Times: Parental failings ‘spawned an infantilised generation’

[Lamahaha]

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/parental-failings-spawned-an-infantilised-generation-s78q5t7zw

Interesting article.
He said that, similarly, the debate on transgender rights had challenged the binary distinction between men and women, just as in politics the boundary between public and private lives has become blurred.

Professor Furedi argued that the dismantling of moral boundaries has created a paradox. Young people who have grown up without them abhor others who make moral judgments.

I agree with him. I was raised by an extremely liberal mother who provided no boundaries whatsoever -- which got me into a lot of trouble in my late teens. Luckily I realised soon enough what was happening and corrected myself; I gave myself rules and boundaries and tried my best to stick to them. It was the best move I ever made. Long story...

Sorry, I still can't get a share token. When I click on the mail signa, I get a "share to email" pop up but no link. I managed it once but never again.

This business of looking to the young for the answers is a bit bizarre. I think it comes out of a sort of faith in a materialist sort of world spirit moving ever closer to some Good End. A lot of progressivism is based on that sort of unconscious faith in progress.

Yes, I agree there is a problem when every possible incidence of dispute, confrontation or teasing is treated as bullying. Even not all physical violence is bullying.

That was well modelled by teachers for my kids - that there is a distinction. But I can imagine some adults are failing to recognise that distinction.

@Goosefoot

This business of looking to the young for the answers is a bit bizarre. I think it comes out of a sort of faith in a materialist sort of world spirit moving ever closer to some Good End. A lot of progressivism is based on that sort of unconscious faith in progress.

I think it's because universities are now consumer driven. They are no longer places of learning where the grown-ups are in charge.

The kids can get a grown-up 'cancelled' on matters of simple disagreement, e.g. trans ideology. The grown-ups are frightened of them.

This business of looking to the young for the answers is a bit bizarre. I think it comes out of a sort of faith in a materialist sort of world spirit moving ever closer to some Good End. A lot of progressivism is based on that sort of unconscious faith in progress.

Oh it's all terribly, terribly fashionable. Maddeningly so. Education has always been vulnerable to these weird and high wankery content fashions, like the brilliant one where you didn't teach children to read, you just surrounded them in the classroom with wonderful books and they magically learned to read via osmosis rather than imposed, authoritarian, rigid nonsense like phonics.

Hurriedly reversed when reading levels plummeted.

It's like adults have focused so much on teaching kids that they are "safe" and the adults will maintain a safe environment, mentally and emotionally, that they don't realise that the flip side of that is the kids learn that other more challenging environments are not safe.

There's also no understanding or transition that at some point those kids who expect adults to take all responsibility for keeping them safe and managing their environment, will themselves become the adults and need to stop being the cared for and become the carers for others. There's no preparation for that, no weaning off, no training to start thinking of other people's needs and doing the sucking up of caring for others rather than focusing on yourself.

@Deliriumoftheendless

BertieBotts that’s a very interesting post.

When you say “lagging skills” do you mean in a sense such as Marjorie Boxall practiced?

Sorry I have only just seen this.

By lagging skills I mean things such as emotional regulation, time management, social skills and so on. I don't know Marjorie Boxall so can't comment.

For example if a child has a delay in emotional regulation compared to their peers (which may be part of some kind of diagnosable SEN or might just be a normal variation in development) they may be more easily wound up and hence get into physical fights quite easily.

Or if a child is constantly losing their belongings it might not be that they are careless but that they do not have very well developed organisational skills, ie they don't actually know how to keep track of their things.

Some element of teaching lagging skills/looking for the reason behind repeated poor behaviour has always been part of good parenting of course, but there are some really good books/materials out now which explain some of the lesser understood skills (emotional regulation would be one, I think) and how they affect behaviour/how they can be learned and developed.

OK I have looked her up - yes sounds similar, although it looks like her work focuses on a particular set of skills which is (assumed to be) underdeveloped because of a specific lack of parenting.

The model of supporting underdeveloped skills is broader than this and doesn't focus only on children with behavioural problems, you can use it for quite ordinary parenting annoyances as well.

I don't think the German way is extreme - did you mean the bit about toddlers? They wouldn't be completely unsupervised doing those things. It was more the fact that older children age 7/8 are regularly given the opportunity to be kids by themselves with no adult directly supervising them. There will be adults around in the wider community (perhaps) who will help if they really find themselves in trouble, but it is normal for them to be out alone at those ages and I think they do have that experience of negotiating and so on without an adult to referee all the time.

Pinker wrote about the topic of nature/nurture in 'the blank slate' and raised some very interesting questions that would relate directly to the reasons why we might think it's a good idea to abdicate responsibility to the young - I have friends who genuinely thought kids would work out morals for themselves and actively stopped me when I tried to intervene as their kids bit/hit/destroyed things, for example - I think it relates to some very naive ideas about noble savage type of ideal (I would say their children are now verging on sociopathic).

Unfortunately Pinker clearly had set ideas about the conclusions he wanted to draw and the book is outrageously badly argued drivel.

