When did parents stop being the boss

[Justsayno123]

Completely aware that I sound like some 'outraged from Surbiton' letter into the Daily Fail... But when did parents stop being in charge of their kids?!

I live in a nice area and socialise with a lot of parents. These are well educated people who have achieved some degree of success in their lives and live in relative comfort. No SEN and a lot of the time the children are onlies. So many conversations recently where the other parent says 'well, I just can't make them' or 'I have to give them that choice' or 'I've given up on that one'. Examples of these things include phone usage, bedtime, mealtimes, attending events, or just essentially anything the child doesn't enthusiastically agree to do. I normally just smile politely but I want to scream at them to just take charge! You can make decisions to stop your child doing something which is not in their best interest. You have a duty to try to inculcate healthy ways of living - for their mental and physical health. That is literally your purpose as a parent. Urgh, I literally despair for the future.

True but at least kids went to school.
And we have such anxiety in some teens now

Don't know what kind of boss you have, but I can discuss and debate with mine and we have a friendly relationship. Ultimately he decides what's best for the business and that's what we do. A rudderless business doesn't work and neither does a family.

There s nothing inhuman about telling your kids when they need to go to bed so that they can get up and learn the next day. Or how their emotions might affect others around them etc.

I live in a nice area and socialise with a lot of parents. These are well educated people who have achieved some degree of success in their lives and live in relative comfort. No SEN and a lot of the time the children are onlies.. It’s a fairly self selected group though isn’t it? You are describing a very niche part of society. Rich, educated and no disability or other vulnerability and no siblings either. You have decided these parents are doing a rubbish job compared to who exactly?

Alot of parents ruled by fear in previous times, (some still do) threatening to smack the small human is the easiest way to claim control. Children tend to conform if they are scared.

Parenting breaks down into three area -

Threat - do xyz or you will get snacked/lose toy/ grounded etc
How successful this is depends on the consequences and how good the parents are at sticking too them. A smack would be quite affective, losing a toy or not being allowed to go out it depends how bothered they were about tge toy/activity in the first place. Whilst loss of treat etc is a suitable consequence it may not hold ground enough to prevent a reoccurrence.

Bribery/reward - can work quite well in the moment but can be tricky to manage and is unlikely to prevent future attempts.

Reasoning - this is the best method but takes a lot of time and patience. It also relies on the child being old enough to understand and being the personality type that likes to please /conform.

Basically it’s been recognised in the past twenty years that smacking/threatening children leads to attachment issues/poor mental health so it generally not used so much. This coupled with the fact tgat other methods do not always work effectively and often both parents work so a lot of the raising of children is taking place in childcare provision which will not be consistently good.

Some parents will have a relatively easy child who conforms / keen to please so they will smugly say it’s down to the parenting. When really it’s a combination of parenting/extended support /influence/life circumstances/personality .

Well I specifically said that so I didn't get the usual whataboutery on SEN and CoL. I'm saying these people tend to have the financial and mental resources to be a bit less lazy, yet they choose not to.

I think children now are just much more aware of how the world works.

The key is to be a very focused parent in the early to teenage years, instil excellent daily habits, routines, lead by example, surround them with good role models, for goodness sake feed them good food not fried crap, talk to them a lot! By the time they are teens fingers crossed they will have good foundations.

Since parents realised it was socially acceptable to abdicate their responsibilities

Rather than external force - how about aligning their will? I wonder how much this has to do with the decline of religion

i could say well done… but I will instead say that a lot depends on the temperament of the child/young person in question.

One sibling can be a handful and other like you describe.

Parents are uncomfortable with the sensation of saying no. So they say yes or back down. Kids are more and more comfortable with tantrums, even in public and taking liberties. To avoid a scene parents back down. A lot more parenting is done publicly than when I was young, we never went out as a family near as much as my grandkids do now.

I’m not sure it’s lazy to raise a child as you describe. I find it far more relaxing to live with polite well behaved children. It’s more about if you’d rather put the work in so you can relax later or relax now and deal with the fallout. Your group seems to comprise of the later take on life and their children are following suit.

Totally agree with @whynotmereally. I have two sons and frankly one can be reasoned with and the other can't!

Parents make the mistake of constantly repeating themselves without following through. I time and time again hear parents say please do this please do that and no consequences when children ignore them.

I don't consider my self my son's boss. I consider myself to be responsible for him and his development.

I mean lazy in the sense that it takes a bit of work to lay the ground rules - bedtime routine, mealtime etiquette, how children should behave in company, screen time limits etc. But then those things just become 'how we do things' and part of life. If you don't do that, you're setting yourself for constant push back and some parents decide that acquiescence in the face of that is just easier.

I also do not have particularly naturally compliant children!

Yes of course it’s my opinion. It’s a forum which invites opinions??!! I don’t see you providing evidence that supports what is presumably your opinion that they aren’t continuing to drop? Yet you appear to want me to?

Uhuh.

So sometimes you have to make a call on what is right for him, even if he doesn't like it, yes?

Yes my point was some people work now then coast, some coast then fix. I would say it’s harder work long run to do the latter but it probably all comes out in the wash.

I agree but I guess my point is they just don't bother to fix!

If an adult has paid for a seat, a 3 year old should be on your lap.

We also have a poor education system. One of the largest class sizes in the developed work, under resourced, expextations too high for some children and exhausted teachers.

Parents are very much still the boss in my family.

Good point religion does bring a set of values that align with good behaviour . Could it considered ruling by fear- the threat of hell? A decline in community too and social media may factor in. It’s true that parenting methods have changed but so has society and both are influential.

I agree that there is some degree of luck involved because kids can just be very different. If I only had one of my children I would also feel quite smug about my marvellous parenting and boundaries, the others, less so. The same parenting might produce a different result in a different child.
i also think as a pp has said the nature of modern family life where both parents are working means the time you have together becomes more precious and there is less willingness to use that to prove a disciplinary point. This works both ways - parents and children are able to enjoy each other more, women especially have fulfillment outside of the home which may make them “better” mothers in some respects in that they feel less trapped by the relentlessness of childcare, but then there is also the flip side which probably does lead to some of the issues identified above.

I have the answer to this one. Honestly I do. Parents stopped being able to parent their children when agencies and the general public intervened to say any punishment was unacceptable. Directly we decided as a society that an angry back and forth with a disobedient or unruly child was a marker for child abuse inside the house then we took all the power away from the parents.

Some of us had jobs where we had training and were able to find effective methodology to deal with our children and are still raising kids with decent manners (only just and often the manners are only seen outside the house). Some of us won the genetic lottery and just had kids with passive personalities that needed minimal correction. Then there was a load of us that were too busy, too distracted or tired and hoped the schools would do it for us as we didn’t have the tools.

I think it’s the pendulum swing from when children didn’t have much of a voice in the household - now we’ve gone right over to the child’s voice is the dominant one.

Too many parents abdicate difficult decision-making (together with taking responsibility for those decisions) to children, because they’re terrified of getting it wrong so don’t want that in their shoulders. All under the guise of allowing their children choice, to be heard etc etc. they don’t seem to be able to see that their children simply don’t have the capacity to make and take responsibility for those decisions. And that can sometimes slide into neglect, because they think their kids are so grown up, can look after themselves (seeing this happen with one of DD’s friends).

And then we wonder why children’s mental health is so bad.