To think we overthink parenting these days??

[Waffle19]

I’ve just had my daily scroll on Instagram and been bombarded by parenting posts such as ‘imagine you’re 5 years old and trying to get dressed’ and ‘5 ways you’re abusing your child’ which includes things like yelling.

Now admittedly it’s easy to avoid this by just not going on social media but that and so many posts I see on here just make me think maybe we’ve overthinking things these days?

Is my four year old really going to be traumatised because I rush him to get his shoes on every morning?

Is my one year old really going to learn how to act safer because I say ‘what’s your plan here’ instead of ‘be careful’ every time?

I used to lap all of this and the whole gentle parenting thing up but I think I’m slowly realising what a ridiculous amount of pressure I’ve been putting on myself.

My kids are loved, fed, clothed, read to, seemingly happy, and I try not to yell too much. Surely that’s enough? Is this me emerging from the PFB bubble??

YANBU - get off social media and stop overthinking

YABU - you need to learn all this stuff else your kid will have issues later down the line

If someone said 'kind hands' I will not be responsible for running to a get sick bucket

"Please do not pull the cats tail" why is that so hard? (in addition to your version I mean)

I think there are ways of introducing autonomy.

Pleases and Thank you and coming to the door to say Bye, always. Framework.

Hugs and kisses to older relatives, no. Your body, your choice

Common sense.

Completely agree with that

All this overthinking parenting doesn't seem to be making the kids any happier from what we can see. I'm guilty of it myself but it does seem like a lot of wasted effort if you don't get results

I also wonder if it's another factor in the declining birth rate. It presents parenting as something very complex, high risk and easy to fuck up. If you're ambivalent about kids then that could well be what sways you into no thanks.

So is being quiet, or touching a child if we're utterly lacking in nuance with blunt statements with some element of truth to them.

Ranting at a child and belittling them is indeed abusive. Simply raising your voice to get attention is not abusive. Shouting shouldn't be the default mode of communicating but it is sometimes necessary and is something that will be encountered in school and social clubs/ sports.
Word choice matters more than volume.

Being quiet is generally not abuse, but specifically silent treatment or ongoing neglect of attention is. Temporary "tell me in a minute when I've finished doing this" is a healthy social boundary.
Touching again has a wide range of nuance between loving comfort and abuse.

The breadth of normal, healthy interactions is broad and varies with child's age before they fall into abuse levels. It's not as simple as "shouting is abuse"

@FanofLeaves I totally agree.

I viewed parenting as a benign dictatorship with routine, love and cuddles… it seems to have worked as my 20 somethings are now out in the world and are just fine. (Their father, however, is another matter…)

And the complete PITA pathetic mother!

That makes sense and sounds much better. I assumed the logic was that it's a quick command. I like that principle of show what you should do.

I like that, a benign dictatorship! Children need boundaries so they know their place in the pecking order and they don't grow up being self-centred, entitled little brats that nobody want to be around. I'm getting tired of queuing for a quick coffee and having to wait behind families of tiny Esmes and Lionels who are being asked to choose what they want - teach them that at home and order for them, don't you know what they like? When they're earning their own money and paying their own bills they can join the grown-ups (yes, families of St Albans, it's you I'm looking at).

I never shouted at my four kids but I had very clear rules and expectations and I had 'consequences' ( otherwise known as punishments).
It depends on people's temperaments. I never shout ever. I don't have a temper and none of my adult kids ever shout either.

Ive a theory that having fun together is one of the most important things as well as lots of love.

Absolutely ignore Instagram posts about parenting. They purposefully use extreme or controversial statements and viewpoints in order to get more engagement. And then unsuspecting new parents take it all to heart.

But yes I do overthink parenting too, because as a PP said, in the past it was seriously under thought and I want my kids to feel loved, safe and valued.

See, I do this. My kids always order their own meals and drinks. Eye contact, treat staff with respect, teaches confidence and engagement with other adults etc.

I am really tired of the endless kneejerking about how "gentle parenting" is the source of all society's problems. There's a few dozen threads every week on here blaming "gentle parenting" for everything from SEN to drug abuse, usually with a reference to "snowflakes" thrown in somewhere and a request to go back to Dickensian standards of discipline.

As PPS have pointed out there's a huge difference between "gentle" parenting (which means non aggressive parenting in which there's a dialogue with the child about the rationale for things happening rather than just "shut up and do as you're told") and "permissive" parenting (which is not enforcing any boundaries with children and taking no interest in what they are doing). Regardless of whether "gentle parenting" works or not (and I think sometimes it works, sometimes not), I really really wish people could learn the distinction between these two things.

Yes there are neurotic parents who overthink things and yes there are parents who need to get better at just enforcing discipline and there are plenty of spoiled children. But it worries me that people think it's a bad idea to have a discussion with your children and treat them as sentient beings.

Sometimes you have to draw a line and put your foot down and you need to be in control. But discipline should not just be a long stream of barked orders with no engagement or acknowledgement of the child's needs. If "gentle parenting" means "intelligent and discursive parenting" I really struggle to understand why that's a bad thing.

I can't help but get the impression of a defensive mother as the OP who just needs to feel better about her methods for a moment.

