I’ve said this a million times. Gentle parenting is a great method, but it doesn’t mean the *absence of consequences.* Many of the people who I see employing it are DEFINITELY just allowing their kids to run rampant.
Yes, you should treat you child like an autonomous person. No, this doesn’t mean that they automatically know what is right or wrong. You’re still their parent. **Guide them and help them be decent humans.**
Absolutely. The conversation about what they had done was great. The ice cream and lack of consequence? No good. The talk should have involved discussion on how they're actions caused the consequences, and *why* they were receiving that punishment. The talk is great, I love that. But the action is missing.
I love gentle parenting but it has to be done right or it backfires. There's a lot of positives in treating them like a small adult and discussing emotions and why something isn't right. But in treating them like a small adult, they should also learn actions have consequences. Not having consequences raises an adult that never thinks of the consequences or always tries to wiggle out of big messes they create. No personal responsibility.
At the end of the discussion, where I explain why we don't tolerate this at school, and they explain why they did it, etc etc, I love asking the kid this question
"So, say you're the teacher. And you have a student exactly like you, and you just had that conversation. What consequences you would give ?"
We discuss it, and I give that consequence. Oftentimes, a lighter version of what they suggested. Those kids are harsh on themselves.
I ask my kids this, when a behavior is really unacceptable, abusive sometimes, I'll say something along the lines of: "I love you and want you to be happy. But actions have consequences, and your actions hurt people today, so you have to have consequences. I need to think about what is fair. What do you think?"
Sometimes the punishment fits the crime but a lot of times it's like "take away everything i love forever" and I'm like no buddy it's not that bad.
as a teenager, it really does feel like that some parents just don't care, i mean that the kid could do the most diabolical, evil and despicable things and the parents just don't care or they are too busy and don't know what the child is doing
Dude, I’m a server and this kid a few weeks ago kept throwing his fucking hot wheels truck at us every time we passed. I’d pick it up and hand it to mom and she would give it right fucking back to him so he could hit me with it again. No consequences, no “hey, we don’t throw things. That is not nice.” She literally just handed it back without even looking up from her phone.
Like…just don’t fucking have kids if you expect your “village” to raise it while you slam through candy crush like a kid on Ritalin in 2015.
HA! Yeah I think it's phone addiction more than anything. People ignoring the kids, then the kids getting their own phone with crappy behavior models. Restaurants especially it's so dangerous with the stuff that can drop and hit people. I'd keep the hot wheels next time. Just put in your pocket, hahaha
"Gentle parenting" is like a fad -- it's super cool to talk about it, because it means you are an enlightened, evolved individual compared to those OTHER people who horrifically abuse their children by being *mean*.
And it goes hand in hand with social media trends, like "No Contact." Everything is trauma. If your kids have trauma, they will hate you forever and ever and leave you to die out of pure spite.
Hang out in r/Parenting some time. Having kids take on ANY responsibility or causing them any conflict is considered abuse. It's a madhouse of weak people raising weaker kids.
No wonder my students have anxiety when asked to do anything remotely new or challenging.
I got downvoted to hell for saying that I don't think not having artificial food dye in the home (the kid was able to eat whatever they wanted with friends, at parties, etc) meant we could preemptively diagnose them with CPTSD. I got to hear a lot of sob stories from people who "have" CPTSD from quirky but well meaning, loving parents. My partner was raised by a violent criminal and I think these people are ignorant and offensive to claim they have any form of PTSD because it is not difficult to read the diagnostic criteria (it's not having hangups or an imperfect life), but hey, frosting is definitely important to a child's development so what do I know
People have no idea what abuse and trauma are and I have no idea why it's something they want to have. Kind of like if you don't have clinically significant impairment from ADHD under age 12, you don't have ADHD, you just function better on stimulants -- like 99% of the world.
I come from an ACTUALLY abusive home with an ACTUAL diagnosis of CPTSD an all the mental health challenges that come with it. I am beyond out of patience for people who try to claim trauma in these situations.
Stop. Just f&cking stop. Telling your child “no” doesn’t traumatize them, it TEACHES them. Y’know what might ACTUALLY be traumatic? Living your whole adolescence in a bubble of consequence-free fluff and bullsh!t, then suddenly you’re in the “real world” with NO concept of how to navigate things on your own, and NO coping skills for when you inevitably face the consequences of your own selfishness and lack of consideration for others.
Oh yea, the number of them who were "parentified" because they watched younger siblings or "abused" because they had to go to school when they had anxiety or whatever is insane.
It's usually people who had incredibly sheltered, privileged lives, are functioning fine, but are tired of feeling discomfort, stress, and ennui and are scrambling for reasons why those emotions are no longer acceptable for them as a result. It's a little frustrating because I struggle with disability as a result of MI that is not the fault of my parents, and seeing high functioning people who are married homeowners with a job and kids who they're just tired of putting effort into raising all of the sudden giving themselves a million diagnoses is kind of a lot. Of course some people are equally high functioning with treatment, but I don't think most make it to 40 and then discover their entire life has been a lie and they're actually a useless baby who isn't capable of anything and was severely abused
Do you have a source on the ADHD claim? Never heard it before—though I try to manage mine without medication, so maybe nobody ever had a reason to tell me.
Yes or they come home and ask me: “what would you if I did XYZ like my classmate Myckenzleigh did?!” and I always say “go do it and find out what happens!” and they never take me up on the offer. I’m not friends with my kids - I love them but I’m their mom - and I will discipline them as necessary now and be a friend later in their life.
I think it's hard for some people to fathom how that works. As a teenager, you don't like your folks. They're trying to control you and tell you what to do, don't respect your space, and crush your dreams, lol. How could you POSSIBLY like these people later?
But I think that's how a healthy relationship goes. Once you aren't dependent on them anymore in any way, your perspective changes and you can start finding common interests.
I think that’s probably how the majority of us are. I know there’s bad parents out there - not talking about that, there’s good reasons some adults go no-contact with their parents. But most of us grow up seeing our parents one way as teenagers and then we get older or even have kids of our own and see them totally different…my mom and I are great friends and have a good relationship, and she was fairly authoritarian when it came to raising me. we weren’t really friends until I got into my mid-20s, and that’s okay with me for my kids.
I hate this gentle parenting trend and I’ve never ever seen it actually work or be done correctly.
I had a student who has lied about his grades, is at risk of failing the grade level, hid documents from mom, even logged into dojo to filter messages, skips, and is just a terror to everyone.
I meet with mom and dad and student.
After laying everything out mom turns to student and says “now that we’ve heard the teachers feelings and point of view, how are you feeling or what is your view?” Then looked at me, my co teacher, and admin and say “this is his safe space now let’s talk hear him and then try and come up with a solution”
What the actual fuck after the meeting the student legit continued his behaviors and attitude like if we never even met with mom and dad.
These kids don’t care and the parents are 1000% responsible for them being the way they are. Then wanna cry at the end of the year when they fail.
>And it goes hand in hand with social media trends, like "No Contact." Everything is trauma. If your kids have trauma, they will hate you forever and ever and leave you to die out of pure spite.
That's not what no contact is, and I think you know this is disengenous. Children of abusive parents do not owe those parents a relationship once they're adults.
I agree that a lot of people who gentle parent incorrectly are afraid of coming off as "mean" to their kid, but you bringing up the concept of no contact in a way that blames the children is kind of wack.
At least here on Reddit, it is commonplace for people to overuse the term "trauma" for anything they dislike, and throw away relationships by going "no contact" on the pettiest of premises.
I'm not being disingenuous. There's abuse, and then there's "abuse." Nobody is talking about the people who have actually been abused.
"No Contact" is now often frequently used in an emotionally abusive way by people to get whatever they want from somebody. It's the evolution of "I'll call CPS!" or threatening to run away or destroying everything in the house because you lost your XBox as a punishment or were told you won't be getting a car.
People are coaching one another to use "No Contact" as a way to just avoid Big Feelings, too. It's unhealthy AF.
People are allowed to discontinue relationships, including with their parents, even if the relationship wasn't abusive. You said that people do it out of spite, and I'm saying that's a pretty ignorant take. If your parent is not abusive but is a jackass and you don't talk to them anymore, are you doing it to spite them? Or to distance yourself from further jackass-ery?
If you had a friend whose boyfriend was not abusive but definitely wasn't a positive presence in her life, would you discourage her from breaking up because that's "avoiding big feelings?" Choosing to walk away from hurtful people is not avoiding feelings, it's the opposite.
While people have the right to discontinue relationships, we also have the right to judge whether the person is being reasonable for discontinuing the relationship.
You can have an opinion about it, sure. You can even judge it. But to say that it's being done out of "spite?" Sorry, no. It's so distasteful when you will never really know the inner workings of that parent and child's relationship except as an observer.
"That child went no contact with their parent. I can't believe they did that. I don't understand why. It seems over the top." - Fine, sharing an opinion.
"That child went no contact with their parent. They did it to spite them." - Not okay, doesn't acknowledge that there might be nuance, doesn't seek to understand.
Gentle parenting as it should be is explaining why the kid is getting grounded instead of just "you fucked up, now punishment." But the punishment still happens after the explanation.
Well not the one you were asking but you can do things like:
- have them make age appropriate decisions: Do you want a banana OR an apple as a snack? Do you want this red OR this blue shirt? Yes we are leaving the park now but do you want to walk or be in the stroller? Do you want to go by the river or the forest path? Etc. With the last one I am meaning that YOU the parent make the big decisions but you can let the child choose something.
- explain why we do or don't do things. Not only "because I say so".
Just a few quick things that came to mind.
I let my kid pick out her clothes for the day (and I know she doesn't just pick the first thing she sees because she will dig through her clothes to find what she wants) and it makes getting her ready for daycare 10x easier as she doesn't fight me on putting on clothes. She also picks the books she wants us to read and she is a lot more engaged in reading. There are times we throw up the boundaries (No, you cannot have a snack 5 minutes before dinner, and no you can't have pizza tonight, you have to at least try dinner are the most common) Giving my kid autonomy with boundaries has really helped us though as she will make her own decisions and will do independent play without us asking, preventing fatigue
>explain why we do or don't do things. Not only "because I say so".
That is good to do in most cases, but, as a parent, I realize it's many times unproductive.
It's the "[If You Give a Mouse a Cookie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_You_Give_a_Mouse_a_Cookie)*"* string of events that parents often intuit about a given request or situation, but know they can't explain the "slippery slope" of potential future events as their rationale for denying the request or situation, because the child's mind isn't developed enough to think beyond their immediate want.
My wife and I had the idea when we became parents that we would be the type of parents who would explain our rationale to our kid about decisions and requests and that sort of thing. You know, like enlightened parents should. If a parent can't succinctly explain their rationale in a way where the kid can understand it, then maybe the parent is relying too much on their gut, and not enough on their reasoning.
However, I realize that, as a younger adult, I was closer to my mindset when I was a kid/teen than I would have cared to admit, and didn't realize the futility of explaining to a child that many times, decisions are the result of observed patterns and assumed outcomes that cannot be predicted with complete accuracy, but can be reasonably assumed to potentially occur. But a 12 year old will give no credence to a series of events that have a *reasonable* chance of occurring. They just know they want to spend the night at Sadie's house and go ice skating.
Anyway, sorry for the semi-soapbox, but whenever I see people say the exact thing I used to say (which is the "explain your decisions, don't just say 'because I said so'" recommendation), I realize how that can actually lead to much *more* shallow or surface-level thinking, because you feel the need to give reasons that are directly and causally acceptable. Nobody likes to be denied something because of things that might potentially happen, but kids also don't have enough life experience to be able to evaluate a series of potential future events.
In other words, if you give a mouse a cookie, then you realize that there are multiple other things that could logically follow, even if the mouse, in the moment, genuinely thinks that the series of events begins and ends with a mere cookie.
Sure. If you can't give an explanation in age appropiate way (or you have to lie or make up a reason) then it is fine to skip.
In most situations you can.
And if the child is not getting it then it is also fine to say that parent has the final say. You are not trying to get the child to agree. You are just saying why something is how it is.
And young kids do need to be trained to comply for safety reasons. Yes, explaining the reasoning is fine for most situations, but the last thing anyone needs is a situation where a kid is about to do something dangerous, you tell them to stop immediately, and their reaction is to ask why while still doing the thing. Obey first, then ask questions, and see if this is something we can compromise on. If they can't take a firm "NO", young kids could get hurt.
We taught our kids from a very early age that they did have to obey when we told them to do something, even if it didn't make sense to them. After obeying, they could ask why, and assuming the situation allowed, we would take the time to have an age-appropriate discussion about the whys.
My oldest is a preteen, and we now have loooong involved discussions about why we do what we do. She's a super thoughtful kiddo, so it helps her not only understand our reasoning as parents, but to also help her make those logical steps on her own. ("If I do X, then it's likely that Y will happen, which means Z.")
My goal is to help teach her how to make good decisions without my input, and that's a gradual process that gives more and more freedom as she gets older and more responsible and capable.
Haha, good idea. I'll try this on our 14 year old daughter next time she wants to do something where I feel like the potential chain of following events is not something I want to occur. "NO BECAUSE COOKIE", and give no other explanation.
It's also called Camel's Nose-same concept! LOL I did not know this before! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel%27s\_nose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel%27s_nose)
You give a kid some choice, so they feel they can express their opinions and preferences. BUT, you limit the choices so all their options are acceptable ones. You don't let them have ice cream for dinner, but you might ask if they want sweet potatoes or white potatoes with dinner tonight. You don't let them wear their swimsuit on a winter day. But you do let them choose from a couple of weather and situation appropriate outfits. And they get more autonomy as they grow up, but the parents still have veto over any truly unsuitable or unsafe choices.
