What is going on?

[pleasemindyourmanners]

I am a teacher and I am aware that this will no doubt lead to lots of teacher bashing as this appears to have become a national past time.
I just can't work out what is going on with children and parents and attitudes towards school.
Younger and younger children are coming through with less and less resilience. I realise that covid and lockdowns have played a part but this was happening before then too. It is just gradually getting worse.
So many parents also appear almost delusional about their children. That is increasing year on year too. They are not interested in any misdemeanours their child may have been part of. They only believe one version of events. And all want their child to be listened to and their version to be acted upon.
I was looking at my pension pot. I have about 25 years to reach the state pension. That is a terrifying prospect. If behaviour and attitudes towards teaching/schools carry on the same trajectory I dread to think what things will be like by that point.
I really wish I could put my finger on what the main problems are but the issues are so massive there are definitely no easy fixes. Lack of resources and specialist staff is one issue but i don't remember there being such a huge need as there is nowadays.
It is like we, teachers, are also becoming immune to being sworn at by parents and even primary aged kids.
It isn't just my school. Friends in other schools and teachers on teaching Facebook pages are all saying the same thing. I'd say this is one of the many reasons there is a teacher retention issue. It is draining.
I absolutely love the kids and what I do. However, I feel like I can't do my job properly a lot of the time as I've effectively become a bouncer or a referee.
Everything appears to be blamed on teachers. Even icy conditions round school was seen as our fault and we were thoughtless putting them out in the icy playground.
Kids who just get on with things, don't try to cause a drama, who are kind without having constant dramas are becoming more and more rare. This is no longer the expected behaviour and ore like a wishful dream. It is Monday night and I'm totally exhausted already.

I agree. I had a shocking day yesterday and I’m afraid a lot of the nonsense is coming from the parenting. I think the internet has just feed the beast. These algorithms are literally changing society and how we interact.

Kids who just get on with things, don't try to cause a drama, who are kind without having constant dramas are becoming more and more rare. This is no longer the expected behaviour and ore like a wishful dream. It is Monday night and I'm totally exhausted already

Look at what has happened to society in the last few years, will you?

Lots of adults feel like this all the time. For more than two years we were kept in state of perpetual anxiety, stress and fear due to Covid. Loads of people don't even leave the house any more. People are shit scared about not being able to afford stuff and their children's future. We've got a government of utter incompetents lurching from one bad policy to another who don't give a fuck. The economy is fucked, we can't even buy a tomato in the shop due to Brexit, there's potentially WW3 in Europe, for Christ's sake don't get ill, schools are underfunded, overcrowded, overstretched and generally rubbish. And kids might be behaving badly at school? I wonder why. It would be a miracle really if they could just get on with it.

There's been a misunderstanding of 'gentle parenting' or 'child centred' parenting.

It's really effective and rewarding, but hard work.

People have misunderstood it as lazy parenting. So you end up with barely parented, over indulged kids.

Some comments here are hilarious.

You know the “entitled” parents some of you are blaming for this behaviour were raised by YOUR generation. It’s also abundantly clear that some people have absolutely no idea what gentle parenting is.

kids these days are dealing with things your generation can’t even begin to fathom. The internet wasn’t even invented when you were young. Never mind social media.

On other threads people loooove to lament on about how dangerous the world is today and it wasn’t like that in your time. Kids could walk to the park and play until dark!

There’s thread after thread from women trapped (with their kids) in abusive relationships. So many single parent families and the struggles that brings (coparenting, poverty). Yet somehow the blame for children being less resilient is “gentle parenting, entitlement and screen time”.

FFS.

Btw there are quotes going back to literally Ancient Rome and Greece and beyond where the older generation talks about how the new generation are spoilt and entitled and pandered to and on and on and on it goes.

I agree OP. It's depressing. Schools are full of entitled brats who think the world revolves around them because mummy says it does and no shitty teacher is going to tell them any different. Hence the children who think it's acceptable to run around a pub/restaurant, or bully others, or don't understand what 'no' means. A lot is down to lazy parenting.

The book Matilda literally starts with two pages on how parents think that the sun shines out of their horrible children, and how teachers have to hear this nonsense all the time. It was published in 1988.

Some of you have incredibly powerful rose tints on your glasses. Parenting was definitely not better in the 60s and 70s. Bullying and truanting were flat out ignored in the 80s. It probably was easier to teach when troubled children just didn't turn up, and dyslexic and autistic children could be slapped or mocked for not achieving. Sure, schools probably do need more consistent discipline policies in a lot of cases but who can implement them? There's a massive shortage of teachers and resources so everything in schools feels 100 times harder.

Not to mention just casually dismissing the almost 3 year long pandemic during vital developmental years for these kids.

oh I know there was covid and everything but….but what? We’re just deciding to ignore that and blame not leaving weeks old babies to cry themselves unconscious? Cool.

