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.

Not the same. This is conflating neglect and parenting. I know noone who would act like that.

My teen dd said to me that she observes in her peers that it’s the kids with harsher, stricter parents who are the ones more likely to be off doing stuff behind the parents backs. Essentially if they’re not afforded much respect by their parents, then it goes both ways.

Choosing your battles is a parenting skill but people are going to have different things they think need to be enforced or not. I see this even amongst my friends who have broadly similar parenting styles as me, there are still differences in what we think is important or where the boundaries will be placed. It depends on how we were parented ourselves and what things we prioritise and value.

Obviously some folk are just crap, lazy parents but you can certainly be the biggest boundary enforcer and be a terrible parent.

Also, the family unit of parent and child is not a democracy. A parent is not there to be popular and liked by their children. The parent is there to help the child grow up into an independent and resilient individual. It is a good thing for children to be curbed and directed away from destructive behaviour and towards positive behaviour. Sometimes this involves saying no and meaning no. Sometimes it involves punishment- consequences for making poor choices.

I, respectfully but totally, disagree with you.
It’s all about parents reneging on their responsibilities because they don’t feel they have the right to instruct/guide/give boundaries to their children. Or rather, that’s the excuse they use.

I really respect the fact this generation is more aware of attachment and trying to help children feel safe to express emotions. Emotional regulation is really important. I work in older adult mental health, and honestly, a lot of that generation really struggle with this. I get women telling me their traumatic life stories, then in the same breath telling me they have no trauma and don't understand why they have mental health problems. And a lot of older men find it genuinely difficult to talk about and recognise their feelings.

However, I think we've taken gentleness slightly too far. You can help children to co-regulate, whilst maintaining boundaries. I also truly don't think everything single conversation needs to end up about emotions whenever you're asking them to do something. Children also need to learn that sometimes we just do things because we're told to, as we have to as adults in the workplace.

Children can absolutely voice and opinions on rules and they don't have to like them, and I'll always explain why I'm asking them to do something. But I'll still expect it to be done anyway lol. I hate the 'because I said so' mentality.

I also think people are too nervous to mess their children up now by using a firm tone or occasionally yelling. A secure and otherwise happy child will not be fucked up for life because you've yelled at them once a week or whatever.

I think parenting advice has not been helpful in recent years. I have a 5yr old and now ignore it, tried gentle parenting and realised it was just not working for us.

I read this thing in twitter recently, 2 scenarios

1. get in the car we are going to see grandma and it doesn’t matter if you don’t like it.
2. I know you don’t like going to grandmas house but she loves you and will be disappointed if you don’t go

I think a lot of the parenting advice we get ends up with people taking the second approach which is actually really quite manipulative and dishonest. The first one acknowledges that seeing grandma is not what the child wants but also communicates that it’s tough shit and life is full of stuff we don’t want to do.

I think thats a microcosm of how people are encouraged to parent now, lots of discussion and negotiation. I spent a lot of time reading parenting books because I had a very dysfunctional childhood and I genuinely tried to implement it but tbh it just made things worse and left my DD feeling like no-one was in charge I think. Too much negotiation, too much navel gazing about stuff. I had an anxiety disorder myself and I actually think a lot of the more recent parenting advice would make fertile ground for anxiety to grow. Children shouldn’t see their parents being helpless, it’s scary.

I do think choosing your battles is reasonable. Too much screen time “nope” you want to jump in that puddle and you are going to have a shower anyway “yup, go for it”. I try to say yes if I can (I do forget this sometimes though).

I think the next generation of parents are going to change how they parent again because they didn't grow up feeling safe with boundaries in place and secure that their parents were in charge. Children grow and explore and feel safe taking risk because they know that they can do so safely because their have experienced adults to provide a safety net. Or else they are going to not feel able to be parents themselves. Youth mental health issues are soaring and if that isn't down to how society is currently parenting what is the cause?

Some people seem to just want to 'be friends' with their children and don't seem to realise that they can be friendly but also teach them stuff like right from wrong.
My exh always went for letting our son do whatever he wanted when he was with him, and couldn't understand how come our son went to bed at a particular time etc and ate vegetables etc when he was with me. My exh just couldn't grasp the idea of setting some boundaries that were in a child's best interests.
Our son is an adult now. He doesn't hate me for the way I raised him and still visits frequently. We get on very well, and now he's an adult we ARE good friends. It doesn't have to be either/or

Completely agree with this, we have a mental health crisis in young people, theres a lack of resilience and I do think we have to rethink how we have been told to parent tbh.

I think so much depends on personality. I have two sons and if I just had the younger one, I would feel the same as you - yes, sometimes he doesn't want to do something and there are toddler tantrums, but even at 3yo he's responsive to boundary setting and things like counting down from three and sharp looks.

The older one (aged 6) is a different story! If he's not in the right mood, heels get dug in over anything and he simply will not do what he is told. I try to pick my battles, but also if you have a child who simply will not (for example) go upstairs to bed when asked (and has always been like this), what do you do? I try to minimise physical intervention, because that's absolutely not a long term solution (it escalates the situation plus he's getting big and heavy!!), I'm totally opposed to corporal punishment. He doesn't react to punishments like screen time removal, in fact it winds him up to worse behaviour. He is getting a bit better as he gets older but fundamentally he's a much more defiant personality. He's had to have a few behaviour interventions at school - teacher reckons he's within the boundaries of normal for his age, just at the "strong - willed boy" end of the boundaries. Which was pretty much his first report from nursery at 18 months.

TLDR: it's not as simple as saying just "be the boss" and "set boundaries" with some kids!!!

I agree with this. You only have to watch children coming out of nursery and the number of parents who barely look up from their phones.