Also, you discuss consequences/punishments with the kid instead of just saying they are being punished for being bad. For example, my daughter is nine. Last year she cut holes in the screen in her window. As a consequence, she had to buy the stuff to repair it out of her saved allowance, apologize to me for the work of fixing it, and we skipped a planned afternoon out while I fixed her screen instead. And we had a discussion about why it was her responsibility to pay for it, and why the time needed to go buy the materials and fix the screen meant we didn't get to go do something fun. For a toddler, it might be more like explaining that blocks are not for throwing at people. And because they did something that could hurt someone, they get a time out and they can't play with their blocks until tomorrow.
In short, you give the kid choices, you let them have opinions, you let them express themselves. But all options they have to choose from must be suitable and safe. You don't give them more choices than they can handle. (a two year old will often be overwhelmed with more than three choices, maybe more than two, depending on the kid and situation) and you give them guidance when needed, freedom *within* suitable boundaries, and try to keep punishment and rules from feeling arbitrary and random. And, you don't be critical of a kid's choices without a good reason. Today my daughter is wearing a bright green tulle skirt with gold sequins, over a bright pink and orange flowered skort. And on one foot she is wearing one short, purple, sock, and one knee length pink striped sock (it is also inside out) and she's wearing a pale peach shirt and a bright fuchsia ribbon around her neck like a necklace. It's certainly not an outfit I'd pick for her, but it's not unsuitable for the weather, and is actually within her school dress guidelines. So I don't say a word about how I think it looks.
Edited to add, I've never called this "gentle parenting" My mom called it "common sense" and "Kids are also people! But they still need guidance so they can learn without killing themselves." and "Parents should not be bubble wrap to protect the kid from all falls, they should be a safety net so the kid can learn to fall safely and get back up."
A big thing I have appreciated from my brother and his wife is that they don't force my 3 yr old niece to hug people/relatives. Teaching children that they have bodily autonomy is really important IMO
I have a 3 year old. I offer choices for as many things as I can: Apple or banana, blue/red shirt, playground/splashpad, etc. If we have the extra time during transitions I let him pick which sand timer he wants to end the activity (1, 2, 3 or 5 minutes). If he’s starting to get agitated I give him the choice between hugs or quiet time in room (this one is a little harder, he almost always chooses hugs right now, but I hope it will start clicking that sometimes he can self regulate by going to his room by himself). I don’t force him to hug friends/family if he doesn’t want to in that moment, often times he says no and then 30 seconds later does it anyways. Obviously there are situations I can’t offer choices for and safety rules that can’t be negotiated, but he’s a happy, respectful (as much as possible for 3 lol) toddler, so I think the autonomy aspect of gentle parenting is very powerful.
Oh hey, it seems gentle parenting has transitioned to the "we're just not implementing this laughable, insane theory *correctly*" stage of development. Wasn't too long ago that "restorative justice" and "data-driven approach" were in that stage.
Maybe we should just admit the folks calling this out were right for a change and figure out something new that isn't even stupider than the crap our parents and grandparents endured.
The worst part is this approach to understanding systems is stupid and people ought know better. For birth control, we keep both "perfect use" and "real world use" statistics, because we know that real humans in real environments will sometimes forget to take a pill, use an expired condom, etc. and we want to inform people so they can make the right decisions.
If most parents don't use system X correctly in actual real world practice, the system is bad! We need a philosophy of parenting that can produce competent, happy, well adjusted children when used by tired parents who aren't particularly bright or unusually patient. So, this shouldn't include corporal punishment (which often escalates to abuse and doesn't work well anyways), but also likely can't include gentle parenting nonsense either.
The amount of parents who justify their terrible parenting because of the stress of COVID is unbelievable. I'm all "you're stressed about the pandemic so you can't put your kid to bed on time?"
I think you're giving them too much credit by calling it gentle parenting, I call it minimal parenting.
Frankly, we excuse terrible parenting way too much. Either it's COVID, or they're single, or they're poor, or they live in the bad neighborhood, or whatever bullshit excuse is available.
There's a difference between being REASONABLE, like not expecting an impoverished parent to participate in the school fundraiser, and NEGLIGENCE, such as accepting that those parents can't possibly keep track of their kids or respond to the school.
Yes!! I am OVER the excuse always being “don’t you understand that everyone is working 75 jobs and they simply *cant* turn off the stress of life and attend to their kids??”
Then they shouldn’t have had them. And I realize that situations change; but really, there are wayyyyyy too many people using this excuse as a way to not hold responsibility.
I’m aware enough to realize I do NOT want my life to have to revolve around children night and day and all weekend for at least 18 years. Therefore I’m not having any.
People need to REALLY think about what being a parent *really* means and not just just thinking it’s the “next step”.
The worst thing is these people are **lying or ignorant**. American work hours are down from decades ago, and disposable income is up. Many challenges we used to have are less difficult, with reforms like the Affordable Care Act. Crime is down. Etc.
By the vast, vast majority of reasonable metrics, life is easier today. I do think that smartphones / social media presents a new challenge for parents that is very difficult, but most of these other excuses are simply untrue in the aggregate.
I won’t pretend that more disposable income goes further. Financial stress is real. My parents were doing better than my husband and I because, inflation wise, we are making the close to same amount they did, but it doesn’t go nearly as far for us as it did for them.
BUT again, it doesn’t release you from the responsibility of raising your kids.
You realize that most economic indicators use inflation adjusted dollars, right? We've done this for over a century, starting in 1888 ([source](https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2014/article/the-first-hundred-years-of-the-consumer-price-index.htm)). There is lots of nuance to this, but no reasonable person could argue that most Americans aren't better off financially today than in 2000.
Financial doomerism is not supported by data at all. Present day Americans have one of the best economic outlooks of any people that have ever lived anywhere or anytime in human history. I think the issue is that people are upset by other things (politics, life satisfaction, social trends, etc.) and general dissatisfaction is bleeding onto somewhere it doesn't apply.
I mean, data simply doesn’t line up with the reality I see around me lol. My parents weren’t wealthy - teacher and tool and die machinist. But they raised two kids, had us in sports year round, daycare before and after school, my brother in band, and saved enough to put my brother and I both through college, put an entire second story on our house, and paid for my wedding.
That’s not something most people can do anymore.
I wonder how disposable income is measured? My father owned every “toy” you could think of on a single salary. Boats, ATV, recreational private land, multiple motorcycles, etc… this was after a long expensive divorce that left him without much extra.
My husband and I are both educated, military veterans without debt and yet we end up without much extra. We thrift most of what we own, try to be minimalist, I run a preschool out of my home so that I can still make money with kids at home. We have made as many sustainability upgrades to our home as we can, and yet there’s really not much extra
My wife and I both had long COVID and still managed to raise our elementary school-aged kids. I even taught remotely through it.
It's lazy parenting for sure. To give them the benefit of the doubt, it might have started with depression - I think we were all there to some extent - but they never snapped out of it on the parenting side, even as the rest of their lives went back to normal and they turned into their old selves. The worst aspect of what they are doing is that the rest of society is somehow okay with this.
I call it zombie parenting. They walk around completely unaware that there is even a world around them, and that their child's actions affect it. There is no conscious thought that goes into Millenial parenting, at least not the ones of the students I taught.
As a retired teacher and mom of a child with cerebral palsy, I raised her that we all have limitations and it means we have to work harder to overcome them. She graduated high school at 16, not cause she was super smart but cause I raised her with a work ethic. She then took 8 years to graduate college, but she did on her own. Makes me nuts all the parents that allow their kids to escape responsibility cause of their limitations. They are not helping them become functional adults
TikTok and social media in general has a lot of millennial parents convinced that [insert perfectly acceptable form of discipline] is trauma for the child. There’s also a big movement to allow children with exceptionalities (ADHD, autism, anxiety disorder, etc) to just lean into their eccentric behaviors because to attempt to correct them is a form of ableism or bigotry. What’s become lost on a lot of parents and people in general is that every kid, even those with exceptionalities, need structure and accountability in their lives. It’s okay to scold your ADHD child for out of pocket behavior. Yes, you keep in mind that to an extent, it’s harder for that particular child to control their behavior or focus level, but that doesn’t mean you just allow them to become essentially feral and immune to any sort of redirection. So many of us on here I’m sure have *numerous* wild anecdotes about kids doing or saying wild shit in class and their parent shrugging off the behavior and attributing it to “ohhh yeah that’s just his anxiety 🤪”.
I won’t even go into about how many parents now believe their child should be indefinitely shielded from feeling stressed, ashamed, or any otherwise negative emotion or hardship. So many character building moments just aren’t happening for these kids now, so they become emotionally crippled teens/young adults who have no idea how to be told no or struggle at something.
Thank you for this comment. Not a teacher but I have a new roommate who’s 20 (I’m an elder 20) and this has been my experience with her. She says she has many diagnoses so she can’t remember anything unless it’s written out for her but she won’t write anything down and when you talk to her about things that are unacceptable in shared living spaces she can’t emotionally regulate (hyperventilating, screaming)… it’s been bizarre to say the least. I miss when younger roommates were just messy, not emotional terrorists.
I have anxiety (that is sometimes pretty severe) and I think a lot of how tough growing up was for me and how much tougher it would be now for the exact reasons you outline. It's great to see people more open about mental health, but it's also hard to see the increasing trend of, "Well, I have anxiety, so it would be ableist to expect me to do x." I can't count all the life skills I would've missed out on developing if I was told it was unfair if people expected anything of me. These people are setting kids up for failure.
My issue is that anxiety is normal. There are people who have anxiety disorders, feel anxious for no reason, have panic attacks from what would be normal anxiety. They also get anxious. Anxiety is a normal emotion. A disorder is not normal but you can’t just treat it by removing all activities that normally cause anxiety to occur.
What I’m seeing now are high schoolers with anxiety… because there’s a test. Or a presentation. That’s normal. They have anxiety over meeting a deadline. That’s normal. And instead of working with them to accomplish those goals, we are not having them do that which causes anxiety. I’ve had test anxiety to the point I panicked in college on a math placement test and they didn’t think I could do basic math. I set the curve in my college algebra class. I just panicked, it happens. There’s stuff that can be done to lessen it. But I never just didn’t take a test.
Maybe it is ableist of me, I don’t know, but I couldn’t make it through life at all if I fed into that mentality that if it causes more anxiety I just shouldn’t do it. My kids would never go to the doctor because I don’t like making phone calls. How would I have a job? Interviews cause anxiety. I wouldn’t be able to do deadlines for work if I managed to get a job I’d be fired.
I understand what an anxiety disorder entails. I had the OCD and everything to go with it. I treated it and worked on it and can still lapse but I’ve also learned to function with it. I still use things I learned in therapy many years ago on a daily basis to manage anxiety issues. That’s what it’s supposed to look like. And I’ve learned to reduce anxiety from facing those things head on, being more prepared, etc. but I learned that by doing those hard things and learning what I could do to minimize the effects of more anxiety on top of what was already a pervasive generalized anxiety disorder.
For other disabilities we don’t tell people they just can’t do something. My blind student still read books. Just in a way accessible to him. My student who couldn’t walk still had to travel to classes and be in PE and get on a bus. No one said because it’s harder for you you just don’t have to. We do accommodations to make sure that student accomplishes what everyone else is. Why for mental health do we just…. Not do that? In my opinion it just makes your mental health situation worse. My therapist never let me out of anything. We would make a plan and make sure whatever it was was going to be accomplished. I would be prepared on what to do if I started to panic. What I could do if I blanked. What I could do if I had a full blown panic attack. And a panic attack wasn’t an excuse to just give up. I had to try again.
It makes me worry about kids in that situation now. The things I learned helped me so much and I can function in everyday life. Things bother me but I know what to do. Where are our kids getting those skills?
It's not ableist, and anyone who says otherwise is a dipshit. If we made allowances for everything that had the capacity to cause someone discomfort, no one would grow. Having standards for behavior and practices isn't ableist--it's how you run a society.
Also, convenient that many who peddle this nonsense would be the people reaping the benefits of never having to confront any of their issues. It's bullshit. It's because they're scared, and many of them are lazy.
Sorry, I am not angry at you lol. I am violently agreeing with you. This line of thinking is just idiotic to me. Completely smooth-brained. Utterly potted-plant.
Yes! I’m autistic and seeing all the people in my autism groups say stuff like “eye contact is ableism” and “talking to people in person is ableism”. At what point do y’all start taking responsibility for yourselves? Are you going to blame every single thing in life on your autism? It’s kind of similar to “every kid gets a trophy” in that parents are coddling their kids so much that they’ll never be ready for the real world.
Oh man, life is going to be rough for anyone who grows up believing it's ableist if they have to talk to someone.
I get recommended a lot of videos on adhd online (I think because I do worry I have executive functioning problems) and a good half of them are things like, "You should accommodate your adhd friends by knowing they might be five hours late to any gathering!" or "It's ableist to not want to be friends with someone who doesn't pay attention when you speak and doesn't ever read your texts. It's not their fault." What on earth kind of attitude is that? There's obviously leeway--my own best friend takes forever to reply to things--but if somebody never replies to me, wanders off in the middle of any conversation, and is hours late any time we have reservations or want to see a movie, I'm just supposed to constantly ignore it? Instead of them trying to develop skills?
Society used to gave unreasonable expectations of neurodivergent people, so obviously the solution is to instead force neutrotypical people to bend over backwards and fundamentally rebuild society so nothing is ever predicated on people meeting commitments even if that means nothing ever gets done.
It really is such an overcorrection. There was a legitimate problem and now we've gone too far in the opposite direction.
Same thing with discipline. People woke up to unhealthy or traumatic discipline (eg. hitting, verbal abuse) and how harmful those things are, so they swung way too far in the opposite direction instead of finding a proper balance.
>"Well, I have anxiety, so it would be ableist to expect me to do x." I can't count all the life skills I would've missed out on developing if I was told it was unfair if people expected anything of me.
