To think that some parents are shit at parenting and that's why their children are little shits

[Itwasthe90s]

There, I said it. 😂
I'm sick of parents excusing appalling behaviour with everything but they actual problem - they're doing a shit job and need to do something differently, read a parenting book or go to parenting classes.
Hitting other children, being rude to adults and throwing a tantrum every time they hear NO shouldn't be brushed off like it so often is these days.
And don't get me started on parents who blame the teacher, the other child, or literally anyone except their own precious offspring.
Yes, children have additional needs. Yes, they have difficult days. But sometimes a badly behaved child is simply a badly behaved child whose parents refuse to set boundaries.
When did gentle parenting become synonymous with refusing to tell your child they're behaving like a little shit?
Go on, tell me I'm wrong.

YANBU. It’s a huge issue.

It's a huge issue, we are going wrong somewhere as a society, because it's really common. Most people love their children and want to do their best for them, so clearly something is amiss rather than it just being laziness.

I'm a Cub Scout leader, and am astonished by how the parents of some of the most poorly behaved Cubs rush to make excuses for their child rather than telling them off for whatever they've done that's bad enough to warrant a report to parents. I had the parent of one particularly difficult bully say that the other kids needed to "toughen up" and accept the name calling and awful rudeness his son dished out every week.

🙄

Yes, those of us whose children have additional needs have never even considered discipline, boundaries or consequences. You alone are the fountain of parenting knowledge, and maybe if my DS didn’t have a lazy, lame-ass weakling mother like me - clueless of such rocket science-y things as saying “absolutely fecking not, kiddo” - he wouldn’t be autistic.

That kind of thing?

People are not gentle parenting they are permissive parenting. Often lazy or lack of parenting.

My dts had a friend in nursery. She was banned from my house in p1. P7 I was down at out of school shouting about how her she's a manipulative crying little cunt (not those words obvs) , the same girl that at 4yo told me she hust cries to get what she wants. Got a phone call from head master backing me 100%, glad I'd said it.

I think that's the interesting part. I don't necessarily think it's that parents don't love their children or don't want the best for them. I wonder whether some parents have become so focused on protecting their child's feelings and self-esteem that they struggle to accept when their child has genuinely done something wrong.
Being told you've behaved badly isn't the same as being told you're a bad person. Surely one of the most important things we can teach children is how to take responsibility for their actions, apologise and treat other people with respect?
Otherwise we're surely not giving them something they need for life, and it's as bad as not educating them or getting them medical care

I agree. As a late dignosed autistic with an abusive and neglectful/ truama inducing upbringing that I'm still having therapy for now, I managed to never hit, kick, spit at or bite anyone.

Yanbu.

And they come from all walks of life...

I'm a teacher and recently I had a parent go mental at me because I dare mention her child had lied rather than owning up to a mistake. She was hostile and absolutely vile. And this parent is a deputy head at a primary school!

And the level of insolence in some kids is unreal. In the 1990s you wouldn't dare answer back to a teacher!! Nowadays it's a regular occurance.

Round of applause for you 😂👏🏻

Who knew all I had to do with my feral SEN kid was say “don’t do that”?

Well, given that there are adults who behave badly, it’s hardly surprising their children grow up with those norms.

Children with additional needs of various kinds are an entirely different matter, obviously.

I haven't said that parents of children with additional needs don't discipline their children, and I certainly haven't suggested that parenting has anything to do with causing autism. I've explicitly acknowledged that children have additional needs and difficult days.
My point is that having additional needs and needing appropriate boundaries aren't mutually exclusive. The boundaries and consequences might look different for different children, and obviously expectations need to be appropriate to the individual child. But surely we can recognise that without suggesting that every discussion about children's behaviour is an attack on parents of autistic children?

maybe if my DS didn’t have a lazy, lame-ass weakling mother like me - clueless of such rocket science-y things as saying “absolutely fecking not, kiddo” - he wouldn’t be autistic. That kind of thing? .

Of course not.
What shite.

YANBU. We are unable in this country to have the difficult conversation: that the current generation of parents are often ill-educated, under/un-employed and unable to cope with the discipline and grit of a productive life. And that is showing in their parenting and producing another generation of the same.

