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!

Any tips on getting them to do chores. If I ask for help it often works but very hard to get any kind of routine chores delegated without A LOT of input!

I started by showing dc the idea that we were all a team in the house and we need to work together. So when they were young it was, "ok everyone. Let's get everything tidied away as quickly as possible". As they got older, then it was "you clear up and you hoover, you wipe the table and you wipe the fridge"
Now that they're older it's "no Xbox or phone til all your chores are done" then I remind them what their chores are!

They're normal kids and still need to be cajoled and nagged.

I understand the reasoning behind the discipline. I tried the stern voice and a "no you do not hit" but he would laugh at me and litterly run around me to go back to hitting which lead to physical restraint and he continued the behaviour as he was getting attention.
By removing myself by putting him in a different location he lost the response from me and the behaviour stopped so I could use more positive reinforcement to work on building their relationship.

The stern voice approach works with my youngest, as you said every child is different and responds to different approaches.

Regarding sleep training I have been accused of abuse even using gentle sleep training methods despite being at the point that I was suicidal with sleep deprivation / depression and had a husband who was a key worker during covid so out of the house with no option to ask famly for help. Your reasonable understanding is a fair response but not what is often said to struggling parents on here by some posters.

Thanks. I was hoping you’d found a magic way to circumvent the nagging, cajoling etc 😂 bugger.

Thanks. I was hoping you’d found a magic way to circumvent the nagging, cajoling etc 😂 bugger.

😊 I suspect that kids who do their chores dutifully without prompting are probably living in fear. You're doing fine.

I’m sorry to hear that you were called abusive. It’s so unhelpful, and you are right that parent well-being has to be part of the decision making. We all ebb and flow in our ability to reach the parenting standards we set ourselves and self compassion is key. Not helpful to blame and label each other.

Even with smacking. I’m 100% of the belief it’s not helpful and shouldn’t be standard parenting practice, but when faced with an over tired, hungry and dysregulated toddler that has had a massive dopamine crash in response to a ‘no’ and is lashing out at you, and you are on your last legs because you had no sleep, you have not had chance to eat and you are trying to find the car keys because you need to get to the hospital for an appointment at a certain time… it’s understandable. We just have to notice, forgive ourselves, reflect on what went wrong, learn and move on.

Parenting is bloody hard! Especially if when our own parents didn’t manage to do it well.

My 4 year old is incredibly anxious. We don't really know why and are trying to help him with ways to manage it because I don't want it hold him back.

We've never hit, I do shout at times but try not to as it doesn't do much good, my "firm mum" voice works loads better. When he was little if he threw or hit with a toy, that toy went away until he was calmer. We left a soft play after 15 mins when he was 2 because he hit another child - after that if another child was "too close" he roared at them instead 🤣

My nan was born in 1930. I'm not sure how she was parented as she didn't like to talk about things really, but I do know she was always a very anxious child and adult. My child displays traits I vividly remember seeing in my nan. Think worrying if windows are closed"properly" or going through a bin to take out a tissue to "put in the right way" and being overwhelmed in busy/noisy places.

I'm willing to admit I probably have contributed to it in some ways - he was 3 months when lockdown began and I'm vulnerable so we took it very seriously for longer than others, which meant it was just us for big portion of his first year. When he went to nursery at 14 months he (like all the others) was handed over to a stranger in a mask at the door at drop off. At 4.5 he still massively struggles with drop offs.

But I do think he's inherited some of what my dear old nan had too.

Very interesting topic! Will come back to read through comments later!

Interesting that you get the opposite to what I thought I was saying.

I am from a set of 7 siblings. Creative, clever, sensitive and with a range of mental health issues in youth and adulthood. Despite all the benign neglect and "freedom". So I disagree on a personal and philosophical level. My family are like most, they are a bit fucked up. My kids are as well, in their own way i am sure. No one is a perfect parent I am definitely not! But I really don't think being responsive and providing safety is damaging. I am not a gentle parent. I am just not convinced about what they have created in young people. Society is anxious because life is so complex, there is too much information too much choice too much stress placed on people. Poverty, comparison being the thief of joy, social media, modern wars. Anxiety as a condition is better understood and treated now, it can be both situational and innate/ inherited.

Prison is not filled with the gentle parented. It is filled with neglected and abused people, many from the "care" system. The most damage that can be done to a child is through abuse and neglect. I struggle with the notion that we used to be better parents in the old days. The past is a foreign country and I do not want to revisit the land of corporal punishment and be seen not heard.

I’m not sure you can judge Starmer’s kids confidence on them not doing the walk-in. It seems very sensible given the flack that Blair’s kids took in the media- Euan Blair became a media figure in and of himself as a teen which can’t have been easy. Teens in Downing Street can’t be easy at all. Sunak’s children were never going to be in as long- it was inevitable he was a stop gap and the press haven’t really gone for them. There would similarly be less interest in Hunt’s. Starmer’s kids on the other hand could very easily be generating tabloid headlines for normal teenage behaviour if they’re not protected.