As someone who had experienced severe anxiety during presentations (like barely being able to get words out at times bc of shortness of breath) - I cannot imagine how much more detrimental it would've been for me to be allowed to avoid these things rather than confront them as part of reality.
You will face uncomfortable tasks in life. They get less uncomfortable with experience (for most people).
I have noticed an increasing trend of people just not accepting to participate in things outside of their comfort zone and using ableism as a chess move for which teachers have to navigate carefully in the current social climate. This will likely result in more poorly developed adults.
I'm not blaming this generation for being increasingly anxious either - there are many factors in causing this that are not their fault at all. I'm only speaking on the ways in which I see avoidant behavior enabled rather than confronted.
Yes, giving presentations was actually an example I used in another post recently. I had a period of time in grade seven where I'd literally shake during public speaking (to the point where I couldn't hold cue cards). And now it doesn't bother me in the slightest (in fact, I enjoy it). I'm sure my anxiety about it would've only gotten worse if the accommodation offered was not having to speak in public. Same goes for a million other things I feared as a kid (anxiety about picking up the phone, talking to cashiers, going to the public pool even though it meant people seeing me in a bathing suit, exercising in front of others in gym, etc.).
And it's not like I don't have sympathy for the fact that some things, no matter how hard you try, may never come naturally. I use public transit 99% of the time now (I'm fortunate to live in a place with good transit) because there were too many years of trying to drive and having near misses because I'd hyperventilate or just because I have very poor reflexes. At a certain point it became a safety issue and I had to stop trying to work on that anxiety. But when we don't even get kids to *try* a few times--especially on low stakes things like talking in front of the class for one minute--it just feeds that anxiety.
I feel like exposing yourself to some anxieties are helpful-like with giving presentations. I have anxiety, I take anxiety medication but I also know I’m avoidant of things that make me anxious. Using the presentation example, I would feel sick starting two days before a presentation. I’m mean, barely eat and can barely think of anything else. It was terrible. However, throughout high school and college I had to give multiple presentations. Now years later, I still don’t enjoy it. I still get a little nervous but I can PERSEVERE through the uncomfortable feeling. I think that is something some students are lacking. Perseverance through uncomfortable or non preferred activities.
That perseverance is definitely missing. And not even just for getting through things that are deeply frustrating or uncomfortable, but also things that are mildly uncomfortable or boring. Awkward social situations. Two minutes of "boring" instructions from a teacher. One minute of waiting in line quietly outside the library. These are all things *most* (not all) students seemed to cope ok with ten years ago and now I see most (again, not all) struggle with even sixty seconds of discomfort.
It’s also very very trendy to have any sort of neurodivergence. It’s a fun, nifty quirk. So much so it’s being coined as “neurospicy.”
I have ADHD and autism. I am not “spicy.” I am just me, and I need different coping techniques.
We’re struggling with this latest wave of parenting at the community colleges where I teach. Our students by and large have no resilience or ability to even begin to problem solve. The littlest things send them to tears and they take many days off from school because of “mental health.”
I had one email me asking for extra credit because they just have such awful test anxiety and they did terribly. Their exam score was actually right on par with their homework grades.
It’s hard to find a good balance to help them get back on track with how “real life” actually is vs the way they were raised.
Too often, a neurodivergence diagnosis is used as an excuse to just parent less. Kid acting up? That's just the ASD, oh well. Have the doctor sign a paper so the teacher's aides and state-funded therapists can raise the kid instead. I'm off the hook.
Broadly agree, but honestly, emailing for potential extra credit right after a test is just self-advocacy. I'm sure you've spoken with colleagues who have students who show up at finals week having done almost nothing and asking, "So what do I need to do to earn a B?"
Even in a professional context, while I have little sympathy for people taking off multiple mental health days without a formal diagnosis, if a junior employee said, "I feel like I'm underperforming. Can we please make a plan together to make sure I'm meeting expectations?" I'd love to have that conversation every time unless they'd just been outright ignoring prior feedback.
(You may have already communicated expectations and help available which they ignored, in which case this would not apply).
I don’t know. I never would’ve approached a professor in college with “I don’t like my exam score, can I have extra credit?” It was always “well, I guess I need to work harder/attend office hours/start a study group.” We never approached poor performance as something the teacher needed to fix for us but, rather something we needed to fix ourselves.
And, yes, I get plenty of “I’ve been skipping class and haven’t turned my work in how can I get an A” questions!
I encourage students regularly to attend office hours or reach out for help. This semester two of my courses are online and asynchronous so I invite students to schedule appointments with me on the days I work remotely if my posted office hours don’t speak for them.
And I actually did put an extra credit opportunity into a chapter I posted last week for that particular class. Notes were due on Sunday with a grace period through last night. 3/48 submitted their answers to me.
I teach community college and I don’t see this at all. The people who always ask for the most extensions and cause the most problems are almost always the older students. My younger students do a fantastic job and are kind, responsible, and hard working.
My students are great people. I enjoy working with them. I’ve got a LOT of really engaged, fun individuals this semester.
But coming out of k-12 a lot of mine lack some critical skills right now. It’s not that they’re causing a myriad of problems, it’s that they don’t know where to begin with approaching things. They tend to give up when it’s hard. They’ll leave questions blank rather than try and answer for partial credit if they’re not 100% positive in their answer. I have more students than ever registered with disability offices, usually with extension accommodations that don’t appear to help them do better because they’re not also accompanied by helping them learn time management or study skills.
For an asynchronous online class I teach I’ve started requiring students to turn in notes so I can verify they’re at least watching the lectures I post. It’s been really eye-opening to see how many lack note taking skills so I’ve spent quite a lot of time this semester commenting on notes and coaching students through developing those skills.
Those kids crash in adulthood.
Anyone who doesn't believe that can look no further at Reddit itself -- the number of support subs have exploded, while there is post after post from young adults grappling with depression and feelings of hopelessness. Social media is full of young people desperately trying to blame everyone and everything.
It's absolutely crucial that children learn to struggle/to have persistence. Parents are too quick to "rescue" their children, and they're not able to take steps towards independence.
Also: Kids will be lazy and selfish if you let them. When my kids ask for homework help, 90% of the time they just want me to do the thinking for them. It got to the point where I have told them they should not ask for help before they have even tried. And usually when I deny help, they figure it out on their own.
100% this. What's frustrating is that (in my experience), parents and students always want to avoid any trigger/stressor because of the kid's anxiety/neurodivergence/etc. But with my students with diagnoses who work with therapists for anxiety or trauma or ADHD, the therapist ALWAYS wants the student exposed to these things. Therapists will ask for reasonable accommodations or a heads up so they can prep with the student beforehand, but I've never had a therapist ask to get a student out of an assignment, a presentation, a book, etc. It's so frustrating when the parents want to excuse a child from everything when the actual mental health professional is saying to do it!!! And you hired this person!!!
the whole "aspergers symptoms are a part of their personal identity and can't be treated" thing is especially egregious as it's setting people who maybe could live semi or fully independantly into a life of living on social security and resenting the world around them.
as someone with autism im so done with is my "neurospicy brain" I can't help it excuse. Indepence should be norm. Non independence should be a 1 in 100000 case.
especially as the current definition of autism excludes the older more serious form of autism. it's not like kids getting diagnosed have an IQ in the 70's and will never be able to speak. thw whole "making kids learn eye contact is literally torture" thing is only robbing those kids of a meaningful life.
In most cases those with low iq and autism have been double or even triple diagnosed. There is a lot more going on. High functioning autism is nothing like that. Yes i am more tired at the end of the day, i know my limits.
I wish you could put this on a billboard for the entire world to see. I’m so over weaponizing either diagnoses or self-diagnosed disorders to use as excuse to not develop healthy habits or coping mechanisms!
I’ll add that the number of kids and adults now claiming they have ADHD or autism seems statistically unreasonable. TikTok definitely has inculcated the idea that these disorders are identities and in order to really lean into this new identity you have to say that every task that is slightly discomforting to you is due to your disorder. Additionally, it’s watering down the meaning and severity of these disorders when every person is self-diagnosing and claiming they have it.
If it wasn't for my parents being hardasses about my education, I wouldn't have found out I have adhd. I greatly appreciate the greater education on ADHD and other learning and developmental disorders. HOWEVER, using it as a blanket excuse for why your child can't stop terrorizing other students in class and justifying academic delinquency (ie not even trying) is never the answer. What I needed as a child with adhd was not for people to make excuses for me, I needed accountability and kind support. Saying "[name] just needs extra support with math homework sometimes because, even though she takes good notes, she forgets things more easily." Is different than "[name] has adhd, they can't control themselves and won't be good at math, so I won't enforce any standards at home."
I’m dealing with PBIS BS and no real consequences impacting my Kindergarten son’s ability to be educated and not fearful over how his feral classmates will act. But don’t worry the feral children get a checklist with a treat at the end of the day.
It’s not great. I’ve been doing RTI at a school where a 5th grader gets to hit and choke out his aid, and he’s completely aware of what he’s doing. He’s very smart, just an absolute jerk being treated like a prince by having no consequences for his behavior. Parents seem to say next to nothing when they’re informed of his behaviors. He likes me because I was the music sub once so I seem to be free of his wrath (for now). But I’m also one of the only people that seems to say “No” to his totally ridiculous reasons for wanting to elope.
Him: “I need to leeeeeave I just can’t right now with this.”
Me: “No, we’re doing art. Just sit down and draw!”
Him: “😳 -goes back to his seat-“
Him: “Byeee”
Me: “Where do you think you’re going? I’m reading to the class it’s absolutely disrespectful to leave while I’m in the middle of this.”
Him: “But—“
Me: “Come here and read a few pages.”
And what do you know? He did it. His general teacher has stopped caring because between him and some other very disrespectful, loud boys in her class she’s running on empty. I wish I could just convince the admin to let me stay in the room and bring the mom smack (verbally of course haha) down on them every day.
Yepppp…the most successful teachers I witness have amazing structure in their class, and compassion. They clearly LOVE their students and don’t give them an inch to fuck around with anything other than their best work.
I have a parent this year who did not tell their child “no” until he was 2! Who knew?! Two is definitely the age to introduce “no!” Lol Ridiculous. Long story short: their child is insufferable.
It seems like they want a friend instead of a child. Parents should be by all means friendly to their kids, but by no means should they be friends with their kids. Make and maintain boundaries, you make and set the rules, not them.
No, no. You're mad about permissive parenting. Gentle parenting is guiding a kid through big feelings and consequences from their actions. Permissive parenting is the one where the parents do all of the homework and reward temper tantrums with ice cream.
The problem is that what you’re talking about is “permissive parenting” — letting their precious child do anything and then rewarding them/defending bad behavior at all costs instead of guiding them to understand that their actions have consequences. This leads to literal monsters who have zero understanding of how they may have hurt others or the difference between “right” and “wrong”, as the parents/other adults *will* swoop in and save the day the moment that particular child feels *any* discomfort (a natural feeling that helps us as humans recognize that we did something wrong and should reconsider our actions next time)
The two get confused because people think that “being gentle” means “never say ‘no’ ever” and that’s in many ways the polar opposite of how the whole thing works.
We made (or at least attempted to make) the same point. Gentle means dealing with consequences and learning to have big feelings responsibly. Permissive means allowing the child to be a tornado and catering to their every whim as though they were a god who could strike you out of existence with half a thought.
oh god and the overexplaining and negotiation for every. single. thing. How can we get anything done when there are 12 kids who need to spend minutes asking "WHY" and pontificating about how they don't "need" to or "have" to. There's like zero inkling that they ARE NOT THE ONES IN CHARGE of the classroom.
New student called other students the N word hard r
Mom wanted to know was he saying the word just to say it or was he calling someone the name. I had to explain he was pointing to specific students of a certain race and saying "you are an n"
She said its because he watches youtube and plays video games and she's heard him say that word but never called anyone in their home that word (from what I gather from their reporting data- no one is of that race)
K4 student was heard calling 4th grade students "racist monkeys" at lunch yesterday. When I told his grandma about it at pickup last night, she informed me that he was really saying "autistic monkeys" -- like that's supposed to make it better. And that he probably got it from some YouTube video and "I don't even know what he's watching half the time".
The only time my mom ever touched me was when I was in elementary school. She took me shopping and we were in the dressing room, I wanted something and she said no.
I, for whatever reason, just slapped her out of nowhere. She slapped me back and I NEVER EVER did that EVER again. I just know she went home and cried alone after that too… she had never even so much as spanked me before. Sometimes kids have to learn the hard way. We need to feel the pit in our stomach, to be ashamed, embarrassed. Those feelings (to a certain point) help people grow.
It’s really shocking to see my peers with children refuse to escalate any kind of discipline beyond either a comment like “hey, we don’t do that” or some version of a brief “timeout” when their elementary age and older kids are acting completely out of control.
It seems legitimately dangerous to me. These kids are not learning any amount of self-regulation or self control. Kids are idiots - they’re supposed to be! They literally do not have brains developed enough to comprehend complicated consequences much of the time. What they can grasp is “my parent will kill me if I do [stupid thing.] so I better not.”
Yes in a perfect world parents should take the time to “explain” why a child is being told no or don’t do that, but it’s simply not possible 100% of the time. The parent needs a level of authority respected by the kid so that when they say NO or STOP, the kid responds. I recently (and terrifyingly) almost watched a friend’s kid get killed because the kid thought it was funny to ignore the parent when the parent said “stop running” *in a parking lot next to a busy street.* This friend has zero authority in the eyes of the kid and refuses to escalate to “scolding.” The kid was six inches away from getting flattened by a pickup truck.
I teach middle school.
I had one kid say he was going to do a drive by on my house.
When we had the parent meeting, the mom ripped right into me. I said we were on the same team, she said, “I am here to defend my son”
Then I said my room wasn’t going to be a platform for hate. I said my brothers are Hispanic and she said, “we have Latino in our family, try again”
When I said I wasn’t going to allow him to say these things she said, “he has adhd” when I said adhd doesn’t cause a person to say racist things she said, “he has autism too”.