Completely missed the point too and obviously has no idea what gentle parenting is as others have said.

I agree.
A short ‘stop that!’ rather than ‘have you thought about how sad you will be if you hurt yourself and how sad that will make mummy if you are hurt because we talked about how dangerous electricity is before, didn’t we, so please can you make a good choice about whether to carry on sticking the fork in the electric socket?’ is surely more effective? But ‘stop that!’ would be classed as yelling which is literal child abuse in some people’s eyes.

I had my DC decades ago so it's interesting for me to see how things have changed.

One thing that always surprises me a bit is how so many will say their toddler wakes at 5am and they have to get up with them. Mine would just get told "back to bed". Sometimes they'd just play quietly in their room, but it was just a standard that the time to get up was set by me, not them.

Likewise people saying they can never shower or get a cuppa. I had the bouncy chair, walkers, door hanging things (not sure if any of those things are in use now) and I just got on with what I needed to. Now it seems like every moment your child is awake you need to be interacting with them in some way.

I think parenting has been made a lot tougher now. And yes, SM doesn't help at all. I'm really glad it wasn't around when mine were young.

I must say, I don't get the whole "kind hands" thing either. How is it traumatising to tell a child something is "naughty". When an adult punches another adult and goes to Court, the Judge doesn't say "kind hands" 😂I don't see how it's wrong to tell children certain behaviours are unacceptable. They need to know that.

I do agree with this. Little babies, yes you do have to go with the flow and survive the broken nights and early mornings and do what you can to get through the difficult times.

But from the age of 2 onwards my son hasn't been allowed to just wake us up before we're ready to be up. He usually wakes at half 7 or 8, but anything before then he's told it's still night time and get back to bed. He's 3 now and we don't mind if we hear him turn his lamp on and chat away to himself looking at his books, or put his Yoto player on (it has a volume limiter which is amazing), as long as he stays in his room quietly.

For what i read on here and see when im out some parents need to grow up and learn how to be parents.
Way to much molly cuddleing.
And way to much SEN being used as a pass card for bad behaviour.
To be honest i dont think half the kids and teens have sen they use it to act as twats to get away with it.
And the parening omg the threads ive read on here are stupit from no visits to kissing babys to strict eating having constant nannys needing constant child care CM payment are never enough is a big one it's like kids are piggy banks.
Kids never hearing a raised voice but a teacher is blamed for abuse if a child is told off at school.
School gate mums having more drama than the kids.
Honestly its fucked up.
The list goes on.

I think because this information is so widely available it means people do more research and do think about it more. If my mum wanted to get parenting advice she either had to get the bus to our nearest town to go to the library, or call the HV. I've got a world of info and opinions in this digital rectangle that's permanently attached to my hand!

The problem is there's so many conflicting pieces of advice and so many "tribes" that parents often end up trying to parent this ideal child instead of the kid that's in front of them.

Regarding yelling, it just suggests that the parent is dysregulated and takes it out on the child.

Yelling is bizzare to me. People would never yell at their coworker for example, but yelling at a child is somehow okay. Being yelled at is frighting for a child, especially a very young one, and means discipline is achieved through fear. The issue will be that they will carry around this fear, which is heart breaking. I hope people apologise to their child if they lost their cool. I bet parents wouldn't allow their child to yell at them, but vice versa is somehow okay. It really is not. Double standards and so on. Do this consistently with other things throughout their childhood too and we'll have more threads pop up by parents who cannot understand why adult children take a break from the relationship or won't be close.

The secret is to treat the child like a human with valid feelings and thoughts, even if the parent does not agree. Accept the child, apologise if you have been unfair or rude and work to change your own behaviour after making mistakes so they don't happen again. Just like you expect from your child. If they feel loved, seen, heard and accepted most things will not cause them lasting damage into adulthood. But I believe a lot of parents don't know how to make their child feel loved, seen, heard and accepted because they have been failed themselves as children. It is natural to deny and insist that the child is loved unconditionally, but ultimately only the child gets to decide if it feels like that's the case.

I stopped gentle parenting when my child started hitting me. Now she gets told off and time out/thinking time in another room away from the fun and... lo and behold, over time, she's stopped hitting me.

Yeah I agree with this

I completely agree. I think people really underestimate how anomalous our current approach of seeing 'parent' as a verb rather than a relationship and as a full-time occupation rather than a thing you as part of the rest of life is historically and culturally. It is such a huge departure. That doesn't make it a bad thing. Equal rights for women is also historically and culturally anomalous, but that doesn't make it bad! But I think it's unsurprising that there are teething problems from trying to so radically change the parent-child relationship in the space of a couple of generations, and I certainly think that it's playing a part in the huge rise in anxiety among both adults and children.

What, when you're standing in a queue with people waiting to get back to work? Hmmm.

Just out of curiosity, what was you're strategy before this? Because "thinking time" or removing from the situation and told off, but not screaming/smacking in response kind of IS gentle parenting??

However, for example brightly saying "Kind hands darling" but not actually doing anything, is not gentle parenting. Not saying this is what you were doing btw, it's just that I really think a lot people think that is the "gentle parenting" way, but it's actually what you are now doing and that's where a lot of confusion is coming in.