Why do some people let their children behave so badly?

[Hikingqueen]

Examples I have seen or see on a regular basis.

Children pushing in queues and the parents standing by doing nothing. Such as queuing for the slide at the swimming pool and people allowing their children to barge to the front of the queue.

Parents have been asked by school repeatedly not to let their children scoot or ride bikes in the school playground. Yet every day there are children zooming around nearly crashing into people.

Parents letting their kids run in the road and meekly saying "watch the road" when the kids have already run into the road.

Recently at a sports club my child attends, some young who should have been supervised children badly and deliberately vandalised property.

Letting children run around in car parks even though this is dangerous with cars moving around.

A child at my dcs school has been really badly behaved two days in a row where they've been called to speak to the teacher. Think hitting, swearing at the teacher, walking out of class, swearing at other children, throwing in class. Saw the mum treating the child to an ice cream after school 🤷‍♀️

Letting children run riot in supermarkets running up and down the aisles with trolleys bumping into people.

I've had to step in on more than one occasion over the years where a child has pushed in front my child or seen a child doing something very dangerous and have had a mouthful of abuse to thank for it.

Watching the news now

Why don't the French arrest the traffickers

I get that some kids are ND, totally not disputing that. And I even get that a huge number of kids we see acting up are probably ND and have all sorts of behavioural issues and maybe their parents are just fucking exhausted.

But you have to admit, there are times when it really is just shit parenting.

I was once having dinner in a restaurant and a kid kept coming over and hanging around our table. His mum just let him do it. Then he picked up a pepper pot and emptied it onto my food.
If that was my child (I mean mine wouldn't have been allowed to come over to another person's table and bother them anyway) I would have been mortified, hugely apologetic and paid for the other person's dinner.
Byt this mum just shrugged and said "you can't stop kids being kids"

Sorry wrong thread

Maybe some kids are easy to parent and teach how to behave, but some aren't.

I took my 4, almost 5 year old to the supermarket at the weekend and he walked around nicely with me. However, about 4 months ago I took him and he ran around the supermarket. I left as soon as possible, but it was really stressful. I guess if you saw me then you would say I was a bad parent for letting him do that. It's really not easy if your child is wired a certain way. He has also runned in the library in the past.

I could choose never take him to the library or supermarket to avoid the judgy people like you get on mumnet, but how will he learn how to behave in these places if he never has the chance?

People are so quick to judge others.

I didn't say that SEN is not a reason for behaviour. I said that it's not an excuse to not bother putting the effort into parenting.

Omg that reminds me of when I was out with my kids having lunch in a soft play and this little girl, maybe about 5, came up to our table, pushed my bag off the spare chair, jumped on and started eating my ds2's food. No parents to be seen.

Many children who are neurodiverse behave well and are kind and polite. I can think of far more children who are not neurodiverse whose behaviour is an issue. They do often have backgrounds where they have been poorly parented or where parents are largely absent or overwhelmed with their own problems. There is a huge difference between a neurodiverse child who is overwhelmed and lashing out and a child who is disrespectful and has no boundaries.

That reminds me of a time when DS was about 3. A boy in soft play was running rampage, hitting and pushing loads of kids and ignoring all adults trying to intervene. Noone could work out who the mum was. Then after he'd been hit maybe three times, DS smacked him one back (I STG I didn't tell him to!) Child immediately finds his mum and reports to her that he's been hit. Mother comes storming over to me to have a go and I explained child had been hitting a lot of other kids. She then made a big show of shouting at her kid "YOU LITTLE SHIT" and thrn went back to her table, rolled a fag, left bit of baccy all over the table then went off out to smoke it, leaving her 3 year old inside.

So in your world all disabled kids can behave as though they weren't disabled if their parents put enough effort in.

Bet a lot of parents are reading this and thinking, if only...

Not at all. You are completely misinterpreting what I've written on this thread.

An example would be:
Kid runs around a playground hitting and kicking other children. Parent shrugs and says "he's autistic, he can't help it, what do you expect me to do?"

Err.... I expect you to at least try to stop him.

And where have I said that my DC does not behave as though he's ND? I can assure you that he most definitely does.

Gently... Maybe they don't feel that they have to "excuse" their children's behaviour to you? Because you are not part of their "community".

If you want children to behave, the best thing to do is to be pleasant, polite and interested towards their parents. The parents are then far more likely to regulate their behaviour towards you.

In 40+ years of teaching in the UK and Victoria I have never ever had the parent(s) of a routinely out of order pupil surprise me by being anything other than condoning, minimising or excusing of their child's behaviour. Not once.

To be fair my UK experience ended in the very early 200s and what I see described on this thread hints at something more widespread.

