What are the opinions on stoic parenting?

[lovepickledlimes]

Me and partner have decided ttc once the rules and regulations once lockdown rules ease up. I have been doing some research on different parenting styles and came across stoic parenting. I think it sounds very sensible but would love to hear more opinions on this

I remember reading a book (American & VERY intentionally funny) called super mom (I think!) one thing she said - to paraphrase - was that before she had children she knew everything about how she was going to do it & she was an expert on being a mom - by her fourth child she knew she knew nothing!
Planning & learning about child development & THEORIES about different ways of bring up children is fine but as other pp have said - dc are all different -its a new adventure each time -& you will have to adapt & learn from each child. Main rules, have (slightly flexible) boundaries, always keep your promises (but think twice before you make them!) whether they are discipline or reward, work together with your dh/dp about rules so you don't confuse or undermine each other make learning fun, get as much sleep as possible, love your dc & enjoy them

Have you and your partner discussed this together?

You sound like you have a lot of anxiety around it and instead of concentrating on the type of parenting (as that's impossible) discuss what way you will work together. So many posts about useless DH's with children and LTB That's what's you need to be thinking about

Hadn't finished, make sure your on the same page and have support :)

I had some strong plans for raising mine. I have 3 under 5 and tonight I got to say
'Hmm. I don't know..could be blood, could be poop. Well don't touch it!!'
A lot of things don't go as expected

Ha,ha,ha...
Three little words:
Cutted up pear....

It is you that need stoicism and hide like a rhino in the face of toddler tantrums...

I will say, I’m not against parenting books. I have learned loads from them. I would just avoid aligning myself with any made up label, and recognising that’s flexibility is key - and the most important factor is your child’s own needs.

[quote lovepickledlimes]@oldwhyno in genral I try to remain clam and manage 70% of the time. I think it's just due to my parents extreme emotions at times I want try avoid it as there was a lot of screaming, shouting and crying growing up. At times my mother letting her anger she had at my dad out on me so part of me deals with negative emotions badly with other people and try avoid feeling them and hate if I do get stressed or upset[/quote]
If you had a turbulent childhood and don't want to become like your parents were towards you, then the best advice I can give is to think about all the things that your parents did wrong, and do the opposite.

Another useful tip...watch bing. Then when your toddler has a "moment" think
What would flop do? 😅

Great advice. But I do imagine once a week Flop goes into a lonely field to scream away his frustrations - no one can be that calm all the time

A tantrum is just a way of releasing pent up emotions which is completely normal for children!

I really don’t like it when people with children say things like ‘you won’t know until you have one of your own’ but, seriously, this!

You can’t ‘pick’ a parenting style, it doesn’t really work like that. You have a child, a human, who has their own personality and they determine what parenting style you use based on what works with them when instilling morals and boundaries.

The parents dealing with tantrums in shops and public spaces didn’t choose that to happen, they will be trying just as hard as you to teach their children not to be motivated by material items and sweets and the red plate. It’s a bit insulting that you seem to think those parents brought that on themselves by not being ‘stoic’. Sometimes being stoic brings about more problems than it solves.

My 5 and 7 year olds know that they should eat what they’re given, my 7 year old has always just been compliant at meal times but my 5 year old has taken a long time to tolerate anything other than beige food. At 3 he was so stubborn he would have starved himself, the dr advised to just let him have the beige food and take the battle of meal times away. And that battle happened because I insisted that he ate what he was given and didn’t give in to his demands. So that can cause more problems.

Parenting is hard enough without having to stick to a rule book.

I’m not sure that just “not giving in to tantrums” teaches emotional control. For that kids need to have their emotions recognised, be able to name them, and gradually how to calm themselves down if they need to. “If you don’t want to eat off the blue plate, don’t eat” doesn’t do that.

Ah cutted up pear!

I followed the mantra ‘what would flop do?’ a lot. It works!

I’m going to need more info. How does a stoic parent react to the fact that a meltdown is occurring because the red plate is in the dishwasher from breakfast and you have served lunch on an unacceptably not red plate?

