To anyone who gravitates towards the unconditional parenting end of the scale

[milkysallgone]

Do you quite often get the impression that other people are judging your parenting skills, and see you as 'a soft touch'? I do. I'm sure that pretty much everyone I know thinks that I let my dcs get away with too much.

Take dd (nearly 4) for instance; she is quite loud and boisterous at times, but I believe that she has a strong sense of what is right and wrong. I have never known her to once hit or hurt another child, she is never rude to adults, and is generally impeccably behaved when being cared for by others.

Yet I sometimes sense that because I'm not actively threatening/punishing/stifling her, people are a bit about my parenting style.

Anyones else get this?

feelinglucky - thank you for apologising, it's a truce. NOw go and do some work you lazy mare .

I think whatever you choose to do or not do as a parent can lead to you feeling judged by other people, rightly or wrongly. Sometimes they are judging, sometimes you're just oversensitive as you feel your entire choice of lifestyle is up for criticism.

As long as you are finding ways to teach your child how to get along with others (both children and adults) then I don't see the problem.

Personally I'm equally as judgy or sympathetic to any kind of parenting style, depending on how stressful my own day has been. I'd be fed up with parents who let their children run riot, but also fed up with ones who were constantly shouting at their children and being more of a pain than the children

Some wise words.
Mp - I agree, I try to make sure my dcs are not annoying the hell out of people.

I think a few incidents have just knocked my confidence recently. My Mum told me she thought dd was spoiled and needed a good smack not long ago. I was totally shocked by this and it's made me think "God do people really think that about us?"

don't feel bullied into toilet training too early. DS2 was 3.5. Took 24 hours, never looked back.

playdates are a bit tricky. At nursery, although they are in a peer group, iut's very 'guided'. At Ploaydates children can be very boisterous and loud - it's one of the few chances they get to all let off steam together. Thus, I tend to have an 'anything goes' attidtude, as long as there is no bullying, hitting etc.

However, I actively limit playdates to 2/week. I know mums that I meet who have a playdate every day (thus lots of boisterous play) with virtually no time at home for just parent and children time, where you can work on acceptable behaviour.

yes. but people thought i was a bit weirdy with most things i did, like breastfeeding more than a few weeks, not weaning at 4 months, not weaning with puree etc etc.

now dd's a toddler i'm not doing the naughty step, not doing time out, not offering sweets or a toy for 'good' behaviour.

i'm sure a lot of people see it as 'trendy' or like i think i'm so far superior but really it's just how i want it to be.

so for eg... we have a pebble border between the house and the patio. dd was picking up the pebbles and throwing them onto the patio. ie not hurting anyone but yes making a mess. dh storms in with 'oi stop that' i instead say 'why are you doing that dd?' she says 'cos it's fun' so i go and get some kitchen utensils, we play cooking with these pebbels for a bit, then she puts them back. which is all dh wanted anyway.

"I'm not actively threatening/punishing/stifling her"

Judgey.

DS2 and DD are horrendously loud and boisterous yet don't hurt other children and they're not rude to adults. That's not to say that they don't need to be told how to moderate their behaviour in public. One person's 'boisterous with a sense of right and wrong' is another person's 'horribly irritating and uncontrollable'. Children do have to learn to live in society rather than as feral animals. It's not threatening, stifling or punishing them to teach them how they should be behaving in public.

My children run feral in my house/garden yet I rein them in in public and they have to learn what is appropriate for each location.

Time and a place I always think. The park - kids can run around scream and yell and generally make as much noise/be as boisterous as they like. A coffee shop? Not so much and I would tell my son off for yelling in a (even child friendly) cafe. If your kid is yelling and screaming and being boisterous somewhere in appropriate then I probably AM thinking you are a bit ineffective.

Not sure what you mean by unconditional. My love my my son is unconditional, my approval is not.

Soupdragon - yes perhaps there was no need for the 'stifling' bit, I suppose I'm just being defensive.

Morloth - the unconditional thing is a reference to the Alfie Kohn parenting ethos.

No no no to being loud in coffee shops etc, I do explain them what is acceptable in certain places isn't acceptable in others.