[quote SuckingDieselFella]@Lamahaha
Sorry, I still can't get a share token. When I click on the mail signa, I get a "share to email" pop up but no link. I managed it once but never again.

That is the share token. Just copy and paste the link.[/quote]
But the one time it DID work the link had share token in it... but never again. I will continue to try....

.I haven't caught up yet but a couple of pages back Michelle posted:

""What would you all really like to do to improve your confidence?"
"We want to be pop stars."
"Great! We'll buy in singing teachers and make lovely plans about your image."""

I've always been sceptical of the "you can be whatever you want to be" mindset. Because you can't. Some people simple ARE more talented in certain areas than others. Not everyone can be a winner. The very concept of "wanting" is off. I guess it's because I grew up in a poor country (though we were mc rather than poor), "getting what you want" has never been a thing which I thought was desirable to teach a child. I think it's far more concerned to teach young people how to make the most of what they have, to reach as high as they can but how to deal with disappointment, refusal, and failure. I believe that hard times and failure, and learning how to get through are just as important for maturity, if not more so, than success.

My daughter, who is of that generation, says that she's heard from several parents that they never ever tell their children no, that they raise them with no negativity whatsoever. It's always only encouragement.
A few months ago we visited a friend of hers: it was me, daughter, her husband, friend, friend's DP, friend of friend, and friend's DS aged about 8 or 9.
The boy had been playing with some of his toys in the living room and now it was dark and th adults were talking. DS was not sent to bed. He goes to bed when he's ready. He continued to play and the adults talked. Every few minutes ds would interrupt the conversation and talk about something that interested HIM, and immediately his mum and her partner talked back to him and the adult talk would switch to child talk. This was literally every few minutes. It was not possible to carry on adult conversation.
My daughter says this is quite common among her friends who are parents. They are millennium parents. So I wonder what the next generation is going to be like.

And yet it is perfectly normal still for children to do this in other countries. Not all countries, of course, but Germany for example. School playgrounds (from the age of six) are almost completely unsupervised and tend to be totally open to the surrounding area. The attitude to bullying is very often "Well, the child ought to learn to defend themselves". This is changing a little, particularly in the case of violence or discriminatory hate speech, but fundamentally they want children to learn to get on and the way it's dealt with is often by getting the bully/ies and the bullied child together under supervision and getting them to talk.

True! My kids went to school in Germany till they were ten.
Another thing I noticed is that kids there walk to school or take the (public) bus alone. They are prepared for walking to school in nursery school, which is from 3-4 to 6-7. By the time they start primary, they know the way from home to school, to wait at the roadside for traffic to pass etc.
Every town at the beginning of the school year is plastered with huge signs: School has started! Be careful! and motorists are told to look out for kids. My daughter used to walk 20 minutes to school, by herself -- it was normal. There is practically no school run for parents, unless it's some kind of out of the way school, such as a Steiner school.
When we moved to England, I didn't realise this and would send her off to school on her own. It was practically around the corner, in a quiet area, with a zebra crossing just opposite the school gate, so really no danger.
After a few days I was reprimanded and told I had to walk her there and pick her up. I was shocked!
You see children walking about the place, on the roads, all the time in Germany, without parents -- even young children, 6 year olds. The one thing I noticed after moving to the UK is that you never see kids on their own.

I think some of the intensity about school pick up etc came in after Dunblane, Lamaha. Hence kids won't be allowed out until released to a parent, etc.

I agree about risk as necessary. And promising kids can do or be anything is pretty much setting them up to fail. Also want to add that schools can be a major driver in some of this. Vague theory gets badly translated into terrible policy. For example, our school insisted that everybody had to be friends with everybody else in the school. I told my kids this was clear bollocks, and whole they were to be respectful and polite they don't ever have to be friends with anyone else if they don't want to. The problems aren't solely with parents.

The problems aren't solely with parents.

Absolutely agree with that and wonder why teachers are not more aware of the long term implications of their theoretical practices. Duty of care, safeguarding, should also be about the effects of teaching on children.

I wonder if teachers (sweeping statement here) feel periodic needs to challenge themselves. Whilst I understand this, there are implications to experiments, no matter how well meaning

@ScrimpshawTheSecond

Pinker wrote about the topic of nature/nurture in 'the blank slate' and raised some very interesting questions that would relate directly to the reasons why we might think it's a good idea to abdicate responsibility to the young - I have friends who genuinely thought kids would work out morals for themselves and actively stopped me when I tried to intervene as their kids bit/hit/destroyed things, for example - I think it relates to some very naive ideas about noble savage type of ideal (I would say their children are now verging on sociopathic).

Unfortunately Pinker clearly had set ideas about the conclusions he wanted to draw and the book is outrageously badly argued drivel.

That kind of educational model goes back at least as far as Rousseau, that romanticism about natural development.

I think that is why AP appeals to a lot of these parents, it pretty much says that your child will just naturally develop appropriately as long as parents fulfil their needs, and interfering is seen as likely to create blockages.

Pinker has a tendency to do that, same with his book about the Enlightenment.

