to be annoyed by namby (ineffectual) middle class parents?

[ElenorRigby]

I have started to bring the kids to a play area not far away in quite a well to do part of the city.

I was quite shocked to find really bad brat behaviour from children of middle class parents.

Picture: Tarquin, Tasha or whoever being shitty to their parents, other children, other parents.

Then Tarquin/Tasha's parents limply say something like "Oh dear, that's not very nice" "Please don't be like that" or so on

Their kids of course carry on as usual

I took DS2 out for his birthday treat and we went to the zoo.
they have a playground there and DS2 tried to playqueueing nicely and waiting his turn. It was totally impossible as he was pushed out of the way, knocked over and generally beaten up by a load of brownies.

Fucking Brown Owls and their wishy washy rules.

I blame broadly middle aged woman.

As other posters havesaid there's a difference betweenconfident respectful children and arrogant, self-obsessed little brats with a msiplaced sense of entitlement who seem to be ebcoming more and more the norm.

isn't that often a matter of perception of the same variety of 'freedom fighter vs terrorist' knd?

i mean, especialy as people are wont to view their own DCs as 'confident', 'creative' and friendly and other people's DC's as 'aggressive', 'messy' and 'out of control'.

my DCs are perfect :p, of course.

Kids today heh? Not like our parents/grandparents ever said the same thing...oh wait...

i seem to remember Socrates commenting that the youth of Athens was not what it used to be.

i thought research showed todays kids as less likely to hit/ more likely to think their parents did a good job?

i think that alot of parents read too many parenting books and get their knickers in a twist about the concept of doing 'psychological damage' to their DC's. Consequentially they avoid almost any form of discipline apar from the 'kind hands' variety (phwarr phwarr).

IMO not enforcing any kind of discipline is likely to leave kids miserable, as they then are made to feel they are in control and don't like that responsibility....

a non-choice that ends up as the wrong choice.

certainly in the case of a certain family i am married to acquainted with the total lack of any kind of discipine was v. damaging to their lives (expulsion (even from a school being paid to take them!) and one in prison...from a wealthy family)

you don't have to look very far on the boards of Mumsnet to find people doing this though. at least if they're here, they're getting some help though....

'MillyR and emkana- me too. Hence many trips to Science Museum and the like where my dcs patiently queue up to go on things only to get barged out of the way by indulged offspring of lazy ineffectual mc parents!'

I've had this, too. My children don't queue barge but often lose out to hooligans.

There was a woman at our carol concert last year who just kept smiling indulgently at her Year 1 as he disrupted their carol rendition. I wanted to poke her in the ribs and suggest that she stop making eye contact with him so that the poor teacher stood some hope of getting him to behave.

CloudDragon - almost my entire experience of this phenomenon is based on my observations of maldapted child behaviour around the leafy streets of North Oxford. I know exactly what you mean and I probably even personally know some of the DCs of whom you speak.

I with Milly re the angst that I have been too strict. My DD is a mild mannered little soul, very sensitive and too aware of other people's feelings - also to the extent that she thinks she isn't as important, no matter what we tell her.

My DD's previous school is packed with over confident bullies spirited little darlings, most of whom, I am sure, have never been told 'no' in their lives. But they are all supremely confident. We moved her due to the daily low lovel bullying and exclusion, she just couldn't accept it/grow a skin thick enough to deal with it as the school insisted she should.

A good friend recently said, .."but you've made X (my DD) so reserved..." but actually given the choice between my DD and her DD (who aged 10 cannot sit at the table) I know whom I would chose.

I also, like a previous poster, seem to have many friends who are lovely, well adjusted educated folk who have the DC from hell - plenty of namby pamby ineffectual, 'don't stifle his creativity' going on there.

Mind you, we're all fine about attacking the middle classes (and I myself hate the phrase "kind hands" with a passion) but no-one dares attack the (I won't call them working classes,as that's now a misnomer) so maybe the "benefit classes" where a small but very irritating minority let their kids "play out" because they can't be arsed to look after them, and then when they terrorise to death poor people like Fiona Pilkington and her disabled daughter, those parents just cackle that "it's kids being kids". Or they blame the schools, or they blame the police. Or they say "it's hard work being a single mum and having 9 kids". So why the fuck didn't you take the pill then, which has been available for 40 years? Or what about all the 15 year olds boys in gangs stabbing each other in London - who's parenting them? It's just so "right on" on mumsnet nowadays that we only dare attack the middle classes, as they're the only ones who might not come round and put a brick through our windows! Let's not push it all onto the wimpy middles, annoying though they are.

KIds of all classes can be very badly behaved and have equally useless and ineffectual parents, they all just go about it in differnt ways that's all!

I guess the middle class useless and lazy parenting is better known as unconditional parenting what a complete load of bo*cks that is

i'm failry certain it's not a new phenomena, or that it's related to just one social group, but that kind of submissive parenting drives me nuts.

and what REALLY gets me, is that people don't realise that they are going to make their child MORE unhappy by allowing them to behave how they want.

