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!

grazes, not crazes!

My OP didn’t suggest reintroducing corporal punishment?

My children have had a wonderful idyllic English childhood in the countryside, so I don't agree. It still very much exists, but not everywhere.

I didn't see any children playing in the streets of Geneva, Zurich or other cities or Athens etc. It depends where you raise your children, as to how much freedom is safe for them.

I was just coming on to say this!

Kids now are less likely than ever to be smacked, more likely to have a huge variety of toys and activities, awareness of mental health is 20 times what it was when I was little

Children are less likely than ever to be smacked has been conflated with poor mental health oddly op.

I think he has a point, I do think parents can be way too involved and controlling in their children's lives. They are well-meaning but does it help?
I used to get fed up when my child argued with friends when they had come over for a play date. They would come to me with every little issue. In the end I started saying to them that if they couldn't get on there was no point playing together and (friend) might as well go home. That forced them to sort it out on their own and they did.

I allowed my children a lot of freedom but screens can be the ultimate enemy, children sometimes will rather play on a screen than play with a friend. I also think some children don't have enough unstructured time and fill up too many days with activities and clubs. Unstructured time was all I looked forward to after school, because it's mentally relaxing. I did have a hobby but only one.

That is interesting and I think there is something in it.

However, the DC I have known to be harshly punished are always the worst behaved. Especially when their parents aren't watching! They don't care if their parent is disappointed or whatever they just care not to get caught! I have never punished my DC and they are really well behaved. They care if I am upset with them or angry. I've not had half the problems most parents seem to have. Just my two penneth!

Has it?!

I think there is a lot about the modern world which makes parenting really hard, and which is really harmful for kids.

There is definitely truth in the concern that children don’t get enough opportunity for independent play, and specifically for play outdoors. I see an almost pathological fear on social media or children being bored - there is such pressure to make sure they’re always entertained with imaginary play involving their parents, or elaborate toy setups, or screens. Children learn so much from playing without adult intervention, and particularly from having time to play outside which isn’t intensely supervised (obviously you need sufficient supervision for safety, but they need independence too).

And then there is screen time - obviously fine in moderation but so much of the stuff which professes to be for kids is actually intensely harmful - overstimulating, attention span destroying and anxiety inducing.

And then children seem to have smartphones younger and younger these days when I think one of the absolute best things you can do for your child is not let them have access to social media and it’s self esteem destroying horrors until they’re 15 or older.

That said, I don’t think punishment is a solution to anything. Children benefit from firm, loving boundaries which are consistently upheld, but punishment is usually counter productive and harmful.

And me!
but I can see the same traits in DH and his mum.
DD however, doesn’t seem to have any anxiety which is sometimes associated with her condition.

I can certainly see that we protect kids much more than we used to and that that is likely to be bad for them in some ways. I do wonder though if this idea that parents smooth life over to the extent that kids never experience disappointment/conflict etc is overblown. Surely any kid with a sibling or who goes to school is going to experience conflict and unfairness? Parents and teachers can’t be everywhere.

It’s hugely complex and he’s honed down to a couple of factors. He is not a child Clinical Psychologist, so whilst he has expertise, he’s got a narrow lens.

I think screens and particularly social media are a much bigger issue. They distort life completely.

Interestingly one of the examples he gave was parents intervening in sibling disagreements. Plus parents rushing to school to iron out any perceived unfairness.

I think phones and social media are a massive part of it.

I also think some of it stems from modern life. Two working parents, constantly juggling, constantly playing catch up in the evening and weekends, never time to relax together apart form the odd holiday or occasion. That breeds anxiety.

DD is 10 and this year has started knocking on for friends and a little group of them roaming house to house raiding the fridges and hanging out. There's been a massive leap in her independence, she's starting willingly and proactively doing more for herself like making lunch or sorting her clothes rather than having to be nagged for it.

I think that it is important ti allow them to take some risks and to stretch themselves as long as there are appropriate boundaries and safety measures in place. For example DD doesn't have a phone but she does have a watch so I can see whereabouts she is and she knows to come home and check in with us at set times throughout the day so we know she's not 'stretched' too far away.

Well, I don't think most of the kids will be able to properly fend for themselves as adults, so they won't be much grateful for the parenting, when they "burn their nose" coupla times.

Yes. As a therapist I am horrified. I'm constantly seeing young patients/teens who dont know its normal to feel bad sometimes so they really fall apart when anything mildly negative happens. Most of my practice with young people is teaching basic resiliance skills these days. Its really sad. They're so dysfunctional and unwell and its all so avoidable.

