and full-blown tantrums are very natural, normal part of being a 2yo. I can understand some things being called ‘lazy parenting’ like not being bothered to cook or leaving a toddler on an iPad for 4 hours every day, but the examples you’ve given aren’t things I would automatically think ‘lazy parenting’ about.

Some of them are also just not very stoppable. There'll follow a whole series of posts now from people saying that their DC were able to behave, or that they learned to behave after a while because of the poster's wonderful parenting skills. But actually it's just as likely that the kid behaved in the first place because they're biddable by nature, or learned to behave later on because they grew out of it.

I tended to find with mine it was easiest just to minimise the time they spent around things and situations where they were going to be a pain in the arse. Avoided where at all possible. Of course, sometimes this isn't doable either. But it's a hard stage, spending so much of your life tethered to the whims of a small dickhead.

See I've never understood anyone who wants to sit in a coffee shop with their small children. I know mothers who did it regularly with their toddlers when mine were younger but I always politely declined!
Take out coffee in a field, then you can be lazy as you like, the kids can run riot and only the cows to judge you

'tethered to the whims of a small dickhead' -
This is my life atm

Shopping been there with one of mine. Screamed repeatedly that I'd abducted her We were in a very public place, I was mortified. Turns out she's incredibly intelligent and worked out how to have a very effective two year old tantrum to get exactly what she wanted...

It’s useful to remember that if a child is having a tantrum in public it’s usually because they’ve been told “no” to something they want or their parent is trying to curtail some undesirable behaviour. Which is obviously “active” parenting. Lazy parenting would be giving in to stop them from kicking off.

DS was the toddler from hell. It turns out he has ASD and ADHD, but we didn’t find out until he was 7. I certainly never felt “lazy”. I was constantly exhausted and on edge when we were out in public. His little sister turned out to be the world’s most compliant 2 year old, but thanks to my baptism-of-fire-PFB I knew it was down to luck rather than my awesome parenting.

OP, if you’re a parent who posts on MN, then you are very unlikely to be a lazy parent! Most posters on here are earnest, conscientious parents genuinely trying to do their best for their kids.
I think the term is a polite euphemism for neglectful or toxic parenting. And I’m afraid that both do exist. As a doctor, I’ve seen some heartbreaking examples of truly shit parenting, by abusive people who do not give a damn about their poor kids. “Lazy” doesn’t begin to cut it.

I remember seeing on here that not having a two year old potty trained was 'lazy parenting'. So I tried with 2.5 yo DS because I was worried people were judging us Piss everywhere - including on his brand new knitted Duggee, which I had given myself rsi knitting!

Waited until he was nearly 3 - he cracked potty useage in a week.

So, was I lazy for not wanting to mop piss up for weeks on end? Or sensible for waiting until DS was actually ready? I know which I think is the right answer here. And since then, I have had no time for the 'lazy parenting' sneers - you parent the child in front of you, the best way you can. Nobody knows my son like I and DH do, and no one has his best interests at heart as much as is - so yes, I do know best, actually. What may appear 'lazy' may actually be the most effective way available to us at that time. So the judgy judgers can pull their judgy pants out from their judgy bums and bugger off.

when out without children & watching parents go through tantrums my (internal to self) thoughts were a celebratory " thank god its not me!" because I didn't have a dc doing exactly the same!

Lazy parenting is none of the examples you just mentioned at all. Lazy parenting is not reading to children, never taking them anywhere, never investing in their education and just dumping them in front of the TV or a tablet for hours every day.

Toddlers have a mind of their own and their natural curiosity drives them. It’s perfectly normal for them to piss about with a Christmas tree, they’re a bit like cats in that sense . Even more normal for parents to find it tough to get them to stop...

