Children these days don't know how to behave

[DoYouWantMeToBeTheCat]

AIBU to wonder why?

image descriptions for visually impaired

1. Photo of socially distanced lunch tables in primary school with taped areas for seating
2. Photo of socially distanced classroom in secondary school with children sat in masks
3. Photo of child cycling past a play area taped up with signs advising it's closed
4. Front page of the Sunday People with headline that says "Death is all around us.. so follow the rules"
5. Photograph of toddler at window with an old lady at the other side - both putting their hands up to each other.

MN - Being lockdowned with a parent means the child has no excuse to not be socialised

Also MN - parents these days don't do enough take their kids out to socialise more

Since Covid, I’ve worked with all ranges of children and whilst there certainly has been lasting impacts for some of them (speech/ social skills/ increased use of screens), I honestly don’t think it’s the main driver behind the decline in behaviour. To me, many some parents simply don’t teach their children how to behave (and this started before Covid).
I left teaching in a formal secondary setting last year but in the 14 years or so that I was in the system there was a decline in the little things which has eventually added up to a sharp decline overall. Things like pupils not holding a door open for a teacher or a peer when they have their arms full of boxes or books, not saying thank you if someone holds the door for them, not apologising for a small misdemeanour like being late but making it into anyone else’s problem instead…I could go on. All of these things stem from basic manners that should be used at home but the way some children spoke to their parents in front of me was shocking.
I also think some (again, not all but certainly some) parents will give in for an easy life. An example that springs to mind was a perfectly pleasant couple who had zero control over their son in my form…when they had meetings with me and the head about their child's behaviour, they would say the right things but then never follow through. An example was when he threw a chair, called the head a an extremely rude word beginning with c, ran around the school and scaled a fence. We of course issued sanctions in school but when he returned from his suspension…he had been bought a brand new games console! With “consequences” like that, why would you behave?

The other thing about lockdown, was my ds got more exercise, not less. Because he was at home, and I was furloughed and then redundant, we cycled or walked or ran every lunchtime.

We spent more time talking, we understood each other better. He couldn't go out with his mates so he learned to cook instead. To meal plan. To recognise a sky lark, and the difference between a swallow and a swift. We both learned to service a mountain bike. He learned to decorate a room.

We did lots of (inexpensive) things that were just a different sort of education. Covid was a tragedy for many, but lockdown need not have been.

Which children? My children know how to behave, as does the children of my friends. Do you mean your children, specifically?

Now that you mention it . . .

😆😆😆

I mean sure 'speech requires modelling' but presumably parents were not working 24/7, 7 days a week?? What about stay at home mums who don't go to too many baby groups and their husbands work long hours? Mumsnet is full of them...and there was a thread just the other day reassuring someone that if they didn't send their kid to nursery they would be fine.

Also pretty sure nurseries and daycares were allowed to open with mitigation in the UK from June 2020.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-confirms-schools-colleges-and-nurseries-on-track-to-begin-phased-reopening

And nurseries and childminders remained open during the lockdown of Jan 2021 when other schools were closed. Here you go:
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-55552711
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/nurseries-open-lockdown-uk-b1782439.html

In fact if you Google search you'll find scores of EYFS settings complaining about having to stay open sans mitigation when schools and colleges are closed and the impact on staff who were offering face to face care.

Weird. The kids of my family, friends and colleagues all had a bloody marvellous time baking banana bread and doing social media challenges with their furloughed (or in my case 50% hours reduction on 100% pay) parents. Everyone I know speaks about lockdown as the happiest time in them and their kids’ lives.

Not my recollection - I had to work and lived alone so had no human contact for months on end.

Still - it was four years ago now and at some point we have to stop blaming it for everything. What’ll be next, parents in 2045 don’t understand how to toilet train their kids because they themselves were lockdown babies?

I thought this was going to be the serpent lady again. I miss her.

what? these are covid images. four years ago. how is it related to misbehaving children?

My kids know how to behave because I parent them properly.

I think behaviour is shit because of the rise in passive parenting disguised as “gentle parenting” then when the kids learn they can do what the fuck they like with no consequences, the parents start looking for blame… covid, teachers, they must have ODD, ADHD or god knows what else

Some of the behaviour in my kids school is ridiculous, there was never any behaviour like this when I was in school. Yes you had the mischievous kids, you had cheeky kids but none of the behaviour was anything like you see today.