The response before children is:
I will explain clearly and patiently to my child who will stop crying and say "of course, mummy, I now understand perfectly, why the red plate is out of commission. I will have the blue one."

The response with your first child is:
I explained clearly and patiently to my child, what do I do now as they're still screaming because they haven't got the red plate (and wanted the carrots to be sliced the other way)?

The response with your second child is:
Wash up red plate and give it to them. Life's too short to listen to a meltdown over the colour of the plate.

The response with your third child is:
Plate... what's that? They at least eat a Happy meal without complaining... and no washing up.
Although child number 2 is complaining that the (identical) happy meal on the left was theirs and you gave it to child number 1. Child number 1 has perfected the art of looking smug while eating said happy meal.
Child number 3, who didn't care until that moment which happy meal they had, has now realised that happy meal on the left is the only possible one for them.
When is it bedtime?

I don't really agree with parenting 'styles' or 'labels' - by saying that you'll follow one you're setting yourself up for failure because you'll almost certainly end up doing some things outside of what is advised under that particular parenting style.

Stop over-thinking things op and take things a step at a time.

The nature of your child will largely determine how you parent anyway and from what I understand that child hasn't even been conceived yet (!) so I think you should just relax.

Good luck ttc

I so was not prepared for how different my kids would be. I thought same parents, so similar genes, same environment...
Oh my goodness. If we didn’t have children that looked so much like us I’d wonder about a swap having happened!

DD1 - quiet but extremely confident in herself. Rarely messed me about, mostly did as she was told. But when she didn’t, she did not back down. I mean 45 minute stand offs, easily. No tears, no fuss, at least not from her. Just a quiet but absolute refusal to do what was asked. If I sat her in the naughty step, she would sit there quietly and happily but just flat out refuse to comply. She was the ultimate in grey rock technique. Thank goodness she did comply most of the time because I struggled to know what to do next, without looking hysterical and over the top, next to my ultra calm little three year old repeating, “No mummy, I not doing it, I told you that.”
DD2. Total opposite. Really naughty. I’d tell her off, she’d scream and sob and throw herself at me and tell me she was sorry and she loved me, and then immediately do whatever it was again the moment my back was turned. Oscar level drama performances, demonstrating stratospheric levels of contrition and remorse, but no impact on her actual behaviour.

Aged 11 and 7 now, and it’s still largely the same. DD1 reacts with a teenage raised eyebrow. DD2 still sobs and professes undying love for me. It’s just as well they are getting to an age where they do behave by and large!

Oh you sweet summer child...😂

We all have wonderful opinions on how we'll parent when we don't have kids. Then the two year old is teething and spends every night for a week attached to your nipple because it's the only way you get to even lie down while it's dark, the four year old decides they want to wear nothing but pants to school and has taken their uniform into the garden and stamped it into mud so they can't wear that and the six year old then announces they need to take six decorated cupcakes into school today and suddenly all those 'I'm going to be a calm and sensible mother who never gets angry' ideas dissolve and you are The Mummy Hulk.

If it's called a Parenting Philosophy and it has a book about it and a Facebook Page then it's full of shit.
Hope that helps.

What I should have added was the parenting style I had with child 1, I thought, worked. Most of the time. She behaved. So I was clearly a good parent who had the right style.
I didn’t realise I had the right child. DD2 was given to me to show me it was not much to do with my parenting style. The style that worked with DD1 failed miserably with DD2. So I suggest ensuring the child has read the book.

One more example:
I was trying to go home from a walk, and DD1 decided she wasn’t ready. I encouraged, I cajoled, I was firm, I used my best stern voice and look. She wouldn’t come. So I pretended to leave. And I hid. I could hear her talking to herself. Oh dear. Mummy gone, I just here on my own. Oh well. I just be by my own self. Mummy gone home.
30 minutes later, having been adamant I would make her come to me, I went and got her. I had time that day and I thought I’d see how long her placid stubbornness could last. Longer than me, it turned out.

Did the same thing to DD2 who screamed and flung herself after me saying “Don’t leave me, I need to be with you.”

Different kids, different things required.

blackeyedsusan I thought of that thread too!

