Why are we letting children call the shots?

[trivi]

Apparently the advice now is to let your child get down from the table when then feel like it during dinner etc. If they don’t feel like eating and want to play with their toys, coming and going as they please, then that should be permitted.
Please help me understand the rationale for this? And at what age should this stop? Surely this doesn’t prepare them for school? Or life in general for that matter 😅 AIBU for thinking this advice is ludicrous??

It's not OK. That's ageist too. And for that reason I don't engage in it personally.

To be clear, the comment I was responding to, in itself I don't consider ageist, just a truism. But in the context of this thread it felt ageist to me due to its dismissive tone.

Same here - started teaching good manners from the start. Stayed in a high chair until they could sit properly at the table. No getting down and wandering around the restaurant and no electronics at the table - same as at home so they knew what was expected.

You haven’t said it in those exact words but you clearly have very low tolerance for toddlers being toddlers and occasional poor behaviour. When a toddler has a tantrum the often are often distressed, even if the cause of the tantrum seems very trivial to us adults.

Your dd having a panic in her plane seat WAS ok, that’s the point I was trying to make. You do your best in the moment and try to reduce the chance of it happening next time, but she wasn’t being naughty, she was being 2.

I don't know who advised that but it's not what I did with my kids when they were little and learning. It doesn't prepare then for socialising and manners in later life and when they start doing that in front of other people the kid won't understand why they're getting a bad reaction!
No!!!

Who is giving this advice? Children need, and thrive with, clear reasonable boundaries and expectations. It’s what reinforces the idea that they can trust the adults in their life to keep them safe and secure and empowers them to make good choices for themselves in later life. I don’t know anyone who parents in the way you’ve described? Nor any reputable professional who advises parenting in that way…

All children have an innate desire to explore the world around them. It’s up to you, the parent, to teach them the difference between situations where it’s appropriate for them to do that, and situations where they’re expected to sit in one place, such as in a cafe or restaurant. Allowing your child free rein (particularly in environments where serving staff are carrying plates of hot food and beverages to other customers) is not appropriate. It’s much easier to instil good habits from the get go than to have allowed a toddler to get up and wander around a cafe then subsequently choose some arbitrary age where you tell him it’s no longer allowed and he must sit down… not only is it the accepted etiquette, it’s literally for their own safety and that of other patrons and staff…

I'm Gen X and I agree in part. I think modern parenting is better in lots of ways than how a lot of us Gen X kids were parented. We weren't played with as much or interacted with as much as parents do now, and we weren't listened to as much either. Our opinions weren't taken seriously a lot of the time because we were children, there was still an element of 'seen and not heard'/'elders and betters' in the air even though this ethos was on the way out. We were smacked. From what I can tell, parenting in general has improved a lot in these regards.

However, I believe bad parenting is worse now than it's ever been.