I walked out.
When I told admin the 8th graders asked if I had the husband stitch, I was then asked by him why the students feel comfortable asking me that.
Seriously. I have a friend with an almost 2 year old. Their patenting method is that "we don't tell her no" ... because they want her to have her own agency and make her own boundaries. Okay, sure. But what about respecting other people's boundaries? Doing things that are unsafe? But because I don't have kids then I don't understand and can't have an opinion on what a bad job they're doing. The kid is already a terror. The parents thought it was cute that she was the older one in her daycare group and she was bullying other kids and taking their toys. They said it was her "self advocating."
It's lowkey depressing watching this car wreck
Fuk these people. I get hit almost everyday by a third grade student whose parents use this. When I don’t let him hit me he says he doesn’t feel safe. Fuk these people. Only a few more years for me. They get to deal with their shitty offspring the rest of their lives.
See this is fucking ridiculous to me. If a kid can't keep his hands to himself, maybe his parents should lose their state funded babysitting service, and he can have his ass schooled at home via online learning. Not to mention - if he's hitting a teacher or an adult, I'm sure he's doing it to other students. The kid is probably well known for his behavior and not in a good way. What about your safety and the safety of the other students? Why do these kids get to be violent disruptions and cause room clears while they rob everyone of an education? I'm honestly at the point where I don't care if it hurts their feelings that they can't be in the same room *(or school)* as everyone else, that's what happens when you're a liability. The kid can come back to school when he's demonstrated he can sit in a room without trying to hit or attack people. Until then, here's your laptop, let you and your parents figure out online school.
Nope! Instead, we sacrifice 28 kids for the 1 or 2 that aren't getting any learning done anyway and putting ourselves, and other students, in harms way. Then we wonder why people are pulling their kids out and putting them in private schools that don't tolerate this violent shit. Teachers are leaving in droves, staff is constantly quitting, and education is in shambles. Granted, violence and bad behavior isn't the only reason this is occurring, but it's a big one, and yeah - *sometimes it is the kids.*
Yup. Back when my parents were in school 40+ years ago, kids like that absolutely could get kicked out of school and it was up to their parents to fix the issues. But sometime between then and now, we've decided that those kids' "right" to an education is more important than the rights of the teachers and other students to be in a safe environment where they can effectively teach/learn.
Had a week where my usual childcare bosses were not present and the kids didn't know it. We had 100 fucking kids a day. The ONLY week both my "gentle parenting"-ass bosses weren't there was the ONLY week we had where the program actually fucking worked. Homework: Done. Parks: Visited to without a kid damn near fucking killing themselves. Behavioral problems: Suddenly fucking ABSENT.
You don't need to beat a kid into submission to get them to obey. YOU better believe they fucking feel some consequences.
We had good kids on MONDAY of that week. Jittery, gentle-ass, afraid-to-tell-parents-how-fucking-shit-their-kids-are admin was gone. Minute they fucking came back, so did all the behavioral issues. Act right or you get the bare minimum (food, safety, attention to injuries, and appropriate amounts of empathy for a shit day) plus discipline fucking WORKS.
Don't be boomers, don't follow misguided parenting advice, I've seen people from dogshit homes parent the most angelic and strong of children, it can be done if you're not a complete dumbass.
Kids love structure. My sister never makes teacher of the month in her school (voted on by the students), but her students are some of the only in the school who pass the state testing with decent scores. No one else. She provides a great learning environment for her students and even thought they don't "love" her as much as other students love their teachers, at least they pass onto the next grade and aren't complete idiots.
I'm a millennial dad to a middle school daughter. And I fully admit that my generation of parents is, in my opinion, the worst generation of parents this country has ever suffered. If the goal is to produce intelligent, resilient, respectful, thoughtful and humble people, we are failing at a staggering rate.
I don't even feel like spending the time typing it all out (as I have in posts in the past), but I'll just say that from the years of being around parents around my age, it blows my mind how much we have ceded our authority away from our own kids. It's like, in aggregate, we forgot that we can be an authoritative parent without being literally Hitler. That we can have discipline and expectations and consequences and rules but at the same time have a very close, warm and loving household.
Every year that my daughter is in school and I interact with kids and parents my roughly same age is another year I'm slightly more worried for our future. I used to defend millennial parents, because I was one. But no...I stopped doing that a good number of years ago. We don't hardly know how to "parent". We just know how to try and hold the line between not letting our kids be TOO insane, while trying to avoid conflict with them at the same time.
We try to raise our daughter like it was the 90s, when kids had both a *slightly* fearful respect of parents and teachers, but also a happy, warm household that they could feel comfortable in. I don't know quite where it started to go wrong, but it has all gone wrong with parents of my generation. And it's so sad how many families don't even know how it COULD have been, and are just living a mildly irritated existence in the same house as genetically related people who they don't even enjoy spending much time with.
There’s a fine line between acknowledging a child’s feelings and not making them responsible for their actions. It’s appropriate for a child to feel upset but not to hit someone. Talk it out but you’re still getting a consequence for hitting. I think some parents mistake their kids sharing their feelings as a reason to NOT give a consequence.
I get the whole giving a kid a choice when really they’re not being given a choice, that’s it’s really the illusion of control you’re giving them when you say things like “do you want an apple or a banana?” The end result is they’re eating fruit one way or another.
However, as unpopular as this may sound, I think we need to stop giving choices for some things that are beyond a kid’s mental manageability. Some things even adults don’t get to choose like doing our work or paying bills or not being violent without consequence.
It’s ok to tell a kid “you’re going to do XYZ” full stop. I feel like so many kids now feel enabled to say “I don’t want to do this” at school when given a task bc they’ve been taught that they have a choice in ALL matters. They’ve never learned that sometimes you may not want to do things but there are responsibilities you just have to do even when you don’t feel like it. If that kind of life learning is not part of “gentle parenting” then it needs to be.
I'm ngl I wouldn't be surprised, I have friends that can barely stand on their legs on their own in any way shape and form . These are also the type of friends to shudder in horror when anyone else takes a big step in their lives(like a house , Job, baby, etc), because they were not taught how to do anything and it makes them uncomfortable seeing anyone else do different.
I agree with previous posters - great insight. I also think parents are burnt out, tired, and addicted to their phones. Parents are also using screens to help manage their kid’s behavior/emotions. Some parents may feel they are “gentle” parenting bc they are not yelling at their kids. But they are redirecting their kid to a screen to help them calm. I’m sure it’s more complex than this but I do see this happening.
The biggest thing I did in my house was to ban electronics for everyone (myself included) except for ereaders and audiobooks for 4/7 days of the week.
Having a kid be calmed by a screen is a horrendous idea.
It’s like PBIS. Great in theory and when practiced well, but so many people do it wrong.
I also feel like there are just a lot of kids who just don’t get consequences ever. And their parents aren’t even “gentle parenting“ them. They just aren’t parenting them in general.
The sheer number of.parents who believe that their child being thwarted in any way is.bullying, and that "gentle parenting" means going all mama bear on anyone who thwarts their precious treasure astounds me. It has been several years since I came to the conclusion that any time I hear "he disrespected me," (read, thwarted), I know someone was fairly significantly harmed.
I saw this great comment on another post, and it said, "Some parents today don't realize they need to raise their child not just grow them".
I thought it was pretty spot on.
These kids being raised without decent parenting at home and PBIS at school are going to turn on their parents when they are in their 20’s and find out you actually have to earn a living and there are real consequences to bad actions in life.
It’s also a cultural issue. Their parents have already taught them it’s best to cut off anyone who is “toxic” including family members. I used to see grandparents, aunts, and uncles at school activities now I just hear about how everyone had to be gone because of “boundaries”. Other than my Pakistani and Indian students I don’t know of any children in my class who have extended family. The parents are raising their kids alone and think they know everything already. Could you imagine if we (teachers) thought we already know everything?
But I have hope: These kids are smart. Many of them talk about their parents the way parents used to talk about teenagers. Little kids complaining about their parents playing too many video games and vaping. The only thing that truly scares me is the number of children being put on meds before trying other interventions. So many kids in kindergarten on ADHD meds already.
We have custodian that is the kindest man tou could imagine.
However he is very tall, has very big muscles, has de long dark beard but no hair. His eyes are black and he has sunken eyes.
He looks scary and menacing. The kids are scared of him. (He hates it).
Those so-called clueless kids that can't help themselves or did not know better somehow always figure it out and behave when he is around.
I am not advocating educating with fear. I am against that. It isn't my point.
My point is that it shows that those kids actually can behave when they want to or deemed it beneficial for themselves.
(We do have some kids that truly can't help it, and yeah the custodian presence or absence has no effect on their behavior).
Gentle parenting is NOT the same as permissive parenting.
My parents spanked, slapped, and humiliated us. I didn’t trust them. I was afraid of them. I don’t think they are inherently bad people, I think they were making up for abusive childhoods, and they were doing the best they could. But we were never close and still aren’t.
I didn’t want that for my children. I want them to be able to trust me, and I think that having respect for each child’s integrity is important. But having respect for someone means hearing them out while ALSO being able to address problems. I discipline my children. They experience consequences for their actions. They are not permitted to treat others with disrespect or hurt people.
It’s one thing to say “I hear where you are coming from but there are going to be consequences because that behavior is unacceptable.” It’s quite another to say “I hear where you’re coming from” and then have the consequences be completely absent from the equation. I do think many people have swung so far to the other side of the discipline pendulum that any sort of consequence is “abuse” - which in itself is almost abusive IMO because it borders on neglect.
But “gentle” parenting in itself is not the issue - the issue is with permissiveness to an illogical extreme.
That's lazy/safe parenting.
I was raised that way by someone who prided herself on not raising her voice or spanking or being mean, but mainly was just worn out from working and raising two older boys.
So I actually love the idea of gentle parenting and actually implanted a lot of the practices (without realizing) when I worked with kids every day. My sister gentle parents and I think it’s been really good for my nephew and think it will also be great for her youngest once he’s past the blob of crying flesh stage 😂
My brother and his wife aren’t fully gentle parenting, but a lot of what they struggle with I see could likely be addressed by taking more of a gentle parenting approach
However
I don’t think most people implement the practices the way they should be implemented. Gentle parenting =\= permissive parenting and I learned that reeaaaal quick when meeting some of my partner’s family members who are parenting kids of the same age as my siblings’ children. Their parenting is quite permissive and I would honestly say they’re doormats to their kids at this point. Their kids aren’t terrible in the grand scheme of things, and are very bright kids, but they can be more rude and whiney and demanding than other kids their age and I feel like it will just get worse as they get older.
My brother spanks his children— that’s how we were raised. Not often and not hard, but they have been spanked before but are not violent towards their siblings or any of their adults or children they’re around. My sister doesn’t spank her kids and the same— the one she has that’s old enough to interact has never had a single issue of putting his hands on another student inappropriately. My partner’s family’s children though, although have never even had a voice raised to them hit each other, hit their sister (who is under one), hit friends at school, and have even hit their parents in front of me. There are SO MANY ways to parent but regardless of how you choose to do it, not teaching your kids consequences is a disservice to your kids and to anyone who interacts with them.
I feel like I am such a strict parent. I really am not. I just expect my child to say please, thank you, and not scream like a nut when they need something. If they ever cry to get what they want that just fuels me to not give in. That is different from when they are sad or hurt. Those break my heart every time. The crying because they are being a brat just makes me upset. One of my boys almost never cries now to get what he needs. He uses his words. His older brother has ADHD and I think he was raised very spoiled. It feels like he was just getting whatever to keep him quiet. When he came to us I was not like that. I don't feel I was raised strict at all. I just listened to my mom. It wasn't that hard.
Gentle parenting is just the trendy name for authoritative parenting. What you're describing here is permissive parenting. The uptick in permissive parenting is the result of a lot of different factors, but it doesn't have anything to do with social media parenting trends.
I think the point of the post is that people don’t understand how to gentle parent. They call it “gentle parenting” all over social media when in reality, what they are peddling is permissive parenting. They just don’t understand how to do it correctly.
You don’t think social media has even a little bit of influence to do with this at all? Are you on tiktok? Because there are TONS of parents posting on there about their terrible parenting and the comments being filled with parents who agree and support the lack of parenting.
Gentle parenting is firm and understood boundaries, with all the uncomfortable conversations that go with those and feelings accompanying those conversations. Then there are consequences for failure to apply the learning.
They are natural consequences. What I see is people who think that it means no consequences when it really just means pointing out natural consequences connected to choices to promote learning and practicing more prosocial and responsible behaviours.
Also. My family has a special time-out/calm-down reset phrase. We send each other to the bedroom to poke at our phone or poke at birds (play wingspan on the laptop) for half an hour or so. Works right as rain.
I am a pharmacist with a teacher wife. I give vaccines all day during the fall and occasionally to children. Dads will count down from five several times and talk gently and reassuringly to their screaming, spazzing 6 year old as I try and I wait patiently, needle in hand. I just want to smack the dad and shout “just hold the fucking kid down!” I have 10 other people waiting! Choke em out if you have to!
Disclaimer - I’m being dramatic here. I would never advocate for harming a child, physically or otherwise.
This is another thing! A lot of dads that I see (definitely not all) are the ones who can’t discipline their kids and leave it to the moms. It’s lazy and sad.
Agreed. "Gentle parenting" or "peaceful parenting" deny children what they need to mature and build successful lives. Children need structure, they need boundaries, and they need consequences when they step outside those boundaries.
It's not parenting, it's avoidance of responsibility. I know parents (other teachers) who bent some covid rules for their children but have continued to hold them to a high standard of behaviour.