Stop using lockdown as an excuse.
People who chose to have children should parent them it’s as simple as that.
Everywhere I go I see parents ignoring their own children. They just hand them a screen and then they carry on as if they don’t actually belong to them.
Not all patents but enough for it to be noticeable.

"Sigh" it wasn't screaming too loud while playing it was the god awful shrieking that replaced playing

Some children didn’t know how to behave long before covid or lockdowns. It’s more down to crappy parents (or being ND, but I’m assuming you mean NT children).

I agree with a lot of posters. Many people did suffer. Including the children who belonged to families where people died. We forget that a 150,000 people died in the UK in a very short period of time. Those people had families and extended families. Of course there was suffering and bereavement.

I was locked down with extremely vulnerable in laws (one on oxygen at night for an existing respiratory condition), and two small children, one of whom had to be home schooled and a traumatised DH working on the covid frontline as a physician and watching more people die in a week than he had so far in his medical career. So listen, it wasn't a piece of cake by means. And oh, I was working full time from home.

BUT there seems to be a desire to attribute a lot of things to COVID that are perhaps not strictly 'lockdown' related. In my own friends' circle I saw two things: unrestricted screen time for many kids for unavoidable reasons that was then much harder to roll back, with attendant consequences. And for some of my colleagues who are quieter and shyer and others who were neurodivergent, COVID provided a relief/break from the relentlessness of life and they found the re-integration process harder than the lockdown itself. Also in that time many people made 'big' decisions in a short space of time- moving house, locations etc- there was migration to rural areas (not just in the UK but in Europe and North America as well). Now the long term effects of say this kind of rapid migration when many people are having to commute again with a cost of living crisis etc, is undoutedly causing stress. The number of people I know who acquired pets esp dogs and are now both working full time again, and struggling to take care of the pet is quite staggering!

There's a lot of lazy parents out there. Pre lockdown and since, fact of life and you see / hear at least one every day.

But none of those things I have outline above should result in not being able to use cutlery, shrieking in restaurants etc. I think we are very quick to attribute stuff to COVID/lockdown that has deeper societal roots that COVID merely highlighted.

You need to move on

Absolutely nonsense. Plenty of children are well behaved.

When people post and comment about ill behaved children, the general theme is that the parents are entitled and ignorant, and any disdain is typically directed at them.

I'm unclear on how lockdown and social distancing would have impacted parents ability to patent.

As a teacher, I don't think behaviour of the children has necessary become worse after covid but the behaviour of the parents has. Way more entitled, defensive and aggressive behaviour than I've seen in my career. I wonder why that has. It's making it more difficult to manage behaviour in class because class sizes are getting bigger, inclusion means more SEND students with usually no support due to lack of funding, and then unsupportive parents to boot.

There are a lot of replies saying the OP "should move on from lockdown".

While I don't think lockdown is fully responsible for all the problems we have now, such as the behaviour of children, some of us will find it extremely difficult to "move on" from lockdown until the government admits to the multiple harms lockdown caused (and yes, I am aware that this admission may never be forthcoming; and they will keep trying to blame it on covid, not lockdown). Now that the precedent of lockdown and terrifying the public out of their wits has been set, some of us are very much afraid that a future government might use these methods again, on a whim, when it suits them, when they think the public have forgotten the horrors of this one. This is why some of us, rightly or wrongly, feel the need to keep reminding of the harms caused by lockdown, so they are not forgotten.

Also, remember who else said "move on". "Please can we move on from the parties in Downing Street which were not parties, which I believed implicitly were work events, while you were unable to comfort your dying loved ones?"

op please could you add in some bisons or serpents to make this a bit more interesting

I had to check the thread title to make sure it wasn't a zombie thread.

hopefully op this thread has made you see that most of us (and our children) have well and truly moved on from covid.

and fact that you say in many ways you have not, is not going to be in your interests and most definitely not your children’s interests

and addressing that should be your focus rather than worrying about children that aren’t yours

The royal family are lizard people and Prince Andrew ate my clutch of eggs

Quote by Aristotle showing this was an issue even in his day

Greek philosopher, Aristotle, took an almost equally dim view of the young: "Young people have exalted notions, because they have not yet been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think them- selves equal to great things.