My dd's former childminder called herself an unconditional positive parent/carer. It sounded quite good to me and I picked her. Thought again when her son started being really cruel to my dd and she did absolutely nothing about it.

AAArgh- I HATE parenting "styles" or "ethoses" (???) Why do you need to follow one set of rules or another?? I don't ever and have never seen myself as one "type" of parent or another- I'm just me, and I parent differently depending on a whole host of relevant factors at the time. Sometimes I can seem quite strict, other times people might think I am a bit too liberal- I don't really care. My aim is to have happy, well-behaved kids who have fun but also some consideration and empathy for others- a tall order, whichever way you try to acheive it, I think.

I honestly think that trying to shoehorn yourself into a parenting mould created by some guru or other is not the answer. I have many shortcomings, and my kids will realise that as I make many misjudgements and other mistakes in my parenting, but hopefully they will also realise that I am genuinely sorry for my overreactions and lack of patience- I usually tell them so later! I hope they will love me as the less-than-perfect person I am, and thereby realise that they themselves might have faults and that that is ok too. Or is that actually the true meaning of "unconditional"?

"Do you quite often get the impression that other people are judging your parenting skills, and see you as 'a soft touch'? I do. I'm sure that pretty much everyone I know thinks that I let my dcs get away with too much."

Back to the OP - no I wouldn't consider myself a UP parent, although I frequented the UP forum in the good ole days when it existed, before AK pulled the plug on it, and found some good ideas there (ha! that's got to be enough acronyms to piss everyone off!!!)

I think that when a non-coercive family dynamic is working smoothly, people tend to look at one with surprise more than anything, tbh - because there are all sorts of things which are off-limits for various families but, with creativity from both adults and children, they can happen successfully with contented parents, contented children and contented joe public passing by. Nobody is being hurt when a small child puts a swimsuit on to splash in a puddle on a path through a park, but it's not normal, yk? And while lots of people here might say "aww how sweet", there might be others who would be horrified.

But I think that when punishment and bribery aren't in one's arsenal, then the way conflicts play out can look really weird to most people. Not in terms of soft touch, necessarily, but in terms of both parent and children changing their preferences on the hoof as they are finding something that will suit everyone - and that's a dance that people get better and better at with practice. If the parent is actively trying not to get caught in the consistency trap (following through on something even though it's making everyone unhappy), then that can look like a "soft touch" to others, maybe, because they are just seeing a skirmish rather than the whole relationship.

I dunno. I try not to spend too much time thinking about what other people are thinking of my interactions with my children. It works for us. What they do clearly works for them. [shrug]

'I try not to spend too much time thinking about what other people are thinking of my interactions with my children. It works for us. What they do clearly works for them.'

I think this is the most sensible approach.Everyone is different. I found the OP judgemental, the opinion seemed to be that you have the best parenting style. All it means is that you have the best parenting style for you. I should just get on with it, not bother about what others think and not worry about what others are doing.

Also, not sure where to add this, but since there's a UP-ish conversation going on in this thread...

I also think there's a big gap in the UP approach, which I've heard described as the "authoritarian trump card". Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, and then suddenly WHAM, parental preference wins (and the list of occasions when AK said the parental preference had to win was just hilarious, because it's so not-obvious or not-given, just obviously his own moments of complete abject terror at things not being done His Way). I think those moments have the potential to undermine all the non-coercive stuff myself, though I might be wrong (and remember that I am a rabid TCSer)

If other people enjoy being with them and find them a pleasure (even if you are not there)then you are doing the right thing-whatever your method.

Elvira - nodding in agreement - I think it's a really important thing to model and suggest the kind of interactions we hope to see in our children, and which will ease our children's paths through life. I totally wouldn't see one of those wild-child lord-of-the-flies destroy-the-house-of-the-host family scenarios as a respectful, either towards the wild children or to the family counting the minutes until the wild children leave and never return.

So yes, I agree with you - from the outside, the whole "no ,we don't do that here" or "that's not ours" or "let's walk not run just here" might look controlling from the outside, but from the inside of the family dynamic, it's a guidance that isn't punitive.