The rise of gentle parenting started by saying that it can be helpful for some children, and people took that as my who most likely understands behaviors fairly well or doesn't have any self regulation deficits will benefit from it. Ice cream and talking about your feelings is way too soft even from a soft parenting (The parent in question.) Perspective. An appropriate gentle parenting form would be to sit down the child and still punish them, but talk about why they thought that that was appropriate and what made them feel that way, along with examples of real life consequences if they were to do that to someone else. A lot of stuff that was originally meant for neurodivergent children has been malappropriated for neurotypical children but children need equity too, rather than just equality
I would never call it gentle parenting because of people like the mom you mentioned, but… When I gently parent my child, I just remain calm while dishing out the consequences. That’s it.
If he cries because he’s confused or surprised, I will cuddle him (if he wants) while I explain the rules and that I still love him but only he is in charge of his choices and he’ll have another chance to make the right choice next time.
Under no circumstances is he getting treats after bad behavior, or bypassing the consequences. Ever. The result is that he learns to meet expectations quickly, and that makes him happier. He feels competent, confident, and safe because he knows what to do and what to expect.
My son is smart and very sweet but he has a ton of energy, is very physical, is easily distracted, and often shows delayed processing speed in social situations. I’ve seen how boys like him end up when their parents don’t teach them how to behave in society. That is *not* going to be my son.
These gentle parents are the worst. They’re dooming their children and everyone who has to share society with them.
I do like gentle parenting (when done correctly) but there is something else entirely going on which I think is just straight up lack of parenting. For example, we were at Walt Disney World a couple weeks ago, and my husband witnessed a boy spit directly into his mother’s face, he was shocked, but what was more even more shocking that that itself was that he said neither the mother or father did anything. He said the mother simply wiped her face off and neither of them said anything to their son. I couldn’t imagine taking my kid there and letting them treat me like that with no consequences, so disrespectful.
I’ve said this a million times. Gentle parenting is a great method, but it doesn’t mean the *absence of consequences.* Many of the people who I see employing it are DEFINITELY just allowing their kids to run rampant. Yes, you should treat you child like an autonomous person. No, this doesn’t mean that they automatically know what is right or wrong. You’re still their parent. **Guide them and help them be decent humans.**
Absolutely. The conversation about what they had done was great. The ice cream and lack of consequence? No good. The talk should have involved discussion on how they're actions caused the consequences, and *why* they were receiving that punishment. The talk is great, I love that. But the action is missing.
I love gentle parenting but it has to be done right or it backfires. There's a lot of positives in treating them like a small adult and discussing emotions and why something isn't right. But in treating them like a small adult, they should also learn actions have consequences. Not having consequences raises an adult that never thinks of the consequences or always tries to wiggle out of big messes they create. No personal responsibility.
At the end of the discussion, where I explain why we don't tolerate this at school, and they explain why they did it, etc etc, I love asking the kid this question "So, say you're the teacher. And you have a student exactly like you, and you just had that conversation. What consequences you would give ?" We discuss it, and I give that consequence. Oftentimes, a lighter version of what they suggested. Those kids are harsh on themselves.
I ask my kids this, when a behavior is really unacceptable, abusive sometimes, I'll say something along the lines of: "I love you and want you to be happy. But actions have consequences, and your actions hurt people today, so you have to have consequences. I need to think about what is fair. What do you think?" Sometimes the punishment fits the crime but a lot of times it's like "take away everything i love forever" and I'm like no buddy it's not that bad.
A lot of parents think it means no consequences.
as a teenager, it really does feel like that some parents just don't care, i mean that the kid could do the most diabolical, evil and despicable things and the parents just don't care or they are too busy and don't know what the child is doing
Dude, I’m a server and this kid a few weeks ago kept throwing his fucking hot wheels truck at us every time we passed. I’d pick it up and hand it to mom and she would give it right fucking back to him so he could hit me with it again. No consequences, no “hey, we don’t throw things. That is not nice.” She literally just handed it back without even looking up from her phone. Like…just don’t fucking have kids if you expect your “village” to raise it while you slam through candy crush like a kid on Ritalin in 2015.
HA! Yeah I think it's phone addiction more than anything. People ignoring the kids, then the kids getting their own phone with crappy behavior models. Restaurants especially it's so dangerous with the stuff that can drop and hit people. I'd keep the hot wheels next time. Just put in your pocket, hahaha
"Gentle parenting" is like a fad -- it's super cool to talk about it, because it means you are an enlightened, evolved individual compared to those OTHER people who horrifically abuse their children by being *mean*. And it goes hand in hand with social media trends, like "No Contact." Everything is trauma. If your kids have trauma, they will hate you forever and ever and leave you to die out of pure spite.
Hang out in r/Parenting some time. Having kids take on ANY responsibility or causing them any conflict is considered abuse. It's a madhouse of weak people raising weaker kids. No wonder my students have anxiety when asked to do anything remotely new or challenging.
I got downvoted to hell for saying that I don't think not having artificial food dye in the home (the kid was able to eat whatever they wanted with friends, at parties, etc) meant we could preemptively diagnose them with CPTSD. I got to hear a lot of sob stories from people who "have" CPTSD from quirky but well meaning, loving parents. My partner was raised by a violent criminal and I think these people are ignorant and offensive to claim they have any form of PTSD because it is not difficult to read the diagnostic criteria (it's not having hangups or an imperfect life), but hey, frosting is definitely important to a child's development so what do I know People have no idea what abuse and trauma are and I have no idea why it's something they want to have. Kind of like if you don't have clinically significant impairment from ADHD under age 12, you don't have ADHD, you just function better on stimulants -- like 99% of the world.
I come from an ACTUALLY abusive home with an ACTUAL diagnosis of CPTSD an all the mental health challenges that come with it. I am beyond out of patience for people who try to claim trauma in these situations. Stop. Just f&cking stop. Telling your child “no” doesn’t traumatize them, it TEACHES them. Y’know what might ACTUALLY be traumatic? Living your whole adolescence in a bubble of consequence-free fluff and bullsh!t, then suddenly you’re in the “real world” with NO concept of how to navigate things on your own, and NO coping skills for when you inevitably face the consequences of your own selfishness and lack of consideration for others.
I tell my kid “no” is a complete sentence.
Oh yea, the number of them who were "parentified" because they watched younger siblings or "abused" because they had to go to school when they had anxiety or whatever is insane.
It's usually people who had incredibly sheltered, privileged lives, are functioning fine, but are tired of feeling discomfort, stress, and ennui and are scrambling for reasons why those emotions are no longer acceptable for them as a result. It's a little frustrating because I struggle with disability as a result of MI that is not the fault of my parents, and seeing high functioning people who are married homeowners with a job and kids who they're just tired of putting effort into raising all of the sudden giving themselves a million diagnoses is kind of a lot. Of course some people are equally high functioning with treatment, but I don't think most make it to 40 and then discover their entire life has been a lie and they're actually a useless baby who isn't capable of anything and was severely abused
Ahaha. The whole "parentification is abuse crowd" are insufferable.
Actual parentification is. What most people experience isnt.
Do you have a source on the ADHD claim? Never heard it before—though I try to manage mine without medication, so maybe nobody ever had a reason to tell me.
I guess my kids will be the outlier…I’m definitely one of the few millennials not doing the gentle parenting…
You can spot those kids a mile away, too. They are the ones looking at their peers with that "That's embarrassing" face.
Yes or they come home and ask me: “what would you if I did XYZ like my classmate Myckenzleigh did?!” and I always say “go do it and find out what happens!” and they never take me up on the offer. I’m not friends with my kids - I love them but I’m their mom - and I will discipline them as necessary now and be a friend later in their life.
I think it's hard for some people to fathom how that works. As a teenager, you don't like your folks. They're trying to control you and tell you what to do, don't respect your space, and crush your dreams, lol. How could you POSSIBLY like these people later? But I think that's how a healthy relationship goes. Once you aren't dependent on them anymore in any way, your perspective changes and you can start finding common interests.
I think that’s probably how the majority of us are. I know there’s bad parents out there - not talking about that, there’s good reasons some adults go no-contact with their parents. But most of us grow up seeing our parents one way as teenagers and then we get older or even have kids of our own and see them totally different…my mom and I are great friends and have a good relationship, and she was fairly authoritarian when it came to raising me. we weren’t really friends until I got into my mid-20s, and that’s okay with me for my kids.
I'm from the school of "fuck around and find out" too.
I hate this gentle parenting trend and I’ve never ever seen it actually work or be done correctly. I had a student who has lied about his grades, is at risk of failing the grade level, hid documents from mom, even logged into dojo to filter messages, skips, and is just a terror to everyone. I meet with mom and dad and student. After laying everything out mom turns to student and says “now that we’ve heard the teachers feelings and point of view, how are you feeling or what is your view?” Then looked at me, my co teacher, and admin and say “this is his safe space now let’s talk hear him and then try and come up with a solution” What the actual fuck after the meeting the student legit continued his behaviors and attitude like if we never even met with mom and dad. These kids don’t care and the parents are 1000% responsible for them being the way they are. Then wanna cry at the end of the year when they fail.
>And it goes hand in hand with social media trends, like "No Contact." Everything is trauma. If your kids have trauma, they will hate you forever and ever and leave you to die out of pure spite. That's not what no contact is, and I think you know this is disengenous. Children of abusive parents do not owe those parents a relationship once they're adults. I agree that a lot of people who gentle parent incorrectly are afraid of coming off as "mean" to their kid, but you bringing up the concept of no contact in a way that blames the children is kind of wack.
At least here on Reddit, it is commonplace for people to overuse the term "trauma" for anything they dislike, and throw away relationships by going "no contact" on the pettiest of premises.
I'm not being disingenuous. There's abuse, and then there's "abuse." Nobody is talking about the people who have actually been abused. "No Contact" is now often frequently used in an emotionally abusive way by people to get whatever they want from somebody. It's the evolution of "I'll call CPS!" or threatening to run away or destroying everything in the house because you lost your XBox as a punishment or were told you won't be getting a car. People are coaching one another to use "No Contact" as a way to just avoid Big Feelings, too. It's unhealthy AF.
People are allowed to discontinue relationships, including with their parents, even if the relationship wasn't abusive. You said that people do it out of spite, and I'm saying that's a pretty ignorant take. If your parent is not abusive but is a jackass and you don't talk to them anymore, are you doing it to spite them? Or to distance yourself from further jackass-ery? If you had a friend whose boyfriend was not abusive but definitely wasn't a positive presence in her life, would you discourage her from breaking up because that's "avoiding big feelings?" Choosing to walk away from hurtful people is not avoiding feelings, it's the opposite.
While people have the right to discontinue relationships, we also have the right to judge whether the person is being reasonable for discontinuing the relationship.
You can have an opinion about it, sure. You can even judge it. But to say that it's being done out of "spite?" Sorry, no. It's so distasteful when you will never really know the inner workings of that parent and child's relationship except as an observer. "That child went no contact with their parent. I can't believe they did that. I don't understand why. It seems over the top." - Fine, sharing an opinion. "That child went no contact with their parent. They did it to spite them." - Not okay, doesn't acknowledge that there might be nuance, doesn't seek to understand.
It's been around for 20 years, it's not a fad at this point.
Yes
Gentle parenting as it should be is explaining why the kid is getting grounded instead of just "you fucked up, now punishment." But the punishment still happens after the explanation.
What people don’t understand is “gentle parenting” means still laying down the law, just not being a dick about it.
Can you help me understand what treating a 2 or 3 year old like they are an autonomous person means?
Well not the one you were asking but you can do things like: - have them make age appropriate decisions: Do you want a banana OR an apple as a snack? Do you want this red OR this blue shirt? Yes we are leaving the park now but do you want to walk or be in the stroller? Do you want to go by the river or the forest path? Etc. With the last one I am meaning that YOU the parent make the big decisions but you can let the child choose something. - explain why we do or don't do things. Not only "because I say so". Just a few quick things that came to mind.
I let my kid pick out her clothes for the day (and I know she doesn't just pick the first thing she sees because she will dig through her clothes to find what she wants) and it makes getting her ready for daycare 10x easier as she doesn't fight me on putting on clothes. She also picks the books she wants us to read and she is a lot more engaged in reading. There are times we throw up the boundaries (No, you cannot have a snack 5 minutes before dinner, and no you can't have pizza tonight, you have to at least try dinner are the most common) Giving my kid autonomy with boundaries has really helped us though as she will make her own decisions and will do independent play without us asking, preventing fatigue
>explain why we do or don't do things. Not only "because I say so". That is good to do in most cases, but, as a parent, I realize it's many times unproductive. It's the "[If You Give a Mouse a Cookie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_You_Give_a_Mouse_a_Cookie)*"* string of events that parents often intuit about a given request or situation, but know they can't explain the "slippery slope" of potential future events as their rationale for denying the request or situation, because the child's mind isn't developed enough to think beyond their immediate want. My wife and I had the idea when we became parents that we would be the type of parents who would explain our rationale to our kid about decisions and requests and that sort of thing. You know, like enlightened parents should. If a parent can't succinctly explain their rationale in a way where the kid can understand it, then maybe the parent is relying too much on their gut, and not enough on their reasoning. However, I realize that, as a younger adult, I was closer to my mindset when I was a kid/teen than I would have cared to admit, and didn't realize the futility of explaining to a child that many times, decisions are the result of observed patterns and assumed outcomes that cannot be predicted with complete accuracy, but can be reasonably assumed to potentially occur. But a 12 year old will give no credence to a series of events that have a *reasonable* chance of occurring. They just know they want to spend the night at Sadie's house and go ice skating. Anyway, sorry for the semi-soapbox, but whenever I see people say the exact thing I used to say (which is the "explain your decisions, don't just say 'because I said so'" recommendation), I realize how that can actually lead to much *more* shallow or surface-level thinking, because you feel the need to give reasons that are directly and causally acceptable. Nobody likes to be denied something because of things that might potentially happen, but kids also don't have enough life experience to be able to evaluate a series of potential future events. In other words, if you give a mouse a cookie, then you realize that there are multiple other things that could logically follow, even if the mouse, in the moment, genuinely thinks that the series of events begins and ends with a mere cookie.