@Dwappy Oh absolutely, that is not on. In that situation I would have told my child as soon as he started that he cannot do that as the things do not belong to us and are needed for other patients - things may get broken and would be very expensive to replace or they may be dangerous and he may get hurt. We don’t touch other peoples things unless we are invited to do so. If my child couldn’t follow this then I would have taken it upon myself to leave the appointment, paid for it in full and apologised to you for the hassle.

I expect him to listen if he’s told no and stop doing whatever it is but I will always allow him to question if he doesn’t understand why he is being told no and I will always do my best to give an explanation.
And I would have taken a quiet toy/activity book or something to keep him occupied if I knew it was going to be longer than he could reasonably sit for.
Mine is 4.5 and would absolutely not have behaved like that in an appointment unless he was having a very very off day

Same. I’ve already warned my rather mouthy nine year old that the day he calls me a swear word will be the day he lives to regret that, as absolutely no one calls me a swear word to my face. My visceral reaction to that has led me to chase people in my twenties. So whilst I’m pretty relaxed about cursing generally and accept my teenager swears with his mates etc. No one will be calling me a biatch or a slag and not face some fierce reaction. That’s a hard boundary.

Honestly? You won’t like my response, but I shouted. They were scared. I wasn’t violent, I just wasn’t afraid to show them when I was at the end of my tether. I didn’t let them run circles around me. Tech was removed, privileges removed. I asserted myself as the boss. I see my threats through. I also reward good behaviour, highly. I very, very rarely shout, but setting those firms boundaries earlier on means they don’t test them as they get older (well not far!)

I remember growing up and knowing what facial expressions of my mum scared me no end, she wouldn’t shout, or lift a finger, but it was just scary. You knew where you were. And I have that. And I think all parents should have that.

I know people think children shouldn’t be scared of their parents, but I vehemently disagree, I think until you’re mature enough to have learned respect and understand why we behave etc (which I can confirm myself, and my children very much have done) fear helps, you don’t need to rule on fear, but at the start, when they don’t understand, it helps.

This is it, you wouldn’t accept it from another adult, so why would you a teen?

Did you mean to prove my point? There plenty I can do, actually. My house, my rules.

Oh, I shout! But it doesn't have much impact. And I don't really want him to be scared of me. He's definitely more scared of his dad and I don't think it improves behaviour, just makes him more devious and inclined to try to cover stuff up. He's not a really bad kid, but he's someone who responds much better to carrot than stick and who is very rigid in his thinking. But you can't always have a treat or reward for doing something and you're not always right. We absolutely enforce that things have to happen and do not let poor behaviour stand, he's just far far far less responsive to most of the methods mentioned on this chat than his brother and I really try to focus on the important things - if he's wriggling on the bus is it really that important he sits totally still, for example? But some people would say it is.

My parents set tons of boundaries for us. All of the ones you describe and when discussing my own teens with mum the other day she told me how vile we all were as teens - could be related to the rules or just the fact we were teenagers. I definitely pushed back and broke at lot of rules, when I learnt to drive that was the start of a new leash of life for me. By the time I was 18yrs I was dying to get out of the house. No one can say my parents didn't try. I was also smacked as a smaller child.
I don't want either of my teens to do this so do encourage open talk and discussion as well as picking my battles and using reasoning, the idea of my 17yr old following in my footsteps makes me feel sick. Thankfully she's not turning in to me and has her head screwed on. Even so though I have my bumpy days with her where she feels constantly in a grump and as happy as anything around her friends - thats pretty normal though I think.
I do have a friend who talks alot about how her boys are so polite etc... and that they would never break the rules because there scared of her. Is that better?

Neglect isn't the same as boundaries. I was once of those kids out from dawn till dusk with my friends, but we came home at dusk because we knew there'd be hell to pay if we didn't. Because my parents parented.

Yes, but you weren't being parented while you were left to your own devices who knows where for hours on end. That would be described as neglect nowadays, and the easier option than actively trying to keep your kids around and entertain them.

This, absolutely. I used to have a friend with dcs the same age as mine, who’d impose some sanction for poor behaviour, but her child would then scream and roar for 20 minutes - friend would then give that helpless ‘what can you do?’ look - and give in.
Cue instant silence and triumphant beam from the child - ‘I’ve won again!’
It was very frustrating to witness!

I used to see the same when I worked in a library - mother of twin girls of maybe 7 would repeatedly tell them that if they didn’t stop running around shouting, there would be no DVD to take home. (Obv. years ago!).
So they’d both start very loud wailing when they were about to leave with no DVD - whereupon she would absolutely inevitably give in.
Children will run rings around weak parents.

Never stopped in our house, it is North Korea, because it was liberal California x 10 in my parents house and North Korea in my grand-parents house. Never stopped in like-minded friends' homes.

My grandparents taught me that civilisation and culture mean prohibition (as in you are forbidden to upset people, you are forbidden to drink drive, to commit crimes) and then civilisation and culture evolve into suppression (I suppress in myself the desire to smash windows, be nasty, kick people) or failing that, repression (my dgm beat out of my db any desire to kick me) or the society does it (prisons) when families failed to help their children evolve along the 'prohibition-suppresson' line.

It is easy to enforce if you start early. 'Enforce' is key here.

Laziness

That's not quite what we're talking about though. The poster I quoted mentions her neighbour pleading with her child to come in for bed. There is no world in which that would have happened with me and my parents. That's the sort of boundaries and parenting I mean.

Yeah I know what you mean. I certainly would never have attempted to negotiate with my parents, I even find that hard as an adult. I was terrified to be even a minute past curfew and the threat of "we'll discuss this with your father when he gets home" struck fear into me. So yes, I guess that in that respect I was immaculately behaved, but I have no desire or need for that kind of control over my kids.