"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.

Same. It just in very extreme cases allows them to believe that abuse is understandable

Of course it works. You can’t tell them enough that violence is acceptable.

Also children who are allowed to be violent as kids don’t suddenly flourish into peaceful adults one day. How do you think the violent adults start being violent?

What benefit comes from doing nothing? How do you teach children what is acceptable if not telling them with words and actions?

I think the PP who talked about validating with containment and encouraging thought - ‘was that a big hurt or a little hurt?’ - said something important.

The phrase ‘gentle parenting’ means many things to many people. While some definitions sound great, too often it descends to a group of women on the way to lunch in the rain standing around while the (uninvited) toddler plays in a puddle, because she has declined mummy’s suggestion that we might like to move on.

Emotional awareness of oneself and others s a great thing, but it is cognitively demanding. Too much attention to the internal may get in the way of learning. The nation’s undergraduates are experiencing an MH crisis. Personal discussions with tutees and other students has led me to wonder how much of this is linked to a lack of capacity to focus on what they find difficult, and/or an inability to sit with the discomfort of struggle.

He learns that actions sometimes have more than one consequence. The practical of not being able to drink the milk (which may actually be rewarding if he threw it because he didn't want it) but also the consequence of the response of others to your behaviour. If we are to be able to function in a society we need to learn that some behaviour will cause a negative reaction from others. Throwing milk is something our society considers unacceptable. An age appropriate phrasing of that is 'silly'.

Interesting you say this.

DH does workshops over zoom a few times a year for a university. He said yesterday and I only realised for the first time that none of them turn their cameras on!

I’m a teacher and couldn’t believe it! I said just tell them they have to turn them on and actually engage!

Apparently that’s against the university’s policy because some of the students may not want their faces seen and this could affect their mental health!!!

Yes but that's not the ONLY reason not to throw milk is it?

Well no, but at three if you explain the others, they won't care very much.

The main reason they won't throw milk up the wall is because they will be socialised by people who don't throw drinks up the wall. Once they come out of the tantrum phase it'll stop happening anyway. As will lying on the ground kicking and screaming etc.

There is no need to call them silly, and it doesn't help anyone learn. But many adults seem to like to say things like that, presumably because they were said to them once.

We don’t explain the impact of behaviour to children to make them care, we do it to make them learn.

Ignoring this behaviour is way more detrimental in the long run than (rightly) pointing out that the behaviour is silly

I'm not suggesting you do nothing.

I'm saying there is no need to call a child silly, and in my view they were not being silly, they were being three.

You still tell them not to do it, obviously, but with a proper reason such as 'now the milk is gone and we have to clean the wall'.

What is the purpose of the word 'silly'? A meaningless insult doesn't teach anyone anything.

If you feel better as a result of using words like silly that's fine.

I think it is better to teach kids more meaningful reasons for not doing things, but there's a range of approaches, obviously.

No it’s just a word describing behaviour.

O would say we don’t throw milk up the wall because it’s damaged the wall and I now have to clean it up.

Although by 3 my kids knew not to do this. This IMO is the behaviour of a 1yo

Im just not into raising entitled children who think they don’t have to be accountable for their actions. At age 3 they’re only a year off starting school. I’d want to nip food/drink throwing behaviour in the bud pronto

Your gentle parenting and insistence of validating spoilt, brattish behaviour will cause your child more MH issues than your mil ever will.

I can't vote as the deadline has passed, but you sound pretty reasonable to me!

Who is 'into' raising entitled kids?

I haven't any experience of that type of parenting.

I guess if you had a lot of that behaviour to deal with you would have been wanting to address it.

People who won’t check the behaviour of a toddler.

I don’t think not being able to drink it is enough of a lesson tbh.

Theres cleaning up, the feelings of the other person etc. it is silly, thoughtless, annoying. These emotions exist whether you want them to or not.

several lessons can be learned from the same event, not just the one that leaves the child feeling validated.