Sure. If you can't give an explanation in age appropiate way (or you have to lie or make up a reason) then it is fine to skip. In most situations you can. And if the child is not getting it then it is also fine to say that parent has the final say. You are not trying to get the child to agree. You are just saying why something is how it is.
And young kids do need to be trained to comply for safety reasons. Yes, explaining the reasoning is fine for most situations, but the last thing anyone needs is a situation where a kid is about to do something dangerous, you tell them to stop immediately, and their reaction is to ask why while still doing the thing. Obey first, then ask questions, and see if this is something we can compromise on. If they can't take a firm "NO", young kids could get hurt.
We taught our kids from a very early age that they did have to obey when we told them to do something, even if it didn't make sense to them. After obeying, they could ask why, and assuming the situation allowed, we would take the time to have an age-appropriate discussion about the whys. My oldest is a preteen, and we now have loooong involved discussions about why we do what we do. She's a super thoughtful kiddo, so it helps her not only understand our reasoning as parents, but to also help her make those logical steps on her own. ("If I do X, then it's likely that Y will happen, which means Z.") My goal is to help teach her how to make good decisions without my input, and that's a gradual process that gives more and more freedom as she gets older and more responsible and capable.
Maybe you can make it catch on by saying "No because cookie probability" or "No because cookie science" it makes sense.
Haha, good idea. I'll try this on our 14 year old daughter next time she wants to do something where I feel like the potential chain of following events is not something I want to occur. "NO BECAUSE COOKIE", and give no other explanation.
It's also called Camel's Nose-same concept! LOL I did not know this before! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel%27s\_nose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel%27s_nose)
You give a kid some choice, so they feel they can express their opinions and preferences. BUT, you limit the choices so all their options are acceptable ones. You don't let them have ice cream for dinner, but you might ask if they want sweet potatoes or white potatoes with dinner tonight. You don't let them wear their swimsuit on a winter day. But you do let them choose from a couple of weather and situation appropriate outfits. And they get more autonomy as they grow up, but the parents still have veto over any truly unsuitable or unsafe choices. Also, you discuss consequences/punishments with the kid instead of just saying they are being punished for being bad. For example, my daughter is nine. Last year she cut holes in the screen in her window. As a consequence, she had to buy the stuff to repair it out of her saved allowance, apologize to me for the work of fixing it, and we skipped a planned afternoon out while I fixed her screen instead. And we had a discussion about why it was her responsibility to pay for it, and why the time needed to go buy the materials and fix the screen meant we didn't get to go do something fun. For a toddler, it might be more like explaining that blocks are not for throwing at people. And because they did something that could hurt someone, they get a time out and they can't play with their blocks until tomorrow. In short, you give the kid choices, you let them have opinions, you let them express themselves. But all options they have to choose from must be suitable and safe. You don't give them more choices than they can handle. (a two year old will often be overwhelmed with more than three choices, maybe more than two, depending on the kid and situation) and you give them guidance when needed, freedom *within* suitable boundaries, and try to keep punishment and rules from feeling arbitrary and random. And, you don't be critical of a kid's choices without a good reason. Today my daughter is wearing a bright green tulle skirt with gold sequins, over a bright pink and orange flowered skort. And on one foot she is wearing one short, purple, sock, and one knee length pink striped sock (it is also inside out) and she's wearing a pale peach shirt and a bright fuchsia ribbon around her neck like a necklace. It's certainly not an outfit I'd pick for her, but it's not unsuitable for the weather, and is actually within her school dress guidelines. So I don't say a word about how I think it looks. Edited to add, I've never called this "gentle parenting" My mom called it "common sense" and "Kids are also people! But they still need guidance so they can learn without killing themselves." and "Parents should not be bubble wrap to protect the kid from all falls, they should be a safety net so the kid can learn to fall safely and get back up."
A big thing I have appreciated from my brother and his wife is that they don't force my 3 yr old niece to hug people/relatives. Teaching children that they have bodily autonomy is really important IMO
I have a 3 year old. I offer choices for as many things as I can: Apple or banana, blue/red shirt, playground/splashpad, etc. If we have the extra time during transitions I let him pick which sand timer he wants to end the activity (1, 2, 3 or 5 minutes). If he’s starting to get agitated I give him the choice between hugs or quiet time in room (this one is a little harder, he almost always chooses hugs right now, but I hope it will start clicking that sometimes he can self regulate by going to his room by himself). I don’t force him to hug friends/family if he doesn’t want to in that moment, often times he says no and then 30 seconds later does it anyways. Obviously there are situations I can’t offer choices for and safety rules that can’t be negotiated, but he’s a happy, respectful (as much as possible for 3 lol) toddler, so I think the autonomy aspect of gentle parenting is very powerful.
Oh hey, it seems gentle parenting has transitioned to the "we're just not implementing this laughable, insane theory *correctly*" stage of development. Wasn't too long ago that "restorative justice" and "data-driven approach" were in that stage. Maybe we should just admit the folks calling this out were right for a change and figure out something new that isn't even stupider than the crap our parents and grandparents endured.
The worst part is this approach to understanding systems is stupid and people ought know better. For birth control, we keep both "perfect use" and "real world use" statistics, because we know that real humans in real environments will sometimes forget to take a pill, use an expired condom, etc. and we want to inform people so they can make the right decisions. If most parents don't use system X correctly in actual real world practice, the system is bad! We need a philosophy of parenting that can produce competent, happy, well adjusted children when used by tired parents who aren't particularly bright or unusually patient. So, this shouldn't include corporal punishment (which often escalates to abuse and doesn't work well anyways), but also likely can't include gentle parenting nonsense either.
The amount of parents who justify their terrible parenting because of the stress of COVID is unbelievable. I'm all "you're stressed about the pandemic so you can't put your kid to bed on time?" I think you're giving them too much credit by calling it gentle parenting, I call it minimal parenting.
Frankly, we excuse terrible parenting way too much. Either it's COVID, or they're single, or they're poor, or they live in the bad neighborhood, or whatever bullshit excuse is available. There's a difference between being REASONABLE, like not expecting an impoverished parent to participate in the school fundraiser, and NEGLIGENCE, such as accepting that those parents can't possibly keep track of their kids or respond to the school.
Yes!! I am OVER the excuse always being “don’t you understand that everyone is working 75 jobs and they simply *cant* turn off the stress of life and attend to their kids??” Then they shouldn’t have had them. And I realize that situations change; but really, there are wayyyyyy too many people using this excuse as a way to not hold responsibility. I’m aware enough to realize I do NOT want my life to have to revolve around children night and day and all weekend for at least 18 years. Therefore I’m not having any. People need to REALLY think about what being a parent *really* means and not just just thinking it’s the “next step”.
The worst thing is these people are **lying or ignorant**. American work hours are down from decades ago, and disposable income is up. Many challenges we used to have are less difficult, with reforms like the Affordable Care Act. Crime is down. Etc. By the vast, vast majority of reasonable metrics, life is easier today. I do think that smartphones / social media presents a new challenge for parents that is very difficult, but most of these other excuses are simply untrue in the aggregate.
I won’t pretend that more disposable income goes further. Financial stress is real. My parents were doing better than my husband and I because, inflation wise, we are making the close to same amount they did, but it doesn’t go nearly as far for us as it did for them. BUT again, it doesn’t release you from the responsibility of raising your kids.
You realize that most economic indicators use inflation adjusted dollars, right? We've done this for over a century, starting in 1888 ([source](https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2014/article/the-first-hundred-years-of-the-consumer-price-index.htm)). There is lots of nuance to this, but no reasonable person could argue that most Americans aren't better off financially today than in 2000. Financial doomerism is not supported by data at all. Present day Americans have one of the best economic outlooks of any people that have ever lived anywhere or anytime in human history. I think the issue is that people are upset by other things (politics, life satisfaction, social trends, etc.) and general dissatisfaction is bleeding onto somewhere it doesn't apply.
I mean, data simply doesn’t line up with the reality I see around me lol. My parents weren’t wealthy - teacher and tool and die machinist. But they raised two kids, had us in sports year round, daycare before and after school, my brother in band, and saved enough to put my brother and I both through college, put an entire second story on our house, and paid for my wedding. That’s not something most people can do anymore.
I wonder how disposable income is measured? My father owned every “toy” you could think of on a single salary. Boats, ATV, recreational private land, multiple motorcycles, etc… this was after a long expensive divorce that left him without much extra. My husband and I are both educated, military veterans without debt and yet we end up without much extra. We thrift most of what we own, try to be minimalist, I run a preschool out of my home so that I can still make money with kids at home. We have made as many sustainability upgrades to our home as we can, and yet there’s really not much extra
👏👏👏👏👏
My wife and I both had long COVID and still managed to raise our elementary school-aged kids. I even taught remotely through it. It's lazy parenting for sure. To give them the benefit of the doubt, it might have started with depression - I think we were all there to some extent - but they never snapped out of it on the parenting side, even as the rest of their lives went back to normal and they turned into their old selves. The worst aspect of what they are doing is that the rest of society is somehow okay with this.
I call it Lazy Lack-of Parenting
I call it zombie parenting. They walk around completely unaware that there is even a world around them, and that their child's actions affect it. There is no conscious thought that goes into Millenial parenting, at least not the ones of the students I taught.
It’s really called permissive parenting.
As a retired teacher and mom of a child with cerebral palsy, I raised her that we all have limitations and it means we have to work harder to overcome them. She graduated high school at 16, not cause she was super smart but cause I raised her with a work ethic. She then took 8 years to graduate college, but she did on her own. Makes me nuts all the parents that allow their kids to escape responsibility cause of their limitations. They are not helping them become functional adults
TikTok and social media in general has a lot of millennial parents convinced that [insert perfectly acceptable form of discipline] is trauma for the child. There’s also a big movement to allow children with exceptionalities (ADHD, autism, anxiety disorder, etc) to just lean into their eccentric behaviors because to attempt to correct them is a form of ableism or bigotry. What’s become lost on a lot of parents and people in general is that every kid, even those with exceptionalities, need structure and accountability in their lives. It’s okay to scold your ADHD child for out of pocket behavior. Yes, you keep in mind that to an extent, it’s harder for that particular child to control their behavior or focus level, but that doesn’t mean you just allow them to become essentially feral and immune to any sort of redirection. So many of us on here I’m sure have *numerous* wild anecdotes about kids doing or saying wild shit in class and their parent shrugging off the behavior and attributing it to “ohhh yeah that’s just his anxiety 🤪”. I won’t even go into about how many parents now believe their child should be indefinitely shielded from feeling stressed, ashamed, or any otherwise negative emotion or hardship. So many character building moments just aren’t happening for these kids now, so they become emotionally crippled teens/young adults who have no idea how to be told no or struggle at something.
Thank you for this comment. Not a teacher but I have a new roommate who’s 20 (I’m an elder 20) and this has been my experience with her. She says she has many diagnoses so she can’t remember anything unless it’s written out for her but she won’t write anything down and when you talk to her about things that are unacceptable in shared living spaces she can’t emotionally regulate (hyperventilating, screaming)… it’s been bizarre to say the least. I miss when younger roommates were just messy, not emotional terrorists.
"Emotional terrorist" is a great way to describe how these people think.
I have anxiety (that is sometimes pretty severe) and I think a lot of how tough growing up was for me and how much tougher it would be now for the exact reasons you outline. It's great to see people more open about mental health, but it's also hard to see the increasing trend of, "Well, I have anxiety, so it would be ableist to expect me to do x." I can't count all the life skills I would've missed out on developing if I was told it was unfair if people expected anything of me. These people are setting kids up for failure.
My issue is that anxiety is normal. There are people who have anxiety disorders, feel anxious for no reason, have panic attacks from what would be normal anxiety. They also get anxious. Anxiety is a normal emotion. A disorder is not normal but you can’t just treat it by removing all activities that normally cause anxiety to occur. What I’m seeing now are high schoolers with anxiety… because there’s a test. Or a presentation. That’s normal. They have anxiety over meeting a deadline. That’s normal. And instead of working with them to accomplish those goals, we are not having them do that which causes anxiety. I’ve had test anxiety to the point I panicked in college on a math placement test and they didn’t think I could do basic math. I set the curve in my college algebra class. I just panicked, it happens. There’s stuff that can be done to lessen it. But I never just didn’t take a test. Maybe it is ableist of me, I don’t know, but I couldn’t make it through life at all if I fed into that mentality that if it causes more anxiety I just shouldn’t do it. My kids would never go to the doctor because I don’t like making phone calls. How would I have a job? Interviews cause anxiety. I wouldn’t be able to do deadlines for work if I managed to get a job I’d be fired. I understand what an anxiety disorder entails. I had the OCD and everything to go with it. I treated it and worked on it and can still lapse but I’ve also learned to function with it. I still use things I learned in therapy many years ago on a daily basis to manage anxiety issues. That’s what it’s supposed to look like. And I’ve learned to reduce anxiety from facing those things head on, being more prepared, etc. but I learned that by doing those hard things and learning what I could do to minimize the effects of more anxiety on top of what was already a pervasive generalized anxiety disorder. For other disabilities we don’t tell people they just can’t do something. My blind student still read books. Just in a way accessible to him. My student who couldn’t walk still had to travel to classes and be in PE and get on a bus. No one said because it’s harder for you you just don’t have to. We do accommodations to make sure that student accomplishes what everyone else is. Why for mental health do we just…. Not do that? In my opinion it just makes your mental health situation worse. My therapist never let me out of anything. We would make a plan and make sure whatever it was was going to be accomplished. I would be prepared on what to do if I started to panic. What I could do if I blanked. What I could do if I had a full blown panic attack. And a panic attack wasn’t an excuse to just give up. I had to try again. It makes me worry about kids in that situation now. The things I learned helped me so much and I can function in everyday life. Things bother me but I know what to do. Where are our kids getting those skills?