I think much of it is well meant, just very difficult to translate into practical application and over an enormous and very divergent population.

@highame

The problems aren't solely with parents.

Absolutely agree with that and wonder why teachers are not more aware of the long term implications of their theoretical practices. Duty of care, safeguarding, should also be about the effects of teaching on children.

I wonder if teachers (sweeping statement here) feel periodic needs to challenge themselves. Whilst I understand this, there are implications to experiments, no matter how well meaning

I’ve had a number of run ins with school where kids were told to be kind to others without any analysis of what the other had done. I’ve told my child that you don’t have to be kind to others if they have been given a warning/chance and they have broken the “trust” by being unkind themselves.

For me it is like the legal concept of “coming to the law with clean hands“. Some kids always have excuses made for them. It’s not fair on the others.

Yes, the walking to school alone thing is interesting. There was a post in AIBU the other day where some parents were saying they would not allow their 11 year olds to go to the park down the street, or only would let 14 year olds begin to go around the neighbourhood alone, or 15 year olds on the bus.

These are kids that could be driving at 16, and leaving home at 17 or 18.

And this is with cell phones, they are never really cut off, having to solve their own problems.

No wonder they are stressed out at university and need their school to provide mental and emotional support.

Schools are a big part of it too. The most dangerous thing for kids around schools here is usually all the cars full of parents.

@ScrimpshawTheSecond

kids need routine, boundaries and yes discipline to feel safe and confident enough to grow and explore. They also need lots of loving, listening and coaching, of course, but I think generally parents are fine with those things. More often they seem to find the boundaries thing difficult.

Well - maybe it's a middle class thing. Friends who are more trad working class have no problem instructing their kids and using discipline. I suppose the post modern questioning of authority has led to much of the permissiveness, and more trad working class families are more likely to have the authoritarian type of model, which has its own issues.

Oh I've soooo noticed this! I come from a very working class northern background - a matriarchy, effectively, the mam's word was law. But I'm raising my kids in a very privileged, very MC community and I seem to be the only one who has control of their kids. Lots of soft voices, and gentle requests for "Sebastian, Tabitha, darlings, don't do that, please, it's not kind" which get completely ignored. Meanwhile I get some very odd looks bellowing "OI!! Pack it in you two!!" across the park - but at least I'm listened to.

We also loved a debate/bloody great row in our house. There were very few subjects that we couldn't disagree on, loudly and at length, and I think it's a good thing. It taught me that a) not everyone was going to agree with me, so b) I had to learn to fight my corner, but c) someone could vehemently disagree with my point of view, but still encourage me to express it, and love me afterwards.

I hope to teach my kids a similar robustness.

Pinker showed himself as an utter tool in that book, Goosefoot.

Childcare books should never be followed 100%. Unfortunately sometimes we are impressed by how good a lot of a book is and then apply the rest, which is where the problems start.

My daughter has had additional support from her university for mental health problems, which has been excellent. It has allowed her to move away from home and still have mental health support, without being moved to the bottom of a waiting list in a new NHS area. She also had additional support at school, although it was pretty rubbish.

My daughter has had some pretty traumatic experiences, fortunately this was documented and she provided MARAC letters, police statements and so on to the university disability centre.

My son’s friend from school killed himself during his first year at university. Children in both my son’s year and my daughter’s year at school have killed themselves in their early teens. I know kids who have been sexually abused, raped, had parents or siblings die horrible deaths, cope with domestic violence. I know kids who live at home for university because they are caring for disabled family members, or whose mothers can’t pay the rent without the child’s Financial contribution.

There has been a huge increase in the number of people going to university. That is going to include a lot more kids who have been through trauma who mostly would not have made it through to HE thirty years ago.

In the past, the recent past, we put huge numbers of children into special schools and adults into mental institutions, and then we didn’t have to see them. Now we do.

Interesting thread.

My own upbringing was very strict and borderline authoritarian. I wasn’t allowed to play out on the road and was kept to pretty strict limits as a teenager. There was also an element of sexual shaming - I was assumed to be ‘up to no good’ if I suggested something out of the ordinary. On the other hand, knowing what I now know about sexual abuse, it kept me fairly safe. My parent was probably right to question why I suddenly wanted to rush off to a new friend ‘Sam’s’ house to see their new puppy! However, where my parents failed was in actively teaching me life skills. For example, I was nearly killed or seriously injured cycling on the road aged 17 (I turned right onto a busy 40 limit road ) because there had been no intervening steps between ‘No, you mustn’t cycle on the road at all’ and ‘You can use Dad’s bike to get to your part-time job’. I hadn’t been allowed to do cycling proficiency so I was completely clueless!

It's tricky, because a traditional upper middle class upbringing was in many ways I think emotionally damaging. The products of such an upbringing might be apparently very functional, practical people in terms of not visibly buckling under various kinds of pressures, but at what cost? I think a lot of the senior decision makers in our society at the moment evince signs of trauma - lack of empathy, dishonesty, fronting and bravado instead of authenticity, misogyny.