Is modern parenting damaging to kids?

[Rainbowsponge]

My friend’s husband is a professional in the area of child development and education. He’s taught at numerous schools, SEN schools and is now a researcher. He doesn’t have children, but I do, and yesterday we were talking about the seeming increase in children with anxiety, mental health issues and what he described as ‘delayed adulthood’.

He’s British but his extended family are from India, and he said visits to see them make a striking contrast between how our children are raised and how theirs are raised. He said children are sort of left to run around in packs and find their own amusement from quite a young age, and as a result they seem more mature and confident.

His theory is that we are interrupting normal development opportunities for kids brains, and therefore they’re not properly developing. He thinks we intervene too much in perfectly ordinary learning opportunities, like playground disagreements, and our quest to make sure our children never feel challenged or upset is actually making them more anxious.

He also thinks softer, more modern punishments are bewildering children and reinforcing bad behaviour, leaving them confused about right and wrong. Children read facial expressions, so seeing us look calm/unbothered rather than angry/disappointed when they’ve done something wrong is counterproductive and blocks them from naturally learning human behaviour and socialisation.

I’m not professing to be a perfect parent at all, but it was a really interesting chat and I want to discuss it further!

What rubbish.

Poor mental health today is nothing to do with no violence!

Poor mental health in young people today is due to the huge increase in poverty, the widening gap in inequality, the massive increase in academic pressure on them, an education system that allows them NO say in their lives (up until 16), environment worries/climate crisis, the lasting impact of isolation and fear from the pandemic, the fact that it’s harder than EVER to get on the property ladder, find a job and just how it’s harder than ever to afford anything.

I also think as a generation we do protect our kids more because of the wild amount of freedom most of got at such a young age and how dangerous that was for us. Yes it built a sort of street-wise independence but my god some of the situations we got into at too young an age make my toes curl now. And I come from a very middle class, secure, loving home as do my friends. Drinking at 13, drugs at 14, parties and raves at 14+, going off with random people in random cars, roaming the streets at all hours etc.

I agree with some points made on here that social media and screen addiction is a problem today, for all of us in fact! Not just kids. But in general I’m so sick of the narrative that todays kids/young people are ‘weak’ and ‘snowflakes’. We need to take a good hard look at how society has changed and support our children and young people not constantly blame them and ‘gentle parenting’.

How much is parents putting their anxiety and issues onto their children?

We see examples on here daily

I completely agree with this. It is not helpful for a child to be expected to deal with an entire world’s worth of suffering. My kids are aware of big things that happen that directly affect them (eg they know about the war in Ukraine because we have refugees locally). Daily updates on all the world’s problems are a recipe for a negative state of mind.

You think that our children should be protected from what some children are actually living?

Yes I absolutely think they should. There is this idea that bearing witness amounts to actually doing something, which in fact it doesn’t.

The human brain, and particularly the brain of a child, did not evolve to be able to process misery on a global scale. Children need to be aware of events in their own communities, where there often is plenty of suffering but it’s contextualised and understandable and sometimes can be addressed. Sometimes they need to be aware of national events. Only rarely is it actually helpful for them to know about international calamities, certainly not daily.

Even for adults, daily global news sets all sorts of mental alarms ringing but most of the time it doesn’t help us to know all the details and it doesn’t help the people suffering either. We’re just pairs of eyes feeding news channels/TikTok/Twitter.

In general I'm very cynical of this idea that we can "teach empathy" to children by exposing them to things that are too scary for them.

Agree with this

Also (1) not allowing children to fail and bounce back and (2) not leaving them to resolve their own friendship issues

Re your DS being rude to your friends, I'd focus on actions and consequences eg " I'm going to meet Susie today, no you can't join us, it's because you were cheeky to her last time, we'll try again when I can be confident you'll be friendly and polite"

Well I never found my mum boring or annoying and wouldn't have been ashamed to hold her hand in public and I moved out at 16 and have been living independently without any mental illnesses ever since.

Quite sad that youre judging mother's and daughters for hiding hands

Interesting topic.

I'm not really sure of the answer but I'm suspicious a lot of the answer lies in the easy access we have to a wealth of opinions and information (that is not always accurate or applicable to our situation)

One example.
I have trouble with my kid in the mornings....old enough to be responsible for getting themselves ready. They get up plenty early enough because I get them up. They then spend 1.5 hours dawdling and messing about doing god knows what, and end up being late for school. This is despite having numerous clocks in her room, me telling her how long she has to get ready at regular intervals, I help and get things out for her like lunchbox, bag, shoes etc.

What do I do? I Google. Google says she probably has ADHD so I go down that rabbit hole. I shouldn't be shouting at her, it's probably not her fault. Maybe she's depressed.. I read "procrastination is the byproduct of depression"

But what if it IS her fault? What if she is just lazy and spoilt... Thinks she has all the time in the world and that I'll drive her to school if she's running late. Authority and strict regime Vs understanding, kindness, visual ques etc...