Great post, fwiw my guess is you probably are a very good parent because you are self reflective and capable of seeing the way you parent isn’t necessarily ideal all the time. I come from a similar type of family to the one you described, my parents did their best but one thing I struggled with was if my parents were negligent, or were cruel or mocking out of lack of control of their own emotions they often acted as though they thought that was the very best way to parent. Whatever they chose to do must be the best, or what they thought at the time was best because otherwise they wouldn’t have done it.

This was difficult, because some of their choices made me feel very sad and alienated. Rather than seeing that and changing their approach they “blamed” me and my personality. Because of this I am now very wary of building up an image of myself as an excellent parent with my children as i remember how vicious people can be when you challenge that self concept in them, even accidentally as a child.

It’s such a great point that the prisons aren’t filled with gently parented people. You can be successful if you had a hard time growing up, but you can definitely be very successful if you had all the support and protection a gentle parent provides.

I think children are born with traits such as a tendency to anxiety. But how they are parented and their environment can exacerbate or help them to manage that anxiety. I also think too much introspection on feelings can have a negative impact on mental health.

Prison has a lot of abused and neglected people in it, but it also has people who have been neglected through having no boundaries placed on them. We have all met the decent people with an out of control teenager who is cocky and thinks they can do what they want.
I remember when long term research controversially identified that those at risk of ending up in prison, could be identified by the time they were 4 years old. Nothing is inevitable, with intervention things may be able to be changed. But the out of control, angry and difficult 4 year old who hits and bites other kids, is way more likely to become the young adult in prison.

Risk factors for offending behaviour are12:

• Individual factors, such as hyperactivity, ADHD, low intelligence, impulsivity, and poor problem solving skills.
• Family factors, such as child abuse, neglect, poor supervision, and parental conflict.
• Social factors, such as peer pressure, school failure, gang involvement, and neighbourhood disadvantage.
• The Big Four, which are anti-social attitudes, anti-social associates, history of anti-social behaviour, and anti-social personality pattern.

What gets called benign neglect these days i.e. letting children play outside without adult supervision is not the same as overall poor supervision. I grew up in a very rough area, but my parents kept a very close eye on who we were friends with and discouraged and encouraged certain friendships. We also had an early curfew and early bedtime.

I really don’t think you can always know if you’re “remotely traumatised” or not. Trauma comes out in all sorts of ways. I know being smacked really scared me as a child and made me afraid of my mum, I felt a huge amount of shame without knowing why what I did was wrong. There is a school of thought that it’s less impactful than psychological abuse, but surely it’s best to use neither

@RosieAway Of course neither is better. But lots of parents have no idea how to get their child to do what they need to do without one of them. You see it on here all the time. I tell them to do x and they say no, I can't make them.

That is because so many parents are exasperating their children with hyper-micromanagement. Teenagers especially need space to breathe, not to be put under a microscope of prison guard-style parenting. My way or the highway.
Even play is micromanaged or organised.
Odd.

@Missamyp I agree micromanaging is not okay. But I see that exasperation from parents on here trying to get their children to go to school, to brush their teeth, to get their child to sit in the car seat - just every day essential things.

This is because of the way the parent is applying the structure. "Me parent-do as I say or else." People claim they're preparing them for work. I'm not sure any workplace has this type of attitude.
If they value what you're saying, they are more likely to join in. Separate the objective from the subjective task. Imagine "clean your room or else." I'm not sure that's in the motivational manual of how to work in a team.

@Missamyp lots of low paid staff are treated exactly in that way.

They may not say do x or else but it is implied. By that I mean if I dont do my job I will get pulled up on a disciplinary. If I repeatedly don't do my job because I don't feel like it I get fired.

The problem is if the child is asked and says no and then there is no consequence then it is not reflective of real life.

We lived overseas as expats for a bit and one of the things that struck me was how confident and resilient most of the expat teens were- lots of them moved every 2 to 3 years and that builds a lot of resilience (as does seeing your parents do it- there is heaps of confidence in knowing you can move somewhere and start a new life). Most of them were not very free range either, so it wasn't that. But they weren't protected from the challenge of a new school, language, friends.

Of course some of them found it very difficult as well.

The Starmers were very clear they would not put the children in the public eye. They don't even share their names publicly. That wasn't about the kids' confidence. Thankfully we are moving to expect less in the way of performative happy families from politicians.

Who cares, we are here in the U.K and we do say please and thank you, we do smile at strangers.

I've just enrolled my 3 year old at forest school to use knives and fires and a lot of my extended family think I'm joking.

I ask my children "how are we going to do this? " not don't do this. My 1 year old twins were on an age 6 plus playground today.

I'm not perfect. I have many a parenting fkaw but I believe that risk taking, being outdoors and limited screen's are key to development. Along with sleep, good nutritional food and lots of opportunities. Be allowed to fail too. Nicely, let them figure things out. They suppose you.

@Piggiesinblankets I agree. If you do not take risks in life, you miss out on a lot.

No we don’t. That’s not the norm in the UK. Some people do and some don’t.