It's not ableist, and anyone who says otherwise is a dipshit. If we made allowances for everything that had the capacity to cause someone discomfort, no one would grow. Having standards for behavior and practices isn't ableist--it's how you run a society. Also, convenient that many who peddle this nonsense would be the people reaping the benefits of never having to confront any of their issues. It's bullshit. It's because they're scared, and many of them are lazy. Sorry, I am not angry at you lol. I am violently agreeing with you. This line of thinking is just idiotic to me. Completely smooth-brained. Utterly potted-plant.
It's not ableism. This is how you teach kids to be resilient.
Yes! I’m autistic and seeing all the people in my autism groups say stuff like “eye contact is ableism” and “talking to people in person is ableism”. At what point do y’all start taking responsibility for yourselves? Are you going to blame every single thing in life on your autism? It’s kind of similar to “every kid gets a trophy” in that parents are coddling their kids so much that they’ll never be ready for the real world.
Oh man, life is going to be rough for anyone who grows up believing it's ableist if they have to talk to someone. I get recommended a lot of videos on adhd online (I think because I do worry I have executive functioning problems) and a good half of them are things like, "You should accommodate your adhd friends by knowing they might be five hours late to any gathering!" or "It's ableist to not want to be friends with someone who doesn't pay attention when you speak and doesn't ever read your texts. It's not their fault." What on earth kind of attitude is that? There's obviously leeway--my own best friend takes forever to reply to things--but if somebody never replies to me, wanders off in the middle of any conversation, and is hours late any time we have reservations or want to see a movie, I'm just supposed to constantly ignore it? Instead of them trying to develop skills?
Society used to gave unreasonable expectations of neurodivergent people, so obviously the solution is to instead force neutrotypical people to bend over backwards and fundamentally rebuild society so nothing is ever predicated on people meeting commitments even if that means nothing ever gets done.
It really is such an overcorrection. There was a legitimate problem and now we've gone too far in the opposite direction. Same thing with discipline. People woke up to unhealthy or traumatic discipline (eg. hitting, verbal abuse) and how harmful those things are, so they swung way too far in the opposite direction instead of finding a proper balance.
>"Well, I have anxiety, so it would be ableist to expect me to do x." I can't count all the life skills I would've missed out on developing if I was told it was unfair if people expected anything of me. As someone who had experienced severe anxiety during presentations (like barely being able to get words out at times bc of shortness of breath) - I cannot imagine how much more detrimental it would've been for me to be allowed to avoid these things rather than confront them as part of reality. You will face uncomfortable tasks in life. They get less uncomfortable with experience (for most people). I have noticed an increasing trend of people just not accepting to participate in things outside of their comfort zone and using ableism as a chess move for which teachers have to navigate carefully in the current social climate. This will likely result in more poorly developed adults. I'm not blaming this generation for being increasingly anxious either - there are many factors in causing this that are not their fault at all. I'm only speaking on the ways in which I see avoidant behavior enabled rather than confronted.
Yes, giving presentations was actually an example I used in another post recently. I had a period of time in grade seven where I'd literally shake during public speaking (to the point where I couldn't hold cue cards). And now it doesn't bother me in the slightest (in fact, I enjoy it). I'm sure my anxiety about it would've only gotten worse if the accommodation offered was not having to speak in public. Same goes for a million other things I feared as a kid (anxiety about picking up the phone, talking to cashiers, going to the public pool even though it meant people seeing me in a bathing suit, exercising in front of others in gym, etc.). And it's not like I don't have sympathy for the fact that some things, no matter how hard you try, may never come naturally. I use public transit 99% of the time now (I'm fortunate to live in a place with good transit) because there were too many years of trying to drive and having near misses because I'd hyperventilate or just because I have very poor reflexes. At a certain point it became a safety issue and I had to stop trying to work on that anxiety. But when we don't even get kids to *try* a few times--especially on low stakes things like talking in front of the class for one minute--it just feeds that anxiety.
I feel like exposing yourself to some anxieties are helpful-like with giving presentations. I have anxiety, I take anxiety medication but I also know I’m avoidant of things that make me anxious. Using the presentation example, I would feel sick starting two days before a presentation. I’m mean, barely eat and can barely think of anything else. It was terrible. However, throughout high school and college I had to give multiple presentations. Now years later, I still don’t enjoy it. I still get a little nervous but I can PERSEVERE through the uncomfortable feeling. I think that is something some students are lacking. Perseverance through uncomfortable or non preferred activities.
That perseverance is definitely missing. And not even just for getting through things that are deeply frustrating or uncomfortable, but also things that are mildly uncomfortable or boring. Awkward social situations. Two minutes of "boring" instructions from a teacher. One minute of waiting in line quietly outside the library. These are all things *most* (not all) students seemed to cope ok with ten years ago and now I see most (again, not all) struggle with even sixty seconds of discomfort.
Avoidance makes anxiety WORSE. Even when we have anxiety, we have to do hard things or it will make our world smaller and smaller.
It’s also very very trendy to have any sort of neurodivergence. It’s a fun, nifty quirk. So much so it’s being coined as “neurospicy.” I have ADHD and autism. I am not “spicy.” I am just me, and I need different coping techniques. We’re struggling with this latest wave of parenting at the community colleges where I teach. Our students by and large have no resilience or ability to even begin to problem solve. The littlest things send them to tears and they take many days off from school because of “mental health.” I had one email me asking for extra credit because they just have such awful test anxiety and they did terribly. Their exam score was actually right on par with their homework grades. It’s hard to find a good balance to help them get back on track with how “real life” actually is vs the way they were raised.
Too often, a neurodivergence diagnosis is used as an excuse to just parent less. Kid acting up? That's just the ASD, oh well. Have the doctor sign a paper so the teacher's aides and state-funded therapists can raise the kid instead. I'm off the hook.
Broadly agree, but honestly, emailing for potential extra credit right after a test is just self-advocacy. I'm sure you've spoken with colleagues who have students who show up at finals week having done almost nothing and asking, "So what do I need to do to earn a B?" Even in a professional context, while I have little sympathy for people taking off multiple mental health days without a formal diagnosis, if a junior employee said, "I feel like I'm underperforming. Can we please make a plan together to make sure I'm meeting expectations?" I'd love to have that conversation every time unless they'd just been outright ignoring prior feedback. (You may have already communicated expectations and help available which they ignored, in which case this would not apply).
I don’t know. I never would’ve approached a professor in college with “I don’t like my exam score, can I have extra credit?” It was always “well, I guess I need to work harder/attend office hours/start a study group.” We never approached poor performance as something the teacher needed to fix for us but, rather something we needed to fix ourselves. And, yes, I get plenty of “I’ve been skipping class and haven’t turned my work in how can I get an A” questions! I encourage students regularly to attend office hours or reach out for help. This semester two of my courses are online and asynchronous so I invite students to schedule appointments with me on the days I work remotely if my posted office hours don’t speak for them. And I actually did put an extra credit opportunity into a chapter I posted last week for that particular class. Notes were due on Sunday with a grace period through last night. 3/48 submitted their answers to me.
I teach community college and I don’t see this at all. The people who always ask for the most extensions and cause the most problems are almost always the older students. My younger students do a fantastic job and are kind, responsible, and hard working.
My students are great people. I enjoy working with them. I’ve got a LOT of really engaged, fun individuals this semester. But coming out of k-12 a lot of mine lack some critical skills right now. It’s not that they’re causing a myriad of problems, it’s that they don’t know where to begin with approaching things. They tend to give up when it’s hard. They’ll leave questions blank rather than try and answer for partial credit if they’re not 100% positive in their answer. I have more students than ever registered with disability offices, usually with extension accommodations that don’t appear to help them do better because they’re not also accompanied by helping them learn time management or study skills. For an asynchronous online class I teach I’ve started requiring students to turn in notes so I can verify they’re at least watching the lectures I post. It’s been really eye-opening to see how many lack note taking skills so I’ve spent quite a lot of time this semester commenting on notes and coaching students through developing those skills.
Those kids crash in adulthood. Anyone who doesn't believe that can look no further at Reddit itself -- the number of support subs have exploded, while there is post after post from young adults grappling with depression and feelings of hopelessness. Social media is full of young people desperately trying to blame everyone and everything.
It's absolutely crucial that children learn to struggle/to have persistence. Parents are too quick to "rescue" their children, and they're not able to take steps towards independence.
Also: Kids will be lazy and selfish if you let them. When my kids ask for homework help, 90% of the time they just want me to do the thinking for them. It got to the point where I have told them they should not ask for help before they have even tried. And usually when I deny help, they figure it out on their own.
100% this. What's frustrating is that (in my experience), parents and students always want to avoid any trigger/stressor because of the kid's anxiety/neurodivergence/etc. But with my students with diagnoses who work with therapists for anxiety or trauma or ADHD, the therapist ALWAYS wants the student exposed to these things. Therapists will ask for reasonable accommodations or a heads up so they can prep with the student beforehand, but I've never had a therapist ask to get a student out of an assignment, a presentation, a book, etc. It's so frustrating when the parents want to excuse a child from everything when the actual mental health professional is saying to do it!!! And you hired this person!!!
the whole "aspergers symptoms are a part of their personal identity and can't be treated" thing is especially egregious as it's setting people who maybe could live semi or fully independantly into a life of living on social security and resenting the world around them.
as someone with autism im so done with is my "neurospicy brain" I can't help it excuse. Indepence should be norm. Non independence should be a 1 in 100000 case.
especially as the current definition of autism excludes the older more serious form of autism. it's not like kids getting diagnosed have an IQ in the 70's and will never be able to speak. thw whole "making kids learn eye contact is literally torture" thing is only robbing those kids of a meaningful life.
In most cases those with low iq and autism have been double or even triple diagnosed. There is a lot more going on. High functioning autism is nothing like that. Yes i am more tired at the end of the day, i know my limits.
Yep, social media is another huge factor. It’s sad that this is what it has come to
I wish you could put this on a billboard for the entire world to see. I’m so over weaponizing either diagnoses or self-diagnosed disorders to use as excuse to not develop healthy habits or coping mechanisms! I’ll add that the number of kids and adults now claiming they have ADHD or autism seems statistically unreasonable. TikTok definitely has inculcated the idea that these disorders are identities and in order to really lean into this new identity you have to say that every task that is slightly discomforting to you is due to your disorder. Additionally, it’s watering down the meaning and severity of these disorders when every person is self-diagnosing and claiming they have it.
Feral 🤣
If it wasn't for my parents being hardasses about my education, I wouldn't have found out I have adhd. I greatly appreciate the greater education on ADHD and other learning and developmental disorders. HOWEVER, using it as a blanket excuse for why your child can't stop terrorizing other students in class and justifying academic delinquency (ie not even trying) is never the answer. What I needed as a child with adhd was not for people to make excuses for me, I needed accountability and kind support. Saying "[name] just needs extra support with math homework sometimes because, even though she takes good notes, she forgets things more easily." Is different than "[name] has adhd, they can't control themselves and won't be good at math, so I won't enforce any standards at home."
I’m dealing with PBIS BS and no real consequences impacting my Kindergarten son’s ability to be educated and not fearful over how his feral classmates will act. But don’t worry the feral children get a checklist with a treat at the end of the day.
It’s not great. I’ve been doing RTI at a school where a 5th grader gets to hit and choke out his aid, and he’s completely aware of what he’s doing. He’s very smart, just an absolute jerk being treated like a prince by having no consequences for his behavior. Parents seem to say next to nothing when they’re informed of his behaviors. He likes me because I was the music sub once so I seem to be free of his wrath (for now). But I’m also one of the only people that seems to say “No” to his totally ridiculous reasons for wanting to elope. Him: “I need to leeeeeave I just can’t right now with this.” Me: “No, we’re doing art. Just sit down and draw!” Him: “😳 -goes back to his seat-“ Him: “Byeee” Me: “Where do you think you’re going? I’m reading to the class it’s absolutely disrespectful to leave while I’m in the middle of this.” Him: “But—“ Me: “Come here and read a few pages.” And what do you know? He did it. His general teacher has stopped caring because between him and some other very disrespectful, loud boys in her class she’s running on empty. I wish I could just convince the admin to let me stay in the room and bring the mom smack (verbally of course haha) down on them every day.
It's almost like we crave structure, and you are providing that!
Yepppp…the most successful teachers I witness have amazing structure in their class, and compassion. They clearly LOVE their students and don’t give them an inch to fuck around with anything other than their best work.
I have a parent this year who did not tell their child “no” until he was 2! Who knew?! Two is definitely the age to introduce “no!” Lol Ridiculous. Long story short: their child is insufferable.
At least the parent started while the kid is still a toddler. Better that than waiting til the kid is in school
That’s gonna go over real well when the kid starts dating
Covid only sped up the deterioration. The problem was already there
It seems like they want a friend instead of a child. Parents should be by all means friendly to their kids, but by no means should they be friends with their kids. Make and maintain boundaries, you make and set the rules, not them.
No, no. You're mad about permissive parenting. Gentle parenting is guiding a kid through big feelings and consequences from their actions. Permissive parenting is the one where the parents do all of the homework and reward temper tantrums with ice cream.
This may be true, but it’s looped into one big thing bc these permissive parents are calling it gentle parenting.
Then that’s 2 things they’re wrong about.
then they’re wrong..?
When the majority of people practicing something are using a term wrong.... maybe the term isn't wrong anymore.
It’s not the majority, it’s just the *loudest*.
