To think you can't hang around with people with different parenting styles happily?

[malificent7]

My dd is 12 and in secondary school. I have some good friends but we all have different parenting styles.
Actually i think they are better parents than me but we all have our own challenges.
I now realise that i dont feel comfortable around some of them due to little digs. I've had parents comment on the amount of pocket money, screen time, time allowed into town etc.
My attitude is live and let live. You won't allow your dd to go to town i let mine go but back before dark.
You think x amount of pocket money is too much ...i think it's fine as she buys clothes from it.
You think i'm too soft on my dd, i think i do what it takes to survive and i will make allowances for her if she's ill etc.

I get on better with the parents who dont comment on anything to do with parenting.

Also there are parents who follow " special" diets etc.

I have a neighbour who very much parents in a way I never would and thinks my parenting is bonker (sling, cosleeping) and we get on well but neither of us feel the need to comment on each other’s parenting unless asked for advice.

I think the issue is the digs, not the differences. If everyone adopted a live and let live attitude, there'd be no problem. They don't sound like particularly nice people Tbh or perhaps they're insecure about their parenting.

I think it'd depend if the difference was something minor (like bedtimes etc) or something that showed a massive difference in world view (for example, when I was young, my mum stopped letting me play with a friend because friend's parent openly encouraged her daughters to calorie count - at age 8 - and told them they could have nose jobs when they were old enough).

For minor things I think everyone goes through life differently so parenting would be no different to that, and I wouldn't expect my friends to 'pull me up' about it any more than I would expect them to about anything else. So the problem here is them making digs about things that don't affect them in any way, they're just being shitty friends.

YA a bit U - we went on a big holiday with multiple families in 2019 (that distant history) with various parenting styles and all got on, because we trusted each others judgement. One friend, who I respect loads, gently pointed out to me I might be letting DS get away with too much and I had to accept she had a point - he's my youngest and I tend to think of him as being so cute but I think he was getting a bit old for some of things I was letting go too easily to just be considered immaturity

I think you're right OP - we've always been quite liberal and found it difficult to be with families where the parents are super strict (and probably vice versa).

Can be. I have a friend who parents very differently to me and, while there are no digs on either side, I find it hard to watch/listen to and it puts me off spending time with her. Maybe it’s my problem?

I dropped a friend for this reason, she called herself a gentle parent but she was more of the passive variety. Her child was completely out of control in a way that was dangerous to the other children around him. She would also refuse to make him apologise to children he had hurt.

She tried to engage me in a bitching session about a mutual friend because she had started using a reward chart for her DD when I informed her that I used one for my DCs

You can, as long as one doesn’t think they are better than the other.

I had a friend who parented very differently to me but she would do things like share posts about how certain parenting styles are bad and traumatising for babies (she once shared a picture of me and my dd in a outward facing baby carrier to show her SIL the types of bad carriers! Wtf?!). Like I say, I had a friend like that once

That's outrageous itsabloody!

I struggle with this a bit. My DC are younger (3 and 4) but I find it quite awkward to navigate get-togethers with other children and their parents at times. My approach is generally - if there's no physical fighting then let them sort it between themselves but this doesn't seem to be too common with their friends/cousins who seem to intervene in squabbles all the time. Yet they ignore when their children are physical which is an absolute no-no in my house. I really don't enjoy the awkwardness at all and feel I'm letting my DC down if I try to adapt to the other parents ways and make my DC do something I wouldn't need to do at home or have them see there's no consequences for other children when they hit them. Ugh it's not fun!

OP how do they even know how much money you give your DD or screen time etc? Don't tell them anything! They're not your friends if they're making little digs at you anyway. I have friends who have very different parenting styles to me but it's never an issue because I wouldn't dream of digging them up on it.

I think you can with older children and teens - when I was a teenager I remember my mum just calmly saying “well, that’s up to them and they’re not me” when I told her it was soooo unfaaaaair because my friends’ parents gave them more pocket money / let them go places / had different values and attitudes. She didn’t criticise them or make snide remarks in their presence about it.