Without the world of information at my finger tips I would not be questioning which path to go down (would probably go down the absolutely losing my shit and telling her she will have to drag her sorry self in to school and apologize for being late)

Similar with letting kids out to play. People's opinions on this are just... There... On your phone.. 24/7... Kids go missing...story on social media... 500 comments saying "omg I would never let my kid out at that age/at that time/in that place"

It's not how it used to be and I don't know if it's good or bad but it's certainly very different to what my parents went through....

I agree with op.

After reading a couple of pp and thinking back to what I have read on here re problems with neighbours, neighbours having problems with games played on the street etc, are we worried about upsetting neighbours rather than letting our children do what they did when they were younger? Are neighbourly relations more important than our children being allowed to play games on the street?

Im only the first couple of posts, I read that when pp were younger they never left the street, was always out with friends but I don't see this anymore, anywhere. My elderly neighbours certainly don't like to see or hear children playing outside their houses. Why was it ok for older generations to do it but not now? Are we teaching our children that we can't do natural things like playing outside with friends incase they upset somebody?

@BodyKeepingScore @Thedayb4youcame
In my mental health First Aid training, i heard of a study where researchers interviewed people who survived after jumping from Golden Gate Bridge (this is rare) They said that, as they were falling, they realised that in fact they wanted to survive

Agree about men generally using more violent methods

But the survival instinct is v strong

Edited = this may be what I was thinking of https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/19/us/golden-gate-bridge-suicide-safety-net

He is right. We now have young adults that are as mature as the 12 year olds 20 years ago.

On the local FB pages, there are quite a few posts from parents looking for part time/summer jobs for their children. Surely those teenagers should be the ones finding out for themselves whether there are vacancies, asking in shops etc. The boy who advertises car cleaning seems to be the only one who has taken some initiative and is trying to help himself.

There seems to be a learned helplessness and difficulty in performing everyday tasks. My grandson, working in a fast food restaurant, asked a new starter to sweep the floor. She didn’t know how.

I was teaching when mobiles became commonplace. As a head of year at the time, there were daily issues I had to resolve, when a dispute at break time or lunch time, resulted in a parent turning up at school demanding that I ‘sort it’ immediately. Children and teenagers fall out, become friends, fall out again, become friends again. Friendship groups evolve, just as they do with adults.

If, as has been said, university students are not able to cope independently, they’re certainly not going to be able to manage in a workplace where the expectation is that you perform the role for which you are paid and that will include doing tasks you’d probably rather not.

There is a difference, obviously, between this learned helplessness and children and young adults who have different needs. The difficulty is that their needs are not regularly being met and the edges are becoming blurred.

Read this. Despite the title, it's an excellent book for parents on why teens behave the way they do, and how to manage your own feelings and expectations and talk to them constructively.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0241403146?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

Thankyou I will give that a try. Especially after looking at it on Amazon and seeing that the chapters of the book are literally named after my most used phrases!!!

I think this question has been asked since Cain and Abel. Probably there was a bit of questionable parenting there. My view is that parenting and the lot of kids has generally got better over the years. One thing I would point out to the older generations (as it is generally they who I hear complaining about young parents, as they did directly to me as a young parent) is that in the 1970s and 1980s parents were regularly so lax that a long series of public information films had to be made, anything from not letting your kids play on the railway line, climb pylons or swim in quarries, not to let very young kids run across the road to the ice cream van, not to go off with strangers offering sweets or to see some puppies or play with matches at home. All things that would be utterly fucking obvious to 99.9% of modern parents, who are apparently "babying" their kids if you actually know they are playing out in the garden or across the street and are not playing chicken in the road or climbing pylons.

On the local FB pages, there are quite a few posts from parents looking for part time/summer jobs for their children. Surely those teenagers should be the ones finding out for themselves whether there are vacancies, asking in shops etc. The boy who advertises car cleaning seems to be the only one who has taken some initiative and is trying to help himself.

Probably because on my local village forum you have to be a member for three months before you can post anything, as one parent explained about a returning university student.

The young person may well be asking themselves elsewhere and have no idea what the parent is doing on Facebook. Most young people don't use Facebook. But in any event a parent asking people on Facebook is simply casting the net wider, in the way that well-connected parents get internships for their kids or jobs in their companies or those owned by their mates by word of mouth. Facebook is just another network. I got my first part time job washing up in a pub because my mate already worked there. All of my mates got jobs like that in the 1990s, no-one went up and down the street at 15/16 handing in their CV to shops. FWIW DD1 didn't get a job in that way two years ago with a national restaurant chain, she applied off her own back aged 16 and went to interviews.

Thank you. It’s also in the moment, what to do? We made a joke at first, then I said it wasn’t kind and was hurtful etc, but she kept it up ALL day (said it was because he was a boy - not at all a romantic connection btw, but as it’s a man, I certainly don’t want to force her into being “nice” to him).

I think I needed to be more “scary” - she wanted to wear something to school today and when I said no, ignored me. I got very serious and stern, she burst into tears saying her life was terrible, I’d hurt her feelings, why couldn’t she have a nice mum etc (she’s 5). I held fast and she was right as rain afterwards. So yes, I do wonder if my authority wasn’t authoritative enough, verging into permissive until I snap.

I have nkt read the thread so my reply is to the op.

