"stop being silly"

[AliceAbsolum]

MIL has DD (21 months) 2 days a week. She's really good with her overall. BUT she doesn't share my (very high) gentle parenting standards.
She rarely takes DD out so by 5pm she's running around the house with loads of energy and MIL will often tell her to stop being so silly.
Or if she's crying she'll say don't cry, don't be upset.

Now maybe I'm being a batshit pfb. Highly likely.
But basically I'm worried DDs being invalidated and it'll impact her mental health in the future.

I don't intend to say anything obviously. It's just hard to hand your child over to your village.

🤣🤣 @desperatedaysareover

@OrangeSlices998 maybe because I don't have time to "ride it out". I can imagine the customers when I tell them hang on for 5 minutes because my staff are riding it out in the warehouse because they don't want to go on checkouts so please be patient. They are getting paid for their time and that doesn't include them having a moment to validate their feelings every time they don't want to do something. You all keep raising these entitled, delicate kids but I'm telling you now you are setting them up for a huge shock when it's time to stand on their own two feet and they can't bring their mother to work. The world is a tough place and they are going to experience a lot worse than being called silly.

Honestly I worked in customer services as a teen and student, it’s not always easy and rude people are a PITA but they’re also part of life. Dealing with difficult people is a brilliant life skill to acquire. One of my DH’s relatives started working in Tesco at age 17, and walked out after 3 hours on her first day as a customer was a bit rude to her. She is now 19 and can’t find a job as she “won’t work with people” after her “horrible experience”. Ridiculous.

In my last workplace we used to have a six month paid graduate programme for Uni leavers. The point was to give them experience of the workplace, in-roads to permanent roles and also for us to get support for ‘menial’ jobs. We eventually stopped it after wet wipe after wet wipe came through our doors. None of them could handle constructive feedback - eg “Just to let you know, you have to do that task using X not Y. Don’t worry about it this time but next time make sure X is used please”. They’d have a total breakdown, one girl even walked out after I corrected her writing (I was approving of hat she wrote) and I’m embarrassed by how many calls we got from their mummies saying they can’t come in as they’re just not feeling up to it. Not to mention the total offence taken at the expectation to do menial tasks like prepare meeting rooms, make coffee, running to the shop for supplies etc. They come out of Uni, never having been told no and always having every last feeling validated, horrified at the thought of not immediately being given senior decision making type tasks while people higher up move chairs around a room. They didn’t get that everyone who starts out has to do menial tasks. And they largely weren’t nearly as smart as they thought they were.

And to think this is the generation who will take care of us in our old age.

@EvilsElsasPetSnowman what you've said is exactly what we experience, they don't take any from of criticism at all no matter how constructive it might be because they've never been told off or told no. It's impossible to train a workforce that have meltdowns every time they don't get their own way.

A 2 year old isn’t a 18 year old in the workplace! What a ridiculous statement. If you genuinely think letting a small child be upset about something means that in 10/15/20 years they’re not going to be able to cope with life then I feel sorry for your kids.

@OrangeSlices998 of course it does. The way you parent at age 2 carries on until they are teens. There's more than one person on this thread agreeing and sharing their experiences in the workplace but yeah, I'm being ridiculous. Whatever makes you feel better I guess.

Honestly sometimes we need someone to tell us to bloody stop it. I actually think it’s good for your DD to know that people have different levels of tolerance for whatever behaviour she’s displaying. The world will not always validate her feelings and it’s important she knows that.

There seems to be an epidemic of fragility in young people these days and I would focus on resilience if I were you. I validate my DD’s feelings, “I know it’s shit and boring but it needs to be done so stop whinging and get on with it”.

Having said that I would never voluntarily spend a day at home with a 2yr old because mine would have been climbing the walls and your MIL should probably be taking her to the park to run it off for her own sake.

I’m increasingly beginning to think the kids who have just been brought up normally with no particular parenting ethos are going to win. I actually tried to gentle parent myself and have read a bunch of parenting books (had a shit childhood, don’t know what I’m doing and I need something to rein in my draconian instincts). But settled for something that looks like authoritative parenting instead (badly done no doubt).

Yeah sorry you’re being batshit PFB to quote yourself. But if it helps I was probably the same with my first. Now with my second I’m just grateful for all the free childcare I can get. My MIL also won’t take the kids out when she has them and that does bother me, but equally I don’t think staying in for a whole day here and there harms them if they’re doing a lot for the rest of the week.

