has parenting changed since the 70's thru the 80's 90's and now?

[hermykne]

or is the methodoly still the same just it moretalked about and discussed.

my questions is a result of my mum witnessing my dd bowing her top in a lovely interiors shop yesterday. my mum couldnt believe it, to me it happens occasionally but i dont put dd in an environment where i know it all gets to much for her and tiring that often.

my mother rang me this evening to say she needs to day nap (as we did as kids til we wnet to school at 4), my dd is at preschool and 4 /1/2.shes up at 7.15 or so , bed at 8 or earlier sometimes. what more can i do?

shes a busy little girl. i try to distract etc all the recomended things one does but my mum thinks this is a whole new way of parenting and not done in her time (shes only 58!).
i know my mother didnt have many firends when we were small who were out age. tbh i dont thing she had one friend who had kids the same age and none older. she had us at 23 and 24. and hercircle was much smaller than mine and there just wasnt as many people in the world then ! (ie our former home town)

my mum doesnt partake much in my dds daily life. its christmas since she last visited my house and she lives 40 mins away. i visit her every 2 wks or so. when kids not at school. she never baby sits for me or offers. any time i asked (about 3/5 time in all honestly) i got no it didnt suit.

but i do get on with her and shes very generous with gifts - maybe a book or something small.

any thougts welcome.

whats bowing her top

my dd is nearly 5 and that wouldn't be enough sleep for her. she needs at least 11.5 hours, pref 12. If she has activities as well as school then she needs more (either an early night or a nap).

but other than that I suspect you mum's memory has accentuated the good and diminished the bad bits of childcare. it happens a lot!

zippi - I assumed it should be "blowing"

Kids are definatley busier nowadays. When I was a kid (in the 70's/80's) I never did out of schhol activities untill I was 10 and joined girls brigade, hardly anyone had birthday parties and if you did it was at home. My mum and dad just used to look at me in a certain way and I behaved myself - so they tell me.

Don't know what they did that was different though.

lol

I was puzzled..thought it mught be a wooden toy as posh interiors shop!

What do you think? Is she getting enough sleep? My DS at that age (ie when at day nursery 3 days/week, before starting school) needed 11.5 hours a night. When he started reception he needed more but didn't get it. Now he is 6 and in Y1 he is still on 11.5 and still needs it. Not all his friends are the same.

i know that when my mum had my eldest brother (early 60s) she really hardly went anywhere with him until school happened. That was partly because she loves gardening rather than socialising, and says she liked just pottering round the garden while he ate daisies/helped. But also, no car at that time, no carseats, not much public transport or money for it, nothing like as much parent/baby provision in terms of organised activities, either community or commercial. Shopping was a fairly rare occurence really. So tantrums in a shop or in public probably were more rare, in that tired small child and public place were a less common combination.

Also am I right in thinking you could leave your child with more people without getting told off like any old teenager from down the road... not that my mum did this either.

But otherwise, I agree with sP that your mum has largely forgotten the bad bits. Good to know it happens eventually...

I had DD in 1986 and DS in 1991... there was a lot of changes in that time... like breastfeeding techniques had changed for one thing. DD fed 10 mins each side. DS i was told to feed from one nork only per feed. I couldnt get on with it, so went back to my 1986 ways.

I quickly learned to ignore everything my mother suggested re. parenting.

When she had me in 1977 I was taken away and she woke up (from caesarean anaesthetic) and nobody even bothered to tell her whether she'd had a girl or a boy.

By the time I had my DS (2003) she still didn't know about 'back is best', don't put hats on them in bed, bf on demand is ok (even good!), newborns don't need to be fed water, etc.

When she had me I was particularly 'bonny' apparently (ie fat) and the nurses at the hospital used to hand me out to random visitors who wanted to cuddle something.

Whole different world!

As for the daytime nap thing some of my family live in France and the kids are put down for a nap in school there, not sure what age this ceases but was def the case at 4.

Having said that my DS is 3.5 I would never have the time to give him a nap now, nor would I want to he is up from 7.30am to 9 pm as it is and spends most of that time running, bouncing and throwing himself off places he probably shouldn't. He doesn't need anymore time to reload!

Tantrums are normal I hate them as much as the next mum but face it, whatever we do (and however much sleep the kids get) they are going to happen, sometime or other.

I remember my mum saying (much to my shock and horror) that I should give my toddlers a 'bloody good hiding' whenever they had tantrums.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.... had that quoted to me way too much.

Now my DS and DD are teenagers, my mum admits that I was right to bring them up the way I did. She admits that I have a much better relationship with them than she did with me and she says she 'takes her hat off to my wonderful parenting skills'. Amazing.

Transport is far better - DC1 large bulky pram could only shop in walking distance until she could go into fold up buggy - then in 1997 the flat floor kneeling buses and lightweight lie back buggies for newborns arrived and could take DC4 anywhere (couldn't use slings as all mine were huge creatures as babies with 9-10lb birthweights and scalebusting growth)

It's all very well saying a given child should have more sleep, but sometimes ... well, since 2.9 or so (now 3) any nap my DD has comes straight off her nighttime sleep. And then some - she had half an hour in the car the other day, wouldn't go to sleep until an hour and a half later than usual at bedtime, and was up at the normal time the next day. She seems to get by, and isn't given to tantrums (had an almight one tonight tho).