Break the cycle - bring people to adulthood productive and well educated and inventivised to work hard.

So often I hear
"X is diagnosed with Y, they can't help it".

No amount of autism or ADHD makes you a misogynistic woman hater saying nasty things to teachers and other professionals trying to help you.

Parenting and child development classes should be mandatory to access maternity and paternity pay. Or perhaps mandatory GCSEs?

Let's face it we are never going to solve all the problems in society and sadly we can't mass sterilize people until they have proven they are suitable to raise a child.

Unborn children already deemed to need protection from their own parents

There is something seriously wrong... generations of failure

That sounds appalling @KvotheTheBloodless - in the Cub Scouts, do you have any flexibility to deal with this, or same as schools (I.e. very little). What happened in that bully’s case?

Of course some people are shit parents. There are no qualifications required, no training provided, it's bloody hard. There have always been shit parents and there will always be shit parents. Some mothers eat their babies, shit parents aren't a human thing.

On a more serious note..

I actually think gentle parenting is a lot of absolute shit. I can’t gentle parent my kid, he’s the furthest from gentle he could possibly be.

His lack of understanding and communication does impact his behaviour, and his emotional regulation can make it almost impossible to manage.

But. We do actively teach him that his needs aren’t an excuse for aggressive behaviour. That he can be angry, but he cannot hurt people. That actions have consequences, in the limited way he understands. That no always means no, or we wouldn’t say it. That he will be removed from situations he’s either not safe or making others unsafe in.

Where I get pissed off is when other people don’t recognise that for our family, those messages have to be a work in LONG progress.

I agree that there have always been shit parents, I'm not arguing that modern parents are uniquely awful and parenting is ridiculously hard and probably harder than it ever has been.

I suppose what I'm wondering is whether we've become less willing to acknowledge that some children's behaviour really does stem from how they're being parented, rather than automatically looking for another explanation or someone else to blame.

I'm not expecting perfection from anyone. God knows, none of us gets a manual with the baby. But surely recognising when your child is behaving badly and doing something constructive about it is part of the job? I just think that specifically is a part that's being lost.

Well I agree - all children need discipline, AN or not. I’m an absolute sergeant major with mine, but even so, DS’ AuDHD/PDA presents as being a fidgety wee gobshite (low impulse control, high energy, huuuuge anxiety in public) so I’ve had all the eye rolls and stink eyes in public that I’ll ever need. They know jack shit about how I parent DS (just like you don’t actually know about the parenting skills - or additional needs - of the people you’ve started a thread to be judgy about). 🤷‍♀️

Well yes.

My DS (he is under 8s, so they are on their third year of games) played a football match today and the other team lost heavily. One of them came stomping over to DS, yelled "I hate you!" and kicked him. When the coach told him off he burst into tears and his mum came running over to defend him. There is an awful lot of shit parenting in kids' sports.

Yes there have always been shit parents.

But up until one/two generations ago there was enough civic and social responsibility that people derided poor parents and were happy to give badly behaved kids a bollocking / clip round the ear.

There was also more communal respect for institutions like school, Guides and church that kept behaviour in check and picked up the slack where parenting was poor.

A lot of that has a fallen away so poor parenting is less monitored / checked and more gentle permissive parenting is allowed to run rampant.

I do get that, and I can absolutely see how frustrating it must be to have people judging you when they have no idea what you're dealing with or how you parent behind closed doors.
My point isn't that every child who behaves badly has shit parents, or that additional needs magically disappear if you shout "NO" loudly enough. 😂 It's that some parents do seem to default to excuses rather than addressing their child's behaviour at all.
I appreciate there's a massive difference between a child struggling despite their parent's best efforts and a parent who refuses to acknowledge there's a problem in the first place. And you're right, we can't necessarily tell which we're looking at from a brief encounter in public.
I still think there's a wider issue with parents being reluctant to accept that their child can sometimes be in the wrong, though. I see it too often for them to all be in the same situation as you, I hear their excuses and I see them ignoring it, to the cost of others around them.

Someone told me off a few weeks back for hauling my 10 year old out of the road.

Like I should have left him there to get ran over. Or asked him nicely to get out of traffic.

Makes me wonder whether people want our children “disciplined” or not.