The parenting crisis

[digimumworld]

I’m listening to the radio, the discussion is on knife crime. A caller calls in and says that we are collectively failing our children - she’s a school governor and parent and said that teachers are scared of children and that we need to stop blaming teachers - we should ask ourselves what’s going on at home for many children and that there is a huge parenting crisis at the moment.

I actually agreed. It seems more common now for there to be very little consequence for “bad behaviour” from parents. I know a few parents that are scared of their children - or at least scared of hurting their children’s feelings; also (this is the reality for me too as a parent) it’s so so hard to monitor what they are exposed to on social media - how do we know if the content they are seeing is overriding the values we are setting?

I am a parent - I truly believe that the modern parent has so much more to consider (incase relevant).

AIBU for thinking maybe there is a parenting crisis?

The problem with social media is not so much the access of it but the interpretation of what is seen and the lack of developing critical thinking because.....parents don't discuss what their kids watch with them.

I never forbid my kids access to anything because I wanted to demystify the sensationalism of it. What I did though was asking them about what they saw and discuss societal matters together. From this I believe I was able to install some of the values I considered important but also got to learn myself about how young people experience society nowadays.

It didn't stop my kids to go through teenage years acting in a typical kid, spending lots of time in their room, too much time on the Xbox, procrastinating and going for the one word response to questions, but the foundations were there. Behind the facade, they develop critical thinking skills, resilience, confidence and a sense of responsibility for their actions and their future.

Children and parents just don't mix and talk enough. Nothing to do with whether parents work or not, more a question of whether talking to their children is something that comes naturally and they find enjoyable, or something unnatural that is more a chore they rather not take part of.

i think some parents are unwilling to set boundaries and are unwilling to be seen as anything other than’ fun’ and ‘best mate’ to their kids.
I see a lot of this as I work in primary schools - young children who genuinely don’t get it when they can’t be the centre of the universe, when they say ‘I don’t want to do this’ (wether that’s maths, PE or reading) and get shocked when it’s pointed out to them that it’s not optional. Kids who genuinely don’t seem to understand that they have to follow the same rules as everyone else.

i was queueing for the bus the other day, it was a long queue and cold. The family in front of us had here kids, two primary and one early senior school age. They were climbing on the seats, trying to climb the columns of the bus shelter, play fighting with each other and banging into others in the queue. Parents were doing nothing at all to get them to behave and stop being a nuisance and in fact ‘fun dad’ was encouraging them.

in the grand scheme of things their behaviour was just irritating, but it’s an example of how parents think their kids should be allowed to behave any which way they like, and the rest of society has to just put up with it. When I was younger (in the 1980s!) most kids were expected to have fun but not irritate everyone else in the process. Kids were not the centre of the universe, whereas now, for some parents, their kids are the centre of their universe, and expect them to be the centre of everyone else’s universe as well. Which of course doesn’t work when you have a class of 30 kids all of whom expect to be the centre of the universe!

No you are the one who is utterly ridiculous.

And abelist. No one wants their child walking round with matted hair then posts about it for help on Mumsnet.

If she didn't care she wouldn't have asked for help.

By the grace of god and all that. You are lucky you've never had to experience it. You haven't got a fucking clue.

It might be SPD - or it might not. Even if it is keeping the child's hair shorter and more manageable may well be the answer. You extrapolating from your knowledge of your one child to prevent any discussion of how someone else might manage their own child's behaviour and closing down any views different to your own is a big part of the problem we are discussing.

This isn’t about your daughter. This is you jumping in with a diagnosis for an unknown girl on a second hand thread account about a mum who couldn’t take the obvious easy step to solve a problem with her dd’s overly long thick matted hair when there was no mention of SNs at all. Every bog standard 4 year old on earth would hate having bum length thick easily matted curly hair brushed out daily. My DD has this hair type which is why we keep it at shoulder length. Very few kids who hate having their hair brushed would qualify for a diagnosis.

Im sorry about your difficulties with your DD which sound really hard.

Agree. It's clearly not the answer. Hitting children just models violence

If the child can tolerate a hair cut. Mine at that age couldn't.

The mother said it was traumatising so I assume they couldn't.

There are strategies that the mother can follow to try to make it tolerable. That's what I would have been suggesting had I been on that thread. If any one reads this and wonders about it many areas allow self referral to occupational therapy. A sensory diet can be used in an attempt to allow the child to be more able to tolerate touch.

https://www.youngminds.org.uk/parent/blog/how-to-create-a-sensory-diet-for-your-neurodivergent-child/

I'm not trying to prevent discussion at all I'm just saying calling it bad parenting and parent blaming is abelist.

Edited to add, this says it's for neurodivergent children but it is worth a go even if the child is not diagnosed.

A few years ago when DS was in secondary school I had a call from a very nervous sounding student welfare officer telling me that unfortunately he was facing a one day suspension for breaking a school rule (obviously serious but absolutely not for violence or bullying or anything like that). I thanked her for letting me know, said I was bloody cross with DS for being such an idiot, apologised to the school on his behalf, and asked for her advice on how I should follow up at home. The woman I was speaking to almost cried and said she really didn't know what to say because she was so used to parents attacking her and the school when she made these calls.

