This "mother's" action seem cruel, that poor little girl

[Mylittlefanny]

I do believe that kids need firm boundaries. But refusing to let a grieving toddler into your bed at night after her dad died! Those poor kids look so unhappy. There is being firm and being cruel. 😭 That bit honestly made me so upset. I agree about chores, cooking and cleaning. But gloating to your kid and leave him shivering without a camping bag! Sorry 😐 that's not on. I wonder what her kids will feel like when they are older! And yes I do read the daily mail as despite some of the celeb shit they publish. They also occasionally do interesting stories and cover issues many other newspapers don't.

I'm such a strict mother, a parent reported me to social services mol.im/a/11942993 via https://dailym.ai/android

And she'll wonder why in 10/20 years time she has no relationship with them

It's the Daily Mail, though. Didn't Samantha Brick say that the Mail wrote the story about her being "too beautiful" and then paid her to front it?

I was quoted by the Mail once. They quoted me accurately but shoehorned the quote into a completely different story to the one I expected.

They're going to go absolutely wild at uni...

She is right in many ways: Alot of people don't 'parent' their kids these days. They all want to be friends.

Kids do need boundaries. They thrive on boundaries.

Kids should help with chores. Kids shouldn't be stuck on screens all the time.

Leaving a kid in the freezing cold on a camp trip overnight? Rubbish. That didn't happen. No leaders would EVER let a child be without a sleeping bag. They would be either given a spare or the parents would be told to collect them.

Just awful, how could you treat your children like that? Beyond words. How will their relationship be when their children become adults I wonder. They will only have themselves to blame if they don’t want to know them.

In the unlikely event any journalists are reading mumsnet 🤔 please put in your calendar for 2035 or so to do a follow up article with this idiot woman and her children once they’re adults.

I wonder if she got paid for giving them her story?

I agree with everything she said but she lost me with the sleeping bag incident. Scout leaders do have safeguarding procedures to follow. It does make me wonder whether she made it up to make her story more juicy and sellable.

There's building independence and resilience and there's being an utter cunt.

I personally don't believe this scout camp thing is 100% true, in fact I suspect the whole story is embellished for clicks but why would you want this in the public domain? Why would you want people to think you are tantamount to a child abuser? 🤔

She isn’t letting them learn natural consequences, she’s gloating over their discomfort/failures. And forcing your child to play sports when ill is nothing to brag about. And telling your kids ‘second isn’t good enough’ and ‘average is a dirty word’ only teaches them that if you can’t be the best you might as well do nothing.

She’s a bully, plain and simple. And since her children are stuck with her she had victims to hand that she can flaunt her power over/bully with free abandon. For now. I wonder when she is old and suffering if they will remember her lessons.

And I'm not talking about the chores / no TV / boundaries as "child abuse". I'm talking about the allegedly mocking your child for forgetting their sleeping bag / talking great delight in being warm when you know your child isn't. It's all bullshit I know but this is abusive to me.

I thought this 😢 that’s the only photo they’re smiley in. And she says the dad was a ‘soft touch’ which in this context likely means ‘normal human who liked his children.’

Did you agree with her making her son play rugby when he was ill? Or when she didn’t want to give her two year old too much comfort when they were distressed? Yes sure teach them to cook etc but she takes too much glee out of ‘teaching them a lesson’.

I don't believe the camping trip story. I have family members involved in scouting and they'd always have some spare gear with them. Failing that they would insist the boy was either provided with a sleeping bag or taken home. They have a duty of care. (As does the mother!!).

She seems to view the dc ability to carry on as resilience. It may well be that she has emotionally crippled them. Evidence that her approach is flawed- if the kid had been raised like this for 14 years, why did he forget his sleeping bag?

I’m a single parent and I always let my kids sleep with me if they were upset or ill. They certainly didn’t want to do it all the time and preferred being in their own beds with their own things once they were ok. They’re adult now and I have a great relationship with them. I was reading about Mayim Balik (sp?) views on motherhood shortly before I read the DM article and she is a strong believer in letting your young children sleep with you if they want and to spend as much close time with them as possible. The exact opposite of this woman. Although I didn’t agree with all of Mayim’s views she’s no dimwit and it’s interesting to see two such opposite views. Personally I loved snuggling up to my kids when they were young.

As a single parent, I don't think you can play 'bad cop' all the time. The skill of being a single parent is being BOTH good cop and bad cop. There's no other parent to balance you out. I'd rather be a bit on the soft side than harsh on grieving children (although I might have gone too far the other way myself so I'm not saying it's an easy one at all).

she will then moan that she's "just" a mother in law to her sons familes, not the nanna, cold

I also dislike it when people give their kids ALL the tasks. Yes they shoud help, but they aren't actually household domestic staff

Heartless and cold. It is cruelty masquerading as parenting. Agree about the Daily Mail. It often covers topics other outlets are afraid to and gives us facts others leave out (on purpose?). I’ve seen news there that later was finally acknowledged by the main outlets who had covered up for their political party of choice. Democrat Fauci funding Wuhan lab coronavirus gain of function experiments with USA tax money is one of many examples. Hello I think this needs an investigation, quite the coincidence!

I wonder what their dads side of the family make of her? If they are still alive? I know she is selling her ideas and beliefs to get paid for an article. But she's exploiting her children this way. Same as the people who do the videos on tik took, YouTube etc. But maybe this is more acceptable as she is a white middle class woman...

I had "strict" parents and she would have gotten on very well with them. "it's for your own good" was a familiar thing to hear in our house.

I can honestly say that I will not mourn my mother much when she dies, likewise when my father died, I was sad but can't say I was grief stricken. I do however sorely grieve my MIL and FIL so much it hurts.

As I got older I began to see the effects of that strict childhood - and I'm still working on the issues it caused. So too are my siblings.
As I go though motherhood's various challenges I look back to my own childhood and wonder how my parents made some of the decisions they did, and I judge them hard for it. It says everything when we've all reared our children vastly different to our own upbringing in almost every way.

My DS is loved and knows it. He's already got great boundaries with his friends - loving and generous and kind but nobodys mug either. His older cousins are all wonderful, lovely young adults at the start of good careers.

If you read the article properly she wanted to get into her mums bed as a toddler when they’d split up not when he died

I regressed yesterday and needed emotional support, and I'm 68. I asked for that support from my adult children, and got it. Why? Because I gave it to them, and still give it to them, whenever it was/is needed. I hope those children build their own boundaries as they grow older, and don't let her manipulate them into becoming her carers.

I agree with them doing chores and cooking the rest of her story sounds insane. I am in a lazy mood today so please forgive my lazy posting I am trying to wind down. Maybe this isn't the place for me to do it. I am not in the mood for debating especially when I know I am wrong and then I get more grieve because I was wrong. I will give you the benefit of the doubt my mum died last month and I am in and out of consciousness. I will have a drink tonight and I am looking forward to unwinding that way.

I also thought she rather revelled in the fact that she had been reported to social services. She saw her parenting methods as being vindicated by the fact they took no further action.

Her whole attitude was sneering and mean, including when she spoke about other parents. I don't know if her mean face in the photo was on purpose but she did look quite nasty.

I very much doubt the word empathy is in her vocabulary.

@KeepingTheWaterOut one of my first thoughts was Samantha Brick, too.

@Humanbiology hope you're okay