Parents who discipline their kids, how do you cope around those who don't ?

[Peppapigforlife]

This isn't a dig at any parenting style or type of people in particular but if you're a parent who instills rules and discipline in your child, how is it for you when you're with your child around friends who do the opposite? I personally find it quite hard to have another child constantly pushing on my boundaries and my DD's boundaries (different examples if experienced are going through my buggy when I'm not next to it, poking DD within an inch of her life because they think it's cute, asking me intrusive questions, giving toddler sweet after sweet at night time just because they keep asking, in front my my dd) whilst the parent just sits back and let's it happen. Just wondering if anyone has any tips or do you just avoid these types of parents?

Oh don’t be ridiculous.

@Smallredclip I'm sorry you don't feel as confident in your own parenting, but that's why I'm here, to improve my own confidence, awareness and skills through speaking to others. İt works, you should try it instead of criticising others for engaging with others in a conversation and sharing their experiences and feelings.

@Thisusedtobeaniceneighbourhood hahaha that's excellent that you confiscated the pellets - you have a lot more guts than i would!

I was 21, jet lagged and pissed off.

@Thisusedtobeaniceneighbourhood hahaha brilliant

@Thisusedtobeaniceneighbourhood, yes, well done. I wouldn't have taken the pellets, am not that confident but I would have said something to the parents! ( Who lets a child take a gun on a plane ??!!).
To answer the question of what to do when a child is kicking your seat, I would probably have a word with the parents. Most parents would be apologetic, etc

Well they were fired into my lap. I returned them once with a glare and the second time declined to return them. We hadn’t even taken off at this point!

I would definitely talk to the child first 'please don't do that' and then the parents afterwards if necessary.

Surestart children centres were great for giving me a break when I was on my second maternity leave. DS1 was undiagnosed at that point but he was a handful. Unfortunately loads of them have been closed since 2010.

@Thisusedtobeaniceneighbourhood

There are some very rude and unempathetic people on this post.

OP, with respect, you have one child who is two. You don’t really know which direction your parenting will go in, and it is all to do with the child really. Pretty much all of us would really like to be 100% calm, non shouty parents. Not all of us have children who will respond best to that. And honestly, I would quite like to go back to parenting a 2 year old, in many ways it is much simpler.

And I don’t really think you can extract SEN from this conversation. It is a massive factor in how some people need to parent. I’m sure sometimes people might see me being what they consider to be permissive, and it’s to do with context, and what else is going on for my child. At other times they might see me being what they might feel is overly hard on him and that would be because at that moment he needs me to communicate firmly and clearly. He doesn’t really understand anything other than a hard no.

In some ways I’m really lucky because he is an absolute dream at school, and for other people, but that also makes life difficult because people don’t know/understand how he falls apart at home. I’ve just had to be pretty firm about something that has broken and I can’t fix because otherwise he will translate it as me not wanting to when the truth is it’s just broken.

I agree with what you've said about SEN here. You can't extract it. With young children especially lots of parents will be dealing with undiagnosed SEN too.

It was me who just brought it into the conversation by mentioning the little lad in our toddler group the other week. I wrote the post as a parent of a young child (age 5 now I was there with her younger sibling who is NT) who is autistic myself.

Not one of the parents in that group had an issue with the little boy not behaving in the same way as his NT peers. Not staying still, making way more noise, approaching the children differently - no problem. I also could see that very clearly he couldn't control his behaviour, it was a loud setting with lots of sensory triggers and it wasn't working for him.

What everyone had a problem with was the fact that his behaviour was dangerous, children and adults were being shoved about and pelted with objects and his mother was sat smiling or looking at his phone. It was a problem with the lack of parenting, not the child and his needs.

Now was that group right for that little boy? No. It wouldn't have been right for my child who has autism either, she wouldn't have been destructive but at 2/3 she'd have cried until I took her out. That doesn't mean these children are segregated it means as parents we choose environments that are positive for them and get the best out of them. Not all environments are right for both NT children and children with additional needs. If they were the children wouldn't have additional needs would they, they'd just muck along happily with the NT children.

Parenting a child with SEN is hard work. I do let some (non dangerous but annoying) behaviours slide with my autistic child in the moment that I wouldn't with my NT child because sometimes you have to make that choice of 1) is my child actually capable in this moment of understanding and processing what I'm saying (usually no) and 2) is this a big enough deal to create the mother of all meltdowns right now when it would be better to remove her from the situation, calm her and talk her through why this behaviour is unacceptable later. My child knows what behaviour is acceptable and what isn't, she just can't always regulate herself well enough to control herself and when she can't it's my job to step in and help. Not all SEN children have the capacity that she does though.

What I do not ever do, is allow her to hurt or majorly disrupt other people. There's no excuse for that. I would remove her immediately even if it meant inconvenience because that is my job.

I always thought when I had a small baby I'd be a so called gentle parent. Until I became a parent of a toddler! I am not shouty, but I have to be way firmer than I ever thought I would be because mine need boundaries.

I have not read all the thread, but recognise how difficult this is.

We used to holiday every year with close friends and our children - then they had a child. Mayhem ensued. This child was so spoiled and was allowed to do whatever she wanted and would scream and thrash about if crossed at all. She ruled the roost. The holidays became a nightmare. It was so unfair on my children who watched this child get away with blue murder while they were expected to behave decently and with consideration for others. This child would be bought an ice cream, would gobble it down and instantly insist on being bought another - and her parents gave in rather than deal with it. And then there would be another ..........She would sit at the table and insist on having all the peas in the serving dish (in spite of the fact that we were all there round the table) - and her parents would give them all to her!! ......But ours did recognise it was wrong and said so to us.

It is very hard indeed when you want to tell this poor child to behave properly and cannot because the parents are there giving out a different message.

She was a poor child.....she has grown up with no self-control and no ability to deal with the real world. And no stable relationships.

And the holidays came to an end - it was not holiday!

"This isn't a dig at any parenting style or type of people in particular but if you're a parent who instills rules and discipline in your child, how is it for you when you're with your child around friends who do the opposite?"

I very much doubt there are any parents who thinks that they don't "instill rules and discipline" in their child, much less any parents who think they "do the opposite" of this (what's that -- going out of their way to discourage any rule-following??).

@ Peppapigforlife sometimes these types of difficult situations occur. At child age, we cannot accept the same level of behaviors from every child because children are in their learning phase.

I think you ever face such a situation the right thing you should do is to guide child’s parents who are behaving like that about how they can teach behave right way.

You can also guide to read online sources where parents can learn Positive parenting tips like beingthechosenone.org/positive-parenting-tips/