No, but another of your posts said "Kids now are less likely than ever to be smacked... they seem so much unhappier now." Are you going to deny that you're making that association?

Let me tell you, the physical and emotional abuse I suffered as a child went hand in hand and ruined me for life, despite long years of therapy and self-work. Either you don't understand that because it didn't happen to you and you're happy to implicitly advocate for a return to domestic abuse of children, or it did happen to you to some degree and you're in denial about the ways it shaped you, even if subtle.

In any case, the root of the problem is parents who can't cope constructively with parenting and take the easy (brutalising) option. Children themselves are not the failure in the equation, whatever you've taught yourself to believe.

Honestly I think it is.

Everything is now so child centric - rather than children fitting in to your life peoples live have to revolve around children.

When I was a kid I was made to behave. If I’d been rolling around in the floor of Waitrose like I saw recently I would have swiftly been made to stand up or removed. Not ignored and allowed to continue it.

Far too much permissive parenting and ignoring bad behaviour.

It teaches children no resilience and they grow up entitled and thinking the world will bend for them.

You see it in the threads on here - the one where the woman was outraged someone made a complaint about her young adult DD at work because she was mucking about giving poor customer service. Which the DD admitted. Still the poster was shocked.

Apparently other people should just put up with bad behaviour and poor standards.

really interesting thread OP. I wonder about this a lot also as my DC are 4 and 2 and I started out with 'gentle parenting' and was ok at it (I think) when I had one DC but found it much harder with two. Listened to Abigail Shriers book Bad Therapy and it's made me question everything 😂 I didn't feel very 'authentic' when I tried to follow gentle parenting, and I feel much better or more at ease now I just typically follow what our very experienced childminder does.

Generally i think we are authoritative parents, we have firm boundaries and fairly high expectations for behaviour but still lots of love and a reasonable amount of time given to reading and play. But we do expect them to entertain themselves a lot and sort their disagreements out most of the time. They get as much outdoor play as possible, and as little screen time as possible. No hand held screens at all and will avoid these for as long as possible. eldest gets a bit of tv in the evening and youngest typically has none. We expect them to do boring stuff such as long car journeys with limited screens (will use one towards the end if needs be, we are talking 200-300 miles a day so a long time!) They do have Yotos which I think are brilliant.

Yesterday met one of my eldests friends from preschool at the park, and after a while he got bored and his mum got out his iPad for him to watch at the park. it honestly put me off meeting them again outside of preschool as one child having a screen massively changes the dynamic with the others. also seen so many young kids sat in buggies with a phone/ipad, and one the other day was a little girl who can't have been older than 2, walking through home bargains watching tv on a phone.

Post your evidence.

Having spent most of the last 15 years working with children, mostly teenagers, I’ve long believed that we cause enormous problems by denying them the responsibilities they are ready for and heaping on them responsibilities that they are not ready for.

Currently working my way through Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff (recommended on here) and the different sections of the book pretty much boil down to:

1. involving children in the tasks of household everyday life
2. parenting without anger
3. allowing children autonomy (while maintaining a sense of the child contributing in a meaningful way towards their household or community - yes, including caring for younger children)

I’m finding the anger section particularly challenging, but I’m pretty certain that all the anthropologists who’ve spent time studying the Inuit parenting approach would be able to tell you that ‘gentle parenting’ does not appear to be correlated with bad behaviour in children or psychological problems in adults - quite the reverse.

And yes, there is a wealth of research showing that autonomy in childhood is linked to better outcomes in adult life; the Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson might be a place to start. It’s why (among other reasons) we need more traffic restrictions in built-up areas if we want any chance of raising well-balanced, independent future generations (shoot me down now 😁)

I am definitely stricter than most of my Mum friends in terms of behavioural expectations and manners, but I also keep home fairly low demand (both my DC are Autistic and have ADHD) and they have a lot more freedom than a lot of children their age (although, they're not out roaming the streets, they play out and I don't monitor every single social interaction nor breath they take).

I probably sound really judgmental, but I see too much wishy washy parenting and badly behaved, ill-mannered children.

However, I'm sure people quietly judge my parenting. 🤷🏼‍♀️

So am I, PepermintPorpoise and I agree - that is a big part of my work too. Colleagues in university counselling departments say they are shocked with the lack of resilience among students, and even staff. I really worry about the direction we’re going in.