So, to my friends whose son woke up the entire campsite before 6 am, because of his temper tantrum. YES if you intervene earlier, you can avoid the scene, it's your job as a parent to show him how to control his emotions. NO it isn't just that he was expressing how we all felt, so that's not ok then, really, is it. and NO you shouldn't comfort, and support his tantrum as the only thing you do, because you just let him get so upset without telling him to calm down. oh, and by the age of 5, it is fairly unusual to have those kind of tantrums several times a day, complete with kicking & hitting.

and then they wonder why dd doesn't want to play with him? see, if you don't help your kids, they end up losing out & it is your fault.

I don't think that children with more "boundaried" parenting are generally less confident, I think there's all sorts of things going on which contribute to a child's confidence. Some children just are more sensitive to things, and like confidence, that's a good trait in many ways as well as a problem in some ways.

I think I'm quite firm with my children (though nothing like as authoritarian as my own parents) and they are fairly confident, in fact one is utterly over-confident and needs her ego squashing at regular intervals She just loves pushing the boundaries to have a good argument, if you don't rise she'll push further. I don't think letting her get away with everything would help much, she wants to argue. and I'm quite like that too.

when I used to employ people in my previous life, the ones who were "confident" in the way we're describing it were generally far worse - it often meant they felt anything vaguely menial was "beneath them", they were way too quick to put their rights above the needs of the team and in general you could tell a spoiled child a mile off. They didn't usually last long and were first out during redundancies. Somewhere, somehow, decent folk do win out, for all those (like me) who worry that they are teaching their own kids manners and kindness whereas the rest of the world isn't bothering.

Some of us mums who are firm on discipline just wouldn't embarrass ourselves by having a 'showdown' in public with our offspring. But be sure that they will get a 'telling off' in the car/on the journey home.

'nobody says no to their kids anymore' - is this a joke?

Perhaps posters who think this should try living in the real world, on the streets, on public transport etc where parents say no all the time, along with 'shut the fuck up', 'I'm going to fucking batter you' and 'the bad man's coming to get you' etc etc.

Christ on a bike. Outrageous hypocrisy imo to slag off namby pamby MC parents but being too namby pamby to admit that much of the truly harmful, upsetting stuff happens amongst whatever it is that we now call the 'working class'.

I travel by bus every day and trust me, yelling swear words at small kids is commonplace amongst parents from the er, less expensive end of town.

I'd rather listen to some plummy voiced Bodenista reasoning with Jocasta all day long than listen to poor Beyonce get told she's a fucking wee bastard, if we're flinging around the class stereotypes.

Hey kickass:

"YES if you intervene earlier, you can avoid the scene, it's your job as a parent to show him how to control his emotions"

Do you want to have a go with my 6yr old then? We've 'intervened' till we're blue in the face. What shall we try now? Physical violence?

Things are not always that simple.

Sorry kickass - that was a bit mean. Just feeling very sore about DS#2 atm. And at the end of my rope TBH.

There is a lot to be said for

"Would you stop that, please?"

which is my usual admonishment to my DCs. Not shouted, or snapped, just said - but said firmly.

And yes, I do think it's important to say please.

ormiron, that's ok. i know some kids are easier than others, but in this case, i witnessed the whole thing. there was no attempt to say calm down, or distract, or say no. just 'are you upset? are you going to cry?' as if they were encouraging him, and then later, they just said he was expressing how everyone else felt. well, i happened to have been awake, but previous to said tantrum, dh & dd had been happily asleep.

i do think that at 5.50 am, SOME attempt should be made to keep kids quiet on a campsite - read them a book, give them a toy/food etc.

and perhaps, when he kicked his younger sister, it would have been good to actually move him away (there was space) rather than just say 'now now', before he did it again?

ROFL at 'are you going to cry'

How odd.

I am MC - I am a parody of a MC Mother (Waitrose, Farmers Markets, Prep schools, Boden, Cath Kidson, Coffee mornings, Tennis, long straight hilighted hair and a gundog)

But even I am sick of some parenting. Recently on the local steam train, "Horatia (I kid you not) do not climb on the table darling, yes I know it is very funny but you mustn't put your feet up on the seats. Look at the sign, it says not feet on seats or tables. Hugo no do not get up there with your sister, no darling come down...."

It was a monologue of mammoth proportions, the children were appalingly behaved and took not one iota of notice. It hissed quietly to mine, "Please stil nicely" whilst smiling in an embarrassed fashion as Horatia's mother tried to catch my eye in a conspiritorial way. She wasn't even outnumbered (as I was) as she had her mother with her, the mother also made me shudder as she referred to her grown up daughter repeatedly as 'baby' .

I have encountered a LOT of highly arrogant, completely ineffectual individuals in my life time (work in an investment bank; we're crammed to the ceiling with these people). They are overwhelmingly upper-middle class, though I know that this problem isn't just limited to particular social strata, it's just that individuals who went to public schools etc. are taught to be so damned arrogant and blind to their own faults, that they think they can get away with anything.

Help me out here. Is it now officially OK to say that members of certain social classes have negative character traits?