Agree with this.

in the 80s and 90s they blamed too much televisions

People often blame smartphones because it absconds poor parenting

Or the mum who proudly says,

“my child has never cried”

I would NEVER let my child suffer.

Agree with this. Parenting doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is a reflection on society and our changing culture. We have an increasingly polarised society on many issues and even our politicians are behaving in a way that would have been unacceptable 40 or 50 years ago.

I know that every generation has a tendency to look back and think that things were so much better "back in the day" but the trend of violence is very worrying.
Individually, we seem to be moving into a fear state, where we lash out and focus on our own needs at the expense of others. We see it on social media, even here on MN where people call each other names. As a society, we seem increasingly angry, quick to blame and quick to deny responsibility.

Thanks, you are right I didn't see the thread, it was the mothers use of the word traumatising over a haircut that led me to think there is something more going on.

Haircuts can be traumatising to some children.

My daughter is in a much better place now and you'll be glad to know she can now tolerate both hair brushing and cutting!

100%. I also think teachers and parents need to work together more.

I caught the tail end of proper Parent Teacher Associations, where there’d be regular joint meetings that anyone could attend. Teachers and TAs would explain the challenges they faced to parents. And vice-versa parents could raise problems. So they had empathy and understanding for each other and could solve problems together.

Then, PTAs morphed into fundraising groups, with endless cake sales and summer fetes, with no discussion of problems. I’ve encountered teachers who are v disparaging about parents and view them as ‘the enemy’, especially teachers who don’t have kids themselves or are from more privileged/very different backgrounds. Likewise, lots of parents have no idea about the challenges faced by teachers and TAs.

I was just watching the news this morning and thinking - how has it come to this re knife crime.
A bereaved mother was saying that closing youth clubs, etc was one issue, which it might be, but there are still after school activities, and cubs, scouts, various hobby clubs etc. so I think that's too simplistic.
Maybe there should be mandatory parenting courses for every new parent, there must be some good middle ground between too harsh and too soft. After you've done the childbirth class either at the hosptial or NCT, there needs to be some focus on what happens after the baby stage.
I remember when DS was about 14/15 he was friends with a boy at school - he told me this boy carried a knife as he lived in a dodgy area - and I told DS to tell him not to, that you are more likely to get stabbed if you carry a knife than not. After a while, DS told me his friend had stopped taking a knife around with him (whether he was BS'ing DS or not, at least the message was relayed).

There must be a happy medium between 'gentle' which is often interpreted as letting your kid to wtf they want, and hitting.

I totally agree. I am a parent with 2 primary age kids. we very much say no, have consequences and we teach them respect, kindness etc.
If my child does something wrong, she is held accountable! We explain why, and help them to say sorry where needed etc. and they get told off if they are being purposely naughty.
We are still able to be compassionate and validate their feelings and all that - but it doesn't mean we can't teach them right from wrong!

I don't understand where this modern parenting has come from.
I've overheard parents at school talking about taking their kids out and moving schools, shocked I asked why (what could be so awful?)
The teacher had dared to tell the child they couldn't use the bathroom during lesson time. But on hearing more, it was because child had been messing about in there all lesson with another child, switching lights on and off and disrupting the other children. My daughter had been having toilet issues up to then and had come home telling me she's scared of using the school toilet because someone keeps turning the light out.

The parent was fuming that the teacher had spoken to them about it, saying messing about is normal for their age and why are they bothering them about it when it's the teachers job! And for addressing it, they felt the SCHOOL was being unreasonable!! Absolutely no acknowledgement that their child was badly behaved or causing distress to other children.

I smiled and nodded and made a mental note to avoid them from now on.

Thankfully I think there's a good proportion of parents that are able to parent properly, but these others are creating the entitled and inconsiderate generation to come.

I remember the dirty looks i used to get at family meals out when i refused to let my DS & DD leave the table during and after eating. I stood firm whilst others at the table would allow their kids to run about. I refused. Guess who, after a short period of work, was able to enjoy calm, fun meals with my children included?

I remember my children being naughty and 100% of the time having consequences. 100% consistency. 100% parents singing off the same songsheet. My children knew where they stood if they did wrong.

I remember my children being smacked. It wasnt nice and it eventually stopped completely and is something i regret. But if it was the choice between this and my child even contemplating carrying a knife i would take it 1000 times over.

My children are now young adults. They still live at home and are in relationships. Their partners consistently come over for sunday dinner and have commented that they are not used to sitting around the dinner table as a full family and they really enjoy the time and conversation generated.

My daughter mentioned the other day on her college course about how flippant some of her 'friends' are discussing weed and other drugs. She just said she was brought up properly and couldnt imagine ever being like that.

Parenting isnt a popularity contest. Its about putting boundaries in place and teaching right and wrong. Unfortunately too many have let their children down. I am quite cold when i see families struggling with out of control children. I just imagine all the opportunities they had to help themselves they missed.