Different parenting ... I have seen a lovely bit of cinefilm of myself in 1972, being fed my bottle and then some pureed apple. The film is dated, I was 33 DAYS OLD. My mum was given drugs to dry her milk up, and was horrified four years later when she wasn't allowed the same when my brother was born - felt the doctor wanted to punish her. My parents did things so differently, but to their enormous credit have never once been dismissive of modern parenting or medical guidelines. I think they think DD has us wrapped round her little finger (and they're right) but they seem to take it in their stride.

Day to day, I suspect things were different ... a bit more community (mum was a navy wife, which helped) and a lot more housework (more labour-intensive methods, plus mum has always had higher housekeeping standards than me).

I think babies/children had more naps because there was nothing else to do! As a child I didn't go to any pre-school music/dancing/whatever, there was only one telly programme at lunchtime and an hour and a half in the afternoon. Shops closed on Wednesday afternoons and all day Sunday. You didn't have tons of toys, and were pretty much expected to just fit in, sit down and shut up! When I was about 5 or 6 my nan used to clean this lady's house, full of all sorts of ornaments and breakable nick-nacks (she and the major had been in India and Hong Kong so they had tons of stuff) - I had to go with her in the school hols as mum worked, so I just sat on the sofa with my book until it was time to go. Couldn't imagine either of mine being able to ever do that! Yes I had tantrums (my mum tells me the teacher would make the other kids stand round to watch at infant school - try that now and social services would be on her case for mental abuse!) but I was also in fear of a slap so it was better not to!

zippi
dd i definietley feel needs 11 /12, up to christmas new year she was sleeping 12 hrs it was brilliant and then it just changed.

senora - re memory i think yourright but she had a much younger brother she loked after too.

bozza - no i dont think she gets enough sleep, her brother sleeps sound 11+ hrs at night and hes 2 1/2 and hes generally in good form til about 6pm.

choosyfloosy - the no car /car seats and money constraints is very true as well - but i think if i said that to my mum she'd be "blowing" again! and yeah any friend who'd have a child of similar age would recognise the scenario immediatly.

tamz77 - thanks for your contribution

the moon - my mum usually gives me great praise but because she limits her visits she doesnt see the whole picture. that s beyond my control i suppose

lackof gravitas - wow at the film footage. thats amazing to see yourself at 33 days old and the puree!!

housemum - you are so right - less to do - and telly was much less. and a my mother produced the wooden spoon once in our lives that i remember it distinctly. but sheagreed with me yesterday about not slapping my dd for her tantrum.

thanks all
emailed a friend who has 4 and a mum who has 11 grandchildren so her point of view echoed mine.

housemum, that is a ludicrous statement. bbies didn't nap more 20 years ago because there was nothing else to do.

But the opposite - babies and children nap less now because they have too much to do is true. and it's not good for them.

senora
what time does your dd get up at in the morn and is it the same every day, i presume you have her in bed 12 hrs before that?

I actually do think that a lot of children nowadays (not all) are chronically sleep deprived. This is a result of our busier lifestyle which is not always a good thing but difficult to correct actually because the fact is we are living in the now and not 30-50 years ago.

Women and children definitwly went out and about less in the past. My mother was a childminder in the late 60's and told me that she looked after 4 children under 5 (plus my sister and me so 6 in total) with a few hours help from a local teenager (no ofsted in those days !!)

She almost never took the children out (far too complicated and she didn't even have a double buggy) - we just played in the house and in the garden all day. Nowadays a childminder who never took her charges out to toddler groups etc would get very little work. In those days it was perfectly normal not to go out as much with young children so it was much easier for children to sleep when they wanted/needed to.

Doesn't help us much though as things just aren't like that now.

I'm amazed by the suggestions that women and children went out less actually - my mother used to go shopping every day, queuing up in all the different shops and carrying everything home.

that was with 3 children under 5 btw.

Things even changed between my eldest and youngest child, when eldest was a baby shopped locally putting stuff under the pram, with the youngest put baby in buggy and went all over the place with bulk shopping arriving by tesco van

didn't have any of them in bed early though as don't want to be woken at 5am much to the shock of some of the older health visitors said babies and toddlers should be in bed by 6pm. I think she was ready to report me as DC1 was still having afternoon nap at 4pm when she turned up for eighteen month check up. That's the other difference the health visitors were bossier

Yes Kathy she probably went to the shops every day but she probably didn't attend mother and toddler groups, go to various children's classes/parties etc. Subsequent babies & toddlers in familes with school age children spend a lot of time getting in and out of cars while their older siblings are ferried around.

Also school age children walked to school on their own a lot more so younger siblings were less likely to be taken out twice a day at set times every single day regardless of their sleep needs.

I don't know, Lazy - we did go to playgroup 4 times a week.
True about older children being more independent and the consequences of that, though.

My dcs have never slept more than 11 hours at night - bed at 8, up at 7. My DD gave up her daytime nap at just turned 3, my DS at just turned 2 (horrors!) so now I'm a bit concerned that they're sleep deprived. Are they? They don't meltdown late afternoon/early evening. It never occurred to me that they needed more sleep.

Agree with everything everyone else has said about children having more activities these days. Children in my DDs class (she's in Year 1) have amazingly elaborate parties for 20 or 25 children, clowns, bouncy castles, etc. Not just sandwiches and cake in the garden for 4 or 5 friends/neighbours like when I were a girl (back in the 60s this is).

It is so easy to fall into this trap of having your whole life revolve around your children - and I'm as guilty as the next Mum - rather than letting them fit in with you and what you need to do.