I do sort of feel this my son has autism. He is sensitive. He's extremely quiet whwnvge talks he puts his head down and sort of mutters so that's the sort of child he is.

He has an ehcp on this one of the things is M must be given extra time to think about what's been said. His teacher really shouted at him for not doing something fast enough. Ds told me about it abd he said he cried quietly behind hid hands 😭. I did think wtf . Buy I also thought I can't protect him from everything there's going to be people that upset him it's how the world is. So I just said maybe he was having a bad day . Let's see hiw he is tomorrow. And ds was fine the next day said his teacher was kind.

He does fall out with friends and some children take the piss out of him because he's behinde most others. I just tell him sometimes people are not very kind . But we all think your amazing . And your friends at school think your great to that's why you have had them same friends for so long .

If I protect him from everything I would be holding him back

As a child of the seventies (born in the sixties) and with children born in the nineties and growing up in the noughties, I am finding this discussion very interesting. There have always been good and bad points about every generation, but I think the biggest problem with many of this generation is that they have not been able to find things out for themselves - ferried from A to B, enrolled in far too many activities and not hearing the word no enough. They are also exposed to adult things too soon. As a child, l had strict parents and this was generally repeated at school with the teachers, but we had a lot more freedom than today's children. We walked to school by ourselves or with friends from the age of around seven. We played outside without supervision from a young age. Older children were in charge. I caught a bus by myself at the age of eight to go to the next village for my piano lesson and by the age of ten was going out for bike rides all over the countryside with my friend. From the earliest age, we were expected to take responsibility for ourselves. Yet rules were strictly enforced. Helping with household chores were a must and I had to practise the piano for half an hour every day from the beginning. By the time I was thirteen, I was babysitting other people's children. My own children didn't have the same amount of freedom, but we made sure that they had time to go out with their friends unsupervised and learned to accept failure as well as success.

Yes, parents are babying children for too long and that means they can't assess risk on their own and do stupid things. We've noticed that more than ever are rude. We had a friend over yesterday for my DS (5) and we're shocked by the lack of manners and respect. He was throwing things, not listening and had no manners. From this experience, we decided, our house, our rules. We also decided to invite other friends and stick with those who behave nicely! Our DS has dropped his manners lately and have been very clear that he needs to find where he lost them! We have used his favourite thing - desert - to get the message through. We haven't had to remove it but he knows we will so the please and thank yous are back! That points to another parenting issue of no follow through. We actually unplugged the TV for a week and put it in the hallway one time. He believed we were putting it in the bin 😂 He also had to miss the school fete once so he knows we are serious! Time out worked week too - we did it twice and now only have to mention it and he changed his behaviour 🙌🏻

I think there is a lot we can do as adults to help our young people develop the skills and resilience that people seem to thing they are missing.

There are lots of fantastic organisations, uniformed and otherwise that provide opportunities for leadership, personal development and skills for young people - NCS, Cadet Forces, Scouting and Guiding, Boys and Girls brigades, Nature organisations, youth groups.

They are all crying out for volunteers - so if you want to help young people, do something useful and give up your time.

If you do you will find that actually most of our young people today are pretty great, even when they are struggling with things that are really tough - when they are given the opportunities to show it.

100 per cent agree.

My husband comes from an unnamed country in EU. Some of his friends let their 6-8 year olds walk or take public transport to school, shops, etc.

Any opinions on why this is seen as unacceptable in the UK? Kidnappings by a stranger are extremely rare, obesity and depression are much more of a risk to their lives. The only actual risk I see is for children to be hit by a car, as they're so small, drivers can't see them so well and they're not as predictable. Howecer, having children walk or commute massively decreases the number of cars around schools.

Agree fully.

It’s only in recent human history that we know what is going on outside of our local area.

Our biology is not meant to know what is going on everywhere in the world! In fact in most of human history we wouldn’t have known what was happening outside of our very local village/community.

This is especially true for children.

@ExtrovertedIntrovert1 Oh my gosh, this is so true. I find myself paralysed by indecision in so many parenting "moments", with this reel of contradictory advice playing out across my mind and before I've decided what to do the moment has passed. And even when I do make a decision, I'm always second-guessing it!

Example: last night we had dinner at PIL's and got in late. Discussion in the car home about how late it was and that 4yo DS would need to start getting ready for bed straight away without any playing. When we got in, he remembered there were cherries in the fridge and wanted some cherries. (He had had a big dinner and pudding - he wasn't hungry.) I think I responded authoritatively by firmly but calmly repeating that it was time for bed, physically blocking him from opening the fridge, validating (briefly) that he was upset, and carrying him (squirming and shouting) up to bed. But the whole thing took longer than it would have taken him to eat a couple of cherries, and I was questioning throughout whether it was worth the power struggle, and whether I really had his best interests at heart or if it was just my ego, trying to feel like I was the boss.

It's a minefield!

I often find myself feeling jealous of all the generations of parents who would have just parented and disciplined their children in the way their parents did because they didn't have all this information and other people's opinions all over the place. None of the mum guilt and angst we all experience. I'm not always convinced more information makes you more informed, sometimes it's an unhelpful overload.