No it doesn’t! I have to chop my 2 year olds food, wipe their bum, brush their teeth for them - everything changes as they get older. Whether you ‘allow’ your small child to feel the feeling (frustrated, angry, whatever) or not, they’ll still feel it you’re just not giving them any tools to actually cope with it or build resilience. It’s not just validate and that’s it, a lot of the work around supporting emotional regulation is done outside of the times they’re upset or whatever. That’s the other half of gentle/respectful parenting, modelling managing our own emotions and helping them be able to, for example, take some deep breaths and not explode if they feel angry or frustrated. Being able to verbalise what they’re feeling again without exploding, you have to learn that it doesn’t just happen because your mum told you to stop being silly.

It goes the other way too though. I’ve worked for so many bosses and managers who don’t have an ounce of people skills. Never learnt empathy, don’t know how to people manage or manage their own frustrations and just dump them on their employees. Who shout and dictate rather than leading, who bully the people that work for them. I don’t really care if other people agree with you or not, am I not allowed to disagree? Is this not a forum for debate and discussion? I do think it’s ridiculous to parent a 2 year old like they’re an 18 year old in their first job!

Nobody's suggested parenting a toddler like an 18-year-old 😂

What they're saying is that deep, critical emotional pathways are laid down in the early years. From the NSPCC:

The first two years of a child’s life are the most critical for forming attachments (Prior and Glaser, 2006)

During this period, children develop an ‘internal working model’ that shapes the way they view relationships and operate socially. This can affect their sense of trust in others, self-worth and their confidence interacting with others (Bowlby, 1997)

When caregivers react sensitively to ease their child’s distress and help them regulate their emotions, it has a positive impact on the child’s neurological, physiological and psychosocial development (Howe, 2011)

Children with secure attachments are more likely to develop emotional intelligence, good social skills and robust mental health (Howe, 2011)

... There's no suggestion that OP's little girl lacks nurturing, care, safety and listening from her adults. What people are trying to point out is that this early, nurturing environment is exactly when emotional self-regulation needs to be reinforced. The other part of this same process is teaching theory of mind (consideration for others), which won't be properly established for several more years but can and should be started at her age.

O m g ............

So the OP's gentle parenting was a reason why people voted for an adjudicated sex offender who said he would date his own daughter?

How does one invalidate a 21 month old?
Asking for a friend

I am guessing the gentle parenting means she behaves terribly and therefore MIL doesn't feel up to being able to take her out where she can't set appropriate boundaries without being called a monster by her DIL.

If someone is being silly, child or adult, it is okay to ask them not to be. It won't hurt their mental health.

Oh no @spuddy4 she fEelS sOrRy FoR yOUr KiDs 😂

And of course if you take the parenting tact of validating that it’s reasonable cry about a TV show ending, they will end up having less resilience than if you take the route of not making out it’s a problem.

'Your village' is that code for 'free childcare'?

When we had those graduates they were frustrating but I mostly felt very sorry for them. Being almost mid-20’s and being unable to handle the most minor or circumstances and show a little team spirit of selflessness makes a very unemployable person and they have to now deal with being unemployable because they were overly protected from unpleasantness by family/society/peers.

I’m sure you haven’t, but I agree with you.
I think some people need to remember they’re not just raising a child they’re raising a future adult who needs prepared for the real world not coddled half to death.

Negotiating about leaving the house with a two year-old? Sorry, no. Children aren’t adults and I don’t agree with them being treated as such. Just makes for a demanding child who thinks they’ve as much say-so in matters as you have. They don’t.

Yes - exclusively 🙄

My mum would always say don't cry. She said it with love. One of the last things she said to me as she died was 'don't cry darling'. I can hear her now. There's a lot of prescriptive guidance out there these days, do's and don'ts with hyperbolic warnings of dire consequences of the wrong word or phrase. In the context of a loving relationship, its largely nonsense. People need freedom to express their love, care and guidance of children in a way that is genuine. Straight jacketing them into parroting phrases from a text book in the name of validation is a barrier to genuine human relationships.

Totally agree with this and sorry about your mum. 💙

Surely children who are brought up with love and care are not damaged by their parents.

I agree with this!