Absolutely agree. There is so much permissive parenting and society is going downhill rapidly. These children will be the adults of the future.

It’s lazy parenting.

I recently witnessed a parent receiving a call that their secondary aged child had been pulled out and put in their behaviour room. The woman laughed. She actually laughed and then argued with whom ever was calling that their child would not be doing an afterschool detention.

I couldn’t believe it, I won’t be speaking to her again and I’ve told my primary aged child to not go near theirs.

It’s disgusting, and I think it’s from where kids haven’t been raised properly, desperately needing attention.

The difference would be that you would hopefully have been trying to stop him running around and telling him off. It's the parents who do neither that we're talking about here.

Sometimes it will be a usually active parent having a particularly bad day. Maybe they're exhausted from always trying their best with a generally more challenging, higher needs child or maybe their kid is usually an angel and they've been thrown by a glitch in that moment.

Sometimes it will be useless parents who don't care, they're too busy, they don't want to put the effort in, if it's not ignoring it's shouting and threatening at every little thing so the child becomes desensitised to it.

The problem is, as a passer by you don't really know which one it is.

I also get a bit annoyed by the automatic assumption that bad behaviour equals Sen because from there it's an easy to jump to "Sen equals bad behaviour" and feeds into people's anxiety about getting their child diagnosed - "I don't want them to be labelled" etc.

You are right. It's everyone's business if it's affecting others. What you let your kids do at home is a different matter if you can live with it. Children's behaviour in schools and other public spaces has to be their parents' responsibility. Who could disagree with it?

No because they’ll get their online ADHD diagnosis or their ‘trauma’ diagnosis and their ‘anxiety’ will be to blame.
but we won’t be able to say ‘sort yourself out you brat’ because #bekind

and it will all be the big bad employers fault for not pandering to their ‘needs’ and ‘well-being adjustments’ aka ‘let me do what I want without any consequences or I’ll be off stressed’ which means they just wont ever hold down a job or be a functioning member of society.

we are doomed

@Cel77 exactly, of course it's everyone's business when the behaviour affects other people.

I thought of another couple of examples.

I was in the park once and another child was hitting all the play equipment with a big stick, then he started hitting the swings which children were playing on and was getting very close to catching my son. I asked him not to and he carried on so I told his mum, I was polite. She told me to fuck off. Nice.

Some volunteers used to organise a lovely event each year at the local park. Every year without fail a group of young children (primary aged) destroyed the things put out for the event sometimes before it had even taken place. The volunteers have stopped bothering now.

If your child is badly misbehaving and you don't even try to put it right. It ruins things for other people and sometimes even put others or themselves in danger.

Great post

Here's the answer to the OP.

In what way is it causing a scene to hold your small child's hand so that they don't run in the road or in front of cars?

How is it causing a scene to take a big stick off your child when they are whacking other children?

How is it causing a scene to supervise your children when at a venue so that they don't run off and vandalise property?

So what you're just going to stand by and watch then have a chat about it later? Well then it's no surprise the children misbehave so badly if that's your technique.

Was on a tube not long ago and a child of about 9/10 was standing on the seat in his football shoes and swinging from the handles on the roof of the carriage. She was busy chatting to the other mother she was with. Eventually after many glares from other passengers and a muttered comment from one along the lines of 'is it a playground?' The mother gently said to him 'darling, I think you should stop doing that, bc all these people are worried that you might hurt yourself'.

I really don't care what kind of back story there could be to explain why it should be ok for a child to stand on the seats and swing around a moving train or why it's judgemental for me to think it's disgusting behaviour, mostly on the parent's part.

That's the type of thing I'm talking about but some people are choosing to take it personally and call me a busy body.

There isn't an excuse for that type of thing and how can the child learn that it isn't ok if the parent is so ineffective.

Oh but you don't know maybe the child has a condition where he has to stand on chair and swing from handles. Maybe the mother is visually impaired and couldn't see. Maybe she didn't want to cause a scene and would have a chat with him later 🙄

This is why consequences in the real world come as such a shock to some young adults and it triggers the entitlement response. An eroding of confidence in parents ability to bring up children has come from a deluge of 'advice' books, social media creating false impression of parenthood and stoking unattainable ideals. Consequences doesn't have to mean punishment but it should allow a child to experience the effect of the behaviour they engage with, eg throwing my ice cream on the ground in a temper means I have no ice cream, pushing others means I will have no friends or might get pushed back harder, making no effort means little reward, screaming at family makes me feel shit etc... I see so many parents of young children feeling like they aren't confident enough to take the lead, worry about others judging has always been there but social media has falsely exaggerated the reality.