I was lucky in that mine were fairly biddable most of the time, and knew that it was luck rather tham my parenting skills. There was the occasional lying on the floor kicking and screaming session in the supermarket, (them not me, although I sometimes felt like it) but on the whole, not too bad.
So yesterday when I saw a mum and older child in the supermarket being accosted by a screaming, stamping, sweaty tantrumming monster all I did was step out of the way and sympathise because I would have ignored that behaviour too

I am not sure I agree. I have got 'lazier' as a parent the more kids I had. And it isn't laziness IMO, it's experience.

When baby #1 was on the way you bought into all marketing and 'needed' every gadget and garment available, but when subsequent babies arrived you'd pared it down to just the things you really needed. In the same way I was strictest with my first child and got very stressed about doing it 'right' but later learned not to sweat the small stuff and only really get hardcore about the things I knew made a difference.

Having said all that its really hard to tell, now my kids are mostly adults, what they would have been like if I had parented differently.

I agree with OutPinked: "Lazy parenting is not reading to children, never taking them anywhere, never investing in their education and just dumping them in front of the TV or a tablet for hours every day."

Often the quiet kids are quiet because they are plugged into some device.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't - if it's not 'lazy parenting', it's 'helicopter parenting'.

I did everything the books told me, breastfed until they wanted to stop (at about 18 months), put routines into place for bedtime so they slept, held their hands and tried to get a connection so that they would behave and do what I asked.

I always got tutted in supermarkets while they screamed and ran everywhere, and didn't do what they were told. I was rarely offered help, just judgement.

Both of my children were diagnosed with ASD and ADHD in primary school, I can now understand their behaviour (having been to endless meetings over the years, read countless books, and DH and I having done training into ABA, a type of therapy) and can ignore the tutters and starers.

My children are doing well at school (eldest just predicted a raft of 7s (As) for his GCSEs but knows he could get higher if he puts in the effort), have a few good friends, and are (mostly) kind and gentle kids.

Ignore the judgers - everyone's a critic, especially when they have no idea of your day to day life and just see a snapshot. I had some good people around me over the years, who kept me sane - they're the only ones that matter.

to me, lazy parenting is allowing your child to break or destroy something that isn't your while sitting there doing nothing.

So, in your example, if toddle approaches tree, then yes the parent should/must intervene. Unless it is your tree and you don't care if things are broken.
I don't care what method the parent uses, anything will do, but if they can't stop their toddler destroying someone else's tree, then there is an issue.

Some kids will respond to a NO (that was dd1). Some will need strapping down in their pushchair to save the tree, some will get offered a cookie as distraction and some will get carried off under the arm of the parent (ds). Some will never approach the tree in the first place, but stand at a distance and look cute (I never got one of those kids)

But is IS lazy to sit on your chair and ignore your child destroying something.

Having said that, then their are the children who are standing next to you like angels chatting away and then 2 seconds later they are across the shop tugging at the decoration and you have to leg it full speed to stop them (dd2 I'm looking at you)

Same goes for if in a public place. Lazy parenting is IGNORING the child making a huge noise, or running round in circles.
As pp said, sitting playing a game on your phone while your kids drive everyone else mad.
If you are trying to feed a child, chase a child, interact with a child and they are being......less than charming, then no problem, we've all been there.

The key common thing in what I've just said is when your kids impact on other people.

I agree with pp who says as you get more experience you do relax. I am less helicopter than most about tree climbing etc, but when you are in other people's houses, or places eg shops, then you have to think of them.

Yes exactly steppemum lazy parenting is not if you don’t manage to get your child to do X but if you don’t even try.

How successful you are at getting your child to do X depends on lots of things, especially on the child’s natural personality. Some children have a more compliant nature than others.

MN has a small but vocal contingent of perfect parents whose children never misbehave and who are quick to blame any misbehaviour on poor parenting. Funnily enough I’ve hardly ever met any of these perfect parents or children in RL

For me, there is a difference between inexperienced parenting, and lazy parenting. The inexperienced parent is clearly trying to manage their child's behaviour - they may not be getting it right all the time, but you can see they are doing their best - and the lazy parent is simply sitting back and letting their child hit other children or run around the coffee shop or create mayhem in someone else's home.