Born early sixties. Attended school with large classes of 40+ pupils. Back in the days when classes were streamed so the less able kids could work at their own pace in their own classes.
If you got into trouble at school (which was very rare as the teachers brooked no nonsense from anyone) you would be terrified of your parents finding out, the resulting punishment would be a thick ear.
Nowadays little Billy goes home and informs parents that teacher told him off.
Next day parents burst into school and threatening the teacher.
Where did it all go wrong?

Parents behaviours towards school and their staff are due to their insular values, belief in their own self importance, and sense of entitlement.

I blame their teachers.

My friend is a teacher in a secondary school she says whenever she has to call a parent as their child is severely misbehaving 99% of the time the parent is defending that child , when she gets that 1% of other parenting she says it's so refreshing !

This 10000%

My DNephew (4.5) his DM does gentle parenting and is surprised when he kicks and hits her (and it hurts her) and he does it on front of others.

His DF (my DB) is a lot stricter and won’t stand for any kicking etc.

We’ve had since he could walk him bolting (running off) and I swear a reason why he still does this is because his DM runs after him and isn’t that angry with him. When me and DB did anything like that as kids it certainly wasn’t a softly softly approach.

He does seem well behaved at school though.

Get out now, OP, while you are young enough to start another career.

In the last few years, my colleagues and I have started to see the outcomes of this child-centred upbringing, i.e. entitlement, shielding from any consequences, doing very little but thinking they know everything, etc.. in university students. They are impossible to work with now, it's like their upbringing has actively impaired them. I don't know why people are saying that it's always been like this. Some of us have worked in education for a long time, and it absolutely hasn't always been like this, not remotely.

I don’t advocate the intimidation or corporal punishment that went with the era you describe however parents can still use consequences as punishments and be very effective. The real question is why don’t they? And the correct answer I think is that it requires work. Good parenting is hard fucking slog and many adults just don’t want to do it.

Some children just do this to the adult they feel safest with. I am strict a
with strong boundaries and my child will hit and kick me when raging. He won’t pummel his father in the same way because he doesn’t have such a close bond with him. He is similarly perfect at school. We are slowly coming out the other end. He is seven now and I fully expect him to be pretty normal by eight 🤣

I’m a child of the 70s, and while I have no wish to go back to my school days where discipline was all about a teacher losing control and leathering into children, there has to be some middle ground between that and how things are now.

I’m very glad that ND issues such as autism are recognised and dealt with more appropriately than in my school days where every class had the “weird kid”, who was probably not NT, but it just wasn’t recognised in those days, but-I see it on MN all the time-whenever bad behaviour is mentioned, there’s a pile on excusing it with suggestions that the child might be ND. I don’t know the stats (and I have my tin hat on) but surely ND kids are on the minority, and the majority of bad behaviour, is just that-bad behaviour.

I apologise if I’ve used terms surrounding neuro diversity incorrectly, it’s not my intention.

Unfortunately I don't think it's just children. We had 2 50 year olds arrested near us for the abuse and threats towards both theatre staff and the police who dealt with it. We are becoming a very self centred society.

I'm a childminder over 22 years & in the last 7 or more years I've seen this too.
Parents I know are working all day & I can understand them not wanting to have a tantruming toddler to deal with, I really can, but what they end up doing is pandering to the children's every little thing so as to keep them happy. It's almost like they're afraid of them.
What they're actually doing is creating a rod for their own backs. It'll be way harder to reel it back when they're older & bigger.
Myself & other minder friends often talk about what the world will be like when these children are in charge.

I admit I am guessing but do they have the authority they need?

one of our friends was a headteacher, she's 75 now. She retired early because she thought she was going to have a breakdown. This was maybe 15 years ago? I think the pressure on a Head not to expel a pupil, and the potential legal storm they unleash when they do, is a problem.

look at how people talk about Katherine Birbalsingh - as if she is a monster, when a lot of what she advocates is just..normal!

Too many parents try to protect their children from disappointments or setbacks of any kind, and feel that those things must be made up for somehow. These things are valuable learning experiences. You only have to look at The Apprentice to see examples of young people who have never experienced constructive criticism and can’t take it. They have been brought up to believe they can have or be anything they want and that they are owed it.

He has just as close a relationship with his father so I don’t think it’s that.

I get what you’re saying re doing this to the parent they’re closest to but she doesn’t want this!

I saw a really good tiktok the other day that reasoned kids today are brats because their millennial/ gen x parents never had their emotional needs met ever. We were left to deal with all our problems ourselves, our MH issues were never dealt with and we felt completely unsupported. As a result, our parenting styles have gone too far the other way and we are raising a generation of self absorbed snowflakes. I wish I could find it now but I didn't save it.

Totally agree with this, including the comment about the increased blurring of what is a mental health issue and what just constitues life and common human emotions.

I think if a lot of the teachers lamenting how awful it is nowadays on here had to actually go back and teach in the 80s/90s/2000s (depending on ages) they might find the land of milk and honey they seek doesn’t actually exist at all.

Perhaps we are just lucky but among DDs' friends and the kids and teens we see out and about I mostly see a bunch of lovely children, in spite of everything. It's random older adults I have far more of an issue with at times.