There are parents who basically enable their DC.

There are the DC who run riot at home, and when they get to school they have to spend two years learning how to sit still for more than five minutes, disrupting the class in the meantime. These children have no SEN, they are just poorly disciplined and unfamiliar with having boundaries imposed on their behaviour. They settle down by about Y2/3.

There are DC who come to school and refuse to do any work except what appeals. They play their parents off against the teachers, their parents always take their side (always believe the child rather than, say, the two TAs and several children who give much the same story for a playground incident) and seek a diagnosis for the child. These children do not have SEN or MH issues. They are able to manipulate their parents who never impose any boundaries. Schools won't get heavy because they are scared of the parents complaining, and dealing with an official complaint is even more hassle than placating the parent.

Then there are parents who actively damage their children. I don't want to go into detail about one case that affected a family where I used to work, but it was pretty much Munchausen's by proxy: the mother wanted her kids to all be autistic or have some form of SEN. She screwed them royally along the way.

There is a significant cohort of parents who just don't take any serious responsibility for their DC. They seem to think that ALL their educational needs - politeness, reading, table manners, maths, conflict resolution - are entirely the responsibility of school. They send them in with no breakfast, despite having gel nails and new phones - money is tight in a lot of these families, but it's not well-managed. I've been poor, we were very poor during my teenaged years, so I do get it, but there is poverty and there is borderline neglect.

Then you get the parents who HAVe to go to the gym every evening, rather than hearing little Elsie read, when she is a year behind her cohort and doesn't think reading matters, because her parents have never shown her that it does.

How we deal with this, I don't know.

<and breathe>

Also, hats off to the many excellent parents out there. the ones who pursue diagnoses for DC who have genuine issues and get the EHCPs young enough for it to make a massive difference. Who support the school and come up to staff outside school and say, Thank you so much for all the help you gave him, it changed his experience of school so much.

Exactly. All this "you don't know what they're looking at on their phones" nonsense. Well, you do if they're not allowed to take their phones upstairs, ever, so all their phone use takes place on the living room sofa with you wandering past every so often going "Ooh, that looks interesting, what are you watching?" (usually YouTube videos on bushcraft and parkour). And you have a content filter on the router, and keep them on a contract with a tiny, miserly amount of data on purpose. And (when they're younger) check their messages on a regular basis, and don't allow Snapchat or social media on pain of confiscation.

I'm also lucky in that his school has a "No phone use gate to gate" policy, and I can trust most of his friends' parents to uphold a vaguely similar set of rules in their own houses.

ETA: this didn't all happen without kickback. There have been some mighty rows, and endless 24hr phone confiscations when I discovered he'd snuck his phone up to bed again, sometimes setting up a cunning decoy with his phone case "on charge" downstairs but I stood firm because I'm the fucking parent.

On the debate around ipads etc I can see the impact of social media but don't agree with banning them completely. My ds has severe autism and has two ipads; one is only used for communication, it is his voice and has Internet access and appstore turned off- so is purely for communication using a specific app. The other has the Internet etc on but is educational too.

I think smart tech if used correctly can be massively advantageous. A whole group of people who were once completely without communication can now have a voice.

I do think that autism/ adhd etc is used as an excuse sometimes for bad parenting and I do know of parents that have repeatedly taken their child for assessments until they get a dx. I might also add though that I don't agree with the neurodiversity movement too.

People need to take more responsibility for themselves and their children. The LA znd schools cannot replace a parent and even with a crap sen system, the parents are ultimately responsible for their child.

I was smacked as a child - on the bottom. Of course I don’t condone it, but a ‘no smacking’ policy hasn’t equated to a less violent society now??
I don’t think smacking works, but a firm - this is not how you behave and there is a consequence for that behaviour - does work.

I find it interesting that you use the term 'do-gooders' in a pejorative sense. There's nothing wrong with doing good, or trying to. Your post seems to jump about from one issue that you're unhappy with to another, and you're blaming 'do-gooders' for all of this. It's always someone else's fault, eh?

There must be a happy medium between 'gentle' which is often interpreted as letting your kid to wtf they want, and hitting.

Apparently 'kind words' are too much too. Some pp are also not keen on mc mothers

I doubt stats on knife crime over represent this group of children with these parents.

Rather violent, abusive, neglectful and other negative behaviours, if you're looking for ways children are damaged it's not kind words or not hitting them.

This is the problem with people using dramatic language. I would read "traumatised" and just think she meant a bit upset because that's the way it's commonly used now.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Gentle Parenting done properly. The problem is that people interpret Gentle Parenting as permissive parenting which it absolutely isn't.

I followed gentle parenting with all three DC, but certain boundaries (generally anything that involved being in any way inconsiderate of other people or the world around them) were absolutely set in stone and strictly enforced. Basically I said Yes to them as much as possible, but when I said No that was absolutely final I made sure they understood why. They have all grown up into generally thoughtful and considerate teenagers.