The problem with your DD’s friends’ parents are not to be that they have different parenting styles per se, but that they feel it’s their place to comment on someone else’s perfectly reasonable slightly different parenting. They’d be judgemental twats about anything else as well, I expect.

You absolutely can get along perfectly well with people who have different parenting styles.

What you can't do is get along happily with people who think they're better than you and keep making snide little digs.

I think it depends on the extent of the difference. We have friends who don't even have a TV while our dc have no screen time limit, but we still share a lot of values and can accept our differences.

I once went out for the day with a mum who regularly smacked her dc during the trip and j couldn't tolerate that at all. Our values were too different.

What's a "special" diet?

How do they know so much about you and your parenting? My DDs are younger but I can’t imagine wanting to get that close to her friend’s parents! My mum and dad never even met the parents of my friends (unless we were close neighbours with them)

@Pantheon

I think the issue is the digs, not the differences. If everyone adopted a live and let live attitude, there'd be no problem. They don't sound like particularly nice people Tbh or perhaps they're insecure about their parenting.

This!

I have friends on all points of the parenting spectrum, and the only ones I've ever had issues with is are the ones who make digs or judge others styles. But that has almost always because they are judgey and insecure and generally not very pleasant, their actual parenting style didn't come in to it.

It's complicated! I broadly feel like I don't care unless it impacts me, except that that can happen quite quickly - if a friend's child breaks one of my child's toys or snatches something off her and the parent sits there gormlessly it becomes a choice between ignoring poor behaviour (to my child's detriment) or having to discipline someone else's child. Neither great.

But I also feel strongly around what I perceive as overly permissive parenting - i.e. parent tells child it's time to go home, child howls/ignores, parent says "OK then", and repeat - because those kinds of kids soon become the type I don't want to share the company of, so I tend to get my excuses in early.

On the other hand I don't care what your income or job is, whether your kid wears a tiger costume or a rugby outfit, whether you're talkative or a quiet type, whether you co-sleep, sleep train, BLW, feed your kid McDonald's, hothouse, unschool, whatever. I'm curious about difference but feel secure in what I'm doing.

Basically some differences are easier to tolerate than others.

I'm curious about difference but feel secure in what I'm doing.

Yes, so am I. I will often ask what people do about x,y or z as I'm just interested but I appreciate that may mean people think I'm being judgy, when I am not - I'm simply interested in how other people come to the point they are at.

It depends. When kids are little and the parenting impact indirectly on your own children or general behaviour, it's awkward.
No one enjoys a screaming child jumping on their sofa, running around a restaurant, listening to loud rubbish on tablets, interrupting the conversation but smile with gritted teeth unless they have their own children who shouldn't have to put up with that.

If you spend holidays together, different parenting styles might make things a bit awkward.

Screen time, bed time, pocket money, amount of presents and clothes you buy? why would you even discuss that

The only deal-breakers for me are physical violence/smacking, abusive shouting/foul language, constantly running down of the child etc - things I don't want my child to witness and don't want to see myself. Those things would mean that the parent wasn't someone I could respect or be friends with.

Other differences in parenting - meh. I think it's good for children to see how other families work and that not everybody has the same values, to some extent. We had some interesting conversations with our children about differences that were thrown up when we were with other families. And I was never so super-confident in my own parenting choices that things weren't up for discussion anyway.

I have a very different style to my best friend, but we are both sensible adults secure in our choices, she can tell me she thinks one of my choices is silly and same goes, if everyone were the same, the world would be a very boring place .

I think that is definitely the case in the UK as people define themselves by their "parenting" so much. In other countries there is more recognition that kids are their own people. Although paradoxically we have the lowest age of criminal responsibility in England. Totaklly

People in the UK seem to think that kids have no agency whatsoever until they are 18 and then they are magically adults and parents should not help them with anything (actually, maybe that's more MN than the UK at large!)

I think as a pp said, if the lack of discipline has an affect on you such as them throwing things about or screaming and doing nothing about it, that is going to affect your friendship, but you should be able to ignore differences such as amount of screen time.

Although paradoxically we have the lowest age of criminal responsibility in England. Totaklly

missed the word inconsistent at the end of that