I’m going to need more info. How does a stoic parent react to the fact that a meltdown is occurring because the red plate is in the dishwasher from breakfast and you have served lunch on an unacceptably not red plate?

Only buy red plates?

(ps I had 3 now adult dc & worked as a cm for over 15 years with many many other lovely dc - all of whom had their "moments" of varying -um- complexity

DD1 has never had a tantrum. She's 10 now. DD2 had me running to ikea to buy 2 packs of each crockery so there were always 2 purple plates. Sometimes it's
Better to pick your battles or life will be one long one.

First off - the most important thing about parenting (apart from picking the right person to do it with, which is actually way more important than this, so the second most important :o) - parenting "styles" are generally written to sell books or get hits on a website, trying to stick to one rigidly will make you miserable at best, and make you start acting "tribal" at worst. Tribal is where you start to see EVERY interaction that you have with any other human as being related to your parenting "tribe" and whether they are one of "us" or one of "them". It's divisive, it's unhelpful, it drives you away from ideas which might be helpful, it isolates you from people who can be a source of support.

Parenting is HARD. You cannot read a book in it, apply the theory perfectly and get an A+. It just does not work like that. You are human and parenting is 24/7. It's just too intense to apply any kind of "theory" or "style". It's 99% just living with other people and building a relationship with them and the methods you use for various things such as "teaching them not to care about material posessions" are just the other 1% and largely they don't matter. Most any "method" will work as long as you are meeting their basic needs and not abusing them.

Parenting styles/books/blogs are useful IME as a discussion point with your partner, to see if you are on the same page about things, to give you ideas about different approaches and to reframe issues but you will generally find that the same approach is repackaged all over the shop and called various different names.

But I like talking and discussing parenting styles and I do think before the baby is actually here, theory is kind of all you have to do - so I'll engage a bit :)

Calmness, confidence and consistency are basically the mainstay of any kind of parenting advice, from Supernanny to Playful Parenting. Nobody is going to purposefully have the parenting style of being an emotional banshee wailing and yelling at children, nobody is going to advise you to be timid or tentative with children (aside from anything else it's incredibly ineffective!) and consistency is useful if you want them to actually learn things, otherwise it's just chaos, really, isn't it?

It seems like the only "different" things about that parenting philosophy (I'm ignoring "clarity" and "contentment" as aspirational bullshit, and actually I'd argue it's NOT your job to keep your kids content at all times and this will not teach them to be happy with what they have - quite the opposite!) is control - the whole point that you can control yourself, control the environment, but not directly control your kids - I agree with this and think it's useful, as it helps you stay calm.

However generally you'll get this from any modern parenting guide. Terrifying your kids into submission has quite fallen out of fashion!

And then compassion/seeing things from their point of view. Well - again - this is the mainstay of most parenting approaches which aren't based on behaviourism.

I could recommend you a load of resources which are based on these five things which aren't quite so unattainable as that blog most likely is.

Janet Lansbury (blog/podcasts)
The Whole Brain Child/No Drama Discipline
Raising Human Beings
Calmer Easier Happier Parenting (or something)
How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk
Unconditional Parenting (THIS is an amazing one to read before kids. Shit to read with RL kids! Amazing discussion potential.)
The Gentle Discipline Book
The No Cry Discipline/Sleep Solution
Aha Parenting (website)
Why Love Matters
Your Baby Skin To Skin
Taking Children Seriously (website)
Playful Parenting
Montessori (theory/books/websites)

There are probably more I have forgotten.

Stoic....as in assuming an expressionless demeanour .....when they have,
been expelled,
dropped home by the constabulary, smashed a window,
totalled the car,
received an appalling teacher report
failed exams
smashed your favourite crystal
lost a front tooth at rugby
fallen in the door incapacitated......

Stoic would be absolutely helpful in the above situations for sure👍

@lovepickledlimes My advice would be to read several books, different styles, and focus on the things that speak to you as a person.

We all get a chance to try and do better than our parents. But try if you can to think about all the things they did well, and your grandparents and other significant relatives. I think those things will come more naturally.