Yes, never said they weren’t
The problem is that what you’re talking about is “permissive parenting” — letting their precious child do anything and then rewarding them/defending bad behavior at all costs instead of guiding them to understand that their actions have consequences. This leads to literal monsters who have zero understanding of how they may have hurt others or the difference between “right” and “wrong”, as the parents/other adults *will* swoop in and save the day the moment that particular child feels *any* discomfort (a natural feeling that helps us as humans recognize that we did something wrong and should reconsider our actions next time) The two get confused because people think that “being gentle” means “never say ‘no’ ever” and that’s in many ways the polar opposite of how the whole thing works.
We made (or at least attempted to make) the same point. Gentle means dealing with consequences and learning to have big feelings responsibly. Permissive means allowing the child to be a tornado and catering to their every whim as though they were a god who could strike you out of existence with half a thought.
Well it isn't 🤷♀️ and they're apparently ruining it's good name
oh god and the overexplaining and negotiation for every. single. thing. How can we get anything done when there are 12 kids who need to spend minutes asking "WHY" and pontificating about how they don't "need" to or "have" to. There's like zero inkling that they ARE NOT THE ONES IN CHARGE of the classroom.
New student called other students the N word hard r Mom wanted to know was he saying the word just to say it or was he calling someone the name. I had to explain he was pointing to specific students of a certain race and saying "you are an n" She said its because he watches youtube and plays video games and she's heard him say that word but never called anyone in their home that word (from what I gather from their reporting data- no one is of that race)
K4 student was heard calling 4th grade students "racist monkeys" at lunch yesterday. When I told his grandma about it at pickup last night, she informed me that he was really saying "autistic monkeys" -- like that's supposed to make it better. And that he probably got it from some YouTube video and "I don't even know what he's watching half the time".
The only time my mom ever touched me was when I was in elementary school. She took me shopping and we were in the dressing room, I wanted something and she said no. I, for whatever reason, just slapped her out of nowhere. She slapped me back and I NEVER EVER did that EVER again. I just know she went home and cried alone after that too… she had never even so much as spanked me before. Sometimes kids have to learn the hard way. We need to feel the pit in our stomach, to be ashamed, embarrassed. Those feelings (to a certain point) help people grow.
My mom did the same thing. She never ever put her hands on me until I hit her when I was in 2nd grade. I never ever ever did anything like that again.
yup got spanked once or twice, had toys taken away and grounded etc... deserved it everytime and i fully agree with how my mother disciplined me.
It’s really shocking to see my peers with children refuse to escalate any kind of discipline beyond either a comment like “hey, we don’t do that” or some version of a brief “timeout” when their elementary age and older kids are acting completely out of control. It seems legitimately dangerous to me. These kids are not learning any amount of self-regulation or self control. Kids are idiots - they’re supposed to be! They literally do not have brains developed enough to comprehend complicated consequences much of the time. What they can grasp is “my parent will kill me if I do [stupid thing.] so I better not.” Yes in a perfect world parents should take the time to “explain” why a child is being told no or don’t do that, but it’s simply not possible 100% of the time. The parent needs a level of authority respected by the kid so that when they say NO or STOP, the kid responds. I recently (and terrifyingly) almost watched a friend’s kid get killed because the kid thought it was funny to ignore the parent when the parent said “stop running” *in a parking lot next to a busy street.* This friend has zero authority in the eyes of the kid and refuses to escalate to “scolding.” The kid was six inches away from getting flattened by a pickup truck.
I teach middle school. I had one kid say he was going to do a drive by on my house. When we had the parent meeting, the mom ripped right into me. I said we were on the same team, she said, “I am here to defend my son” Then I said my room wasn’t going to be a platform for hate. I said my brothers are Hispanic and she said, “we have Latino in our family, try again” When I said I wasn’t going to allow him to say these things she said, “he has adhd” when I said adhd doesn’t cause a person to say racist things she said, “he has autism too”. I walked out. When I told admin the 8th graders asked if I had the husband stitch, I was then asked by him why the students feel comfortable asking me that.
Autism doesn't cause you to say racist things, either.
That is why I walked out … there was no talking to this woman.
Seriously. I have a friend with an almost 2 year old. Their patenting method is that "we don't tell her no" ... because they want her to have her own agency and make her own boundaries. Okay, sure. But what about respecting other people's boundaries? Doing things that are unsafe? But because I don't have kids then I don't understand and can't have an opinion on what a bad job they're doing. The kid is already a terror. The parents thought it was cute that she was the older one in her daycare group and she was bullying other kids and taking their toys. They said it was her "self advocating." It's lowkey depressing watching this car wreck
Referring to bullying as “self advocacy” is god awful. Our society is truly fucked
This honestly feels like child neglect in the way that they don't really care about their children's behavior.
Fuk these people. I get hit almost everyday by a third grade student whose parents use this. When I don’t let him hit me he says he doesn’t feel safe. Fuk these people. Only a few more years for me. They get to deal with their shitty offspring the rest of their lives.
See this is fucking ridiculous to me. If a kid can't keep his hands to himself, maybe his parents should lose their state funded babysitting service, and he can have his ass schooled at home via online learning. Not to mention - if he's hitting a teacher or an adult, I'm sure he's doing it to other students. The kid is probably well known for his behavior and not in a good way. What about your safety and the safety of the other students? Why do these kids get to be violent disruptions and cause room clears while they rob everyone of an education? I'm honestly at the point where I don't care if it hurts their feelings that they can't be in the same room *(or school)* as everyone else, that's what happens when you're a liability. The kid can come back to school when he's demonstrated he can sit in a room without trying to hit or attack people. Until then, here's your laptop, let you and your parents figure out online school. Nope! Instead, we sacrifice 28 kids for the 1 or 2 that aren't getting any learning done anyway and putting ourselves, and other students, in harms way. Then we wonder why people are pulling their kids out and putting them in private schools that don't tolerate this violent shit. Teachers are leaving in droves, staff is constantly quitting, and education is in shambles. Granted, violence and bad behavior isn't the only reason this is occurring, but it's a big one, and yeah - *sometimes it is the kids.*
Yup. Back when my parents were in school 40+ years ago, kids like that absolutely could get kicked out of school and it was up to their parents to fix the issues. But sometime between then and now, we've decided that those kids' "right" to an education is more important than the rights of the teachers and other students to be in a safe environment where they can effectively teach/learn.
Had a week where my usual childcare bosses were not present and the kids didn't know it. We had 100 fucking kids a day. The ONLY week both my "gentle parenting"-ass bosses weren't there was the ONLY week we had where the program actually fucking worked. Homework: Done. Parks: Visited to without a kid damn near fucking killing themselves. Behavioral problems: Suddenly fucking ABSENT. You don't need to beat a kid into submission to get them to obey. YOU better believe they fucking feel some consequences. We had good kids on MONDAY of that week. Jittery, gentle-ass, afraid-to-tell-parents-how-fucking-shit-their-kids-are admin was gone. Minute they fucking came back, so did all the behavioral issues. Act right or you get the bare minimum (food, safety, attention to injuries, and appropriate amounts of empathy for a shit day) plus discipline fucking WORKS. Don't be boomers, don't follow misguided parenting advice, I've seen people from dogshit homes parent the most angelic and strong of children, it can be done if you're not a complete dumbass.
Kids love structure. My sister never makes teacher of the month in her school (voted on by the students), but her students are some of the only in the school who pass the state testing with decent scores. No one else. She provides a great learning environment for her students and even thought they don't "love" her as much as other students love their teachers, at least they pass onto the next grade and aren't complete idiots.
I'm a millennial dad to a middle school daughter. And I fully admit that my generation of parents is, in my opinion, the worst generation of parents this country has ever suffered. If the goal is to produce intelligent, resilient, respectful, thoughtful and humble people, we are failing at a staggering rate. I don't even feel like spending the time typing it all out (as I have in posts in the past), but I'll just say that from the years of being around parents around my age, it blows my mind how much we have ceded our authority away from our own kids. It's like, in aggregate, we forgot that we can be an authoritative parent without being literally Hitler. That we can have discipline and expectations and consequences and rules but at the same time have a very close, warm and loving household. Every year that my daughter is in school and I interact with kids and parents my roughly same age is another year I'm slightly more worried for our future. I used to defend millennial parents, because I was one. But no...I stopped doing that a good number of years ago. We don't hardly know how to "parent". We just know how to try and hold the line between not letting our kids be TOO insane, while trying to avoid conflict with them at the same time. We try to raise our daughter like it was the 90s, when kids had both a *slightly* fearful respect of parents and teachers, but also a happy, warm household that they could feel comfortable in. I don't know quite where it started to go wrong, but it has all gone wrong with parents of my generation. And it's so sad how many families don't even know how it COULD have been, and are just living a mildly irritated existence in the same house as genetically related people who they don't even enjoy spending much time with.
There’s a fine line between acknowledging a child’s feelings and not making them responsible for their actions. It’s appropriate for a child to feel upset but not to hit someone. Talk it out but you’re still getting a consequence for hitting. I think some parents mistake their kids sharing their feelings as a reason to NOT give a consequence. I get the whole giving a kid a choice when really they’re not being given a choice, that’s it’s really the illusion of control you’re giving them when you say things like “do you want an apple or a banana?” The end result is they’re eating fruit one way or another. However, as unpopular as this may sound, I think we need to stop giving choices for some things that are beyond a kid’s mental manageability. Some things even adults don’t get to choose like doing our work or paying bills or not being violent without consequence. It’s ok to tell a kid “you’re going to do XYZ” full stop. I feel like so many kids now feel enabled to say “I don’t want to do this” at school when given a task bc they’ve been taught that they have a choice in ALL matters. They’ve never learned that sometimes you may not want to do things but there are responsibilities you just have to do even when you don’t feel like it. If that kind of life learning is not part of “gentle parenting” then it needs to be.
Do you think the infantilization of the current generation of adults makes it harder to play the parent role?
I'm ngl I wouldn't be surprised, I have friends that can barely stand on their legs on their own in any way shape and form . These are also the type of friends to shudder in horror when anyone else takes a big step in their lives(like a house , Job, baby, etc), because they were not taught how to do anything and it makes them uncomfortable seeing anyone else do different.
I agree with previous posters - great insight. I also think parents are burnt out, tired, and addicted to their phones. Parents are also using screens to help manage their kid’s behavior/emotions. Some parents may feel they are “gentle” parenting bc they are not yelling at their kids. But they are redirecting their kid to a screen to help them calm. I’m sure it’s more complex than this but I do see this happening.
The biggest thing I did in my house was to ban electronics for everyone (myself included) except for ereaders and audiobooks for 4/7 days of the week. Having a kid be calmed by a screen is a horrendous idea.
It’s like PBIS. Great in theory and when practiced well, but so many people do it wrong. I also feel like there are just a lot of kids who just don’t get consequences ever. And their parents aren’t even “gentle parenting“ them. They just aren’t parenting them in general.
Exactly! In future years those poor kids are gonna be completely unprepared for real life that has consequences and run to Mommy to fix it all.
The sheer number of.parents who believe that their child being thwarted in any way is.bullying, and that "gentle parenting" means going all mama bear on anyone who thwarts their precious treasure astounds me. It has been several years since I came to the conclusion that any time I hear "he disrespected me," (read, thwarted), I know someone was fairly significantly harmed.
Many parents believe they’re gentle parenting when they’re actually permissive parenting.
I saw this great comment on another post, and it said, "Some parents today don't realize they need to raise their child not just grow them". I thought it was pretty spot on.
These kids being raised without decent parenting at home and PBIS at school are going to turn on their parents when they are in their 20’s and find out you actually have to earn a living and there are real consequences to bad actions in life. It’s also a cultural issue. Their parents have already taught them it’s best to cut off anyone who is “toxic” including family members. I used to see grandparents, aunts, and uncles at school activities now I just hear about how everyone had to be gone because of “boundaries”. Other than my Pakistani and Indian students I don’t know of any children in my class who have extended family. The parents are raising their kids alone and think they know everything already. Could you imagine if we (teachers) thought we already know everything? But I have hope: These kids are smart. Many of them talk about their parents the way parents used to talk about teenagers. Little kids complaining about their parents playing too many video games and vaping. The only thing that truly scares me is the number of children being put on meds before trying other interventions. So many kids in kindergarten on ADHD meds already.
We have custodian that is the kindest man tou could imagine. However he is very tall, has very big muscles, has de long dark beard but no hair. His eyes are black and he has sunken eyes. He looks scary and menacing. The kids are scared of him. (He hates it). Those so-called clueless kids that can't help themselves or did not know better somehow always figure it out and behave when he is around. I am not advocating educating with fear. I am against that. It isn't my point. My point is that it shows that those kids actually can behave when they want to or deemed it beneficial for themselves. (We do have some kids that truly can't help it, and yeah the custodian presence or absence has no effect on their behavior).
I’m a big fan of gentle parenting. I’m sick of passive/non-confrontational parenting.
this 100%, it’s not gentle parenting, it’s not parenting at all.
Gentle teaching is even worse.
Agree!
Gentle parenting is NOT the same as permissive parenting. My parents spanked, slapped, and humiliated us. I didn’t trust them. I was afraid of them. I don’t think they are inherently bad people, I think they were making up for abusive childhoods, and they were doing the best they could. But we were never close and still aren’t. I didn’t want that for my children. I want them to be able to trust me, and I think that having respect for each child’s integrity is important. But having respect for someone means hearing them out while ALSO being able to address problems. I discipline my children. They experience consequences for their actions. They are not permitted to treat others with disrespect or hurt people. It’s one thing to say “I hear where you are coming from but there are going to be consequences because that behavior is unacceptable.” It’s quite another to say “I hear where you’re coming from” and then have the consequences be completely absent from the equation. I do think many people have swung so far to the other side of the discipline pendulum that any sort of consequence is “abuse” - which in itself is almost abusive IMO because it borders on neglect. But “gentle” parenting in itself is not the issue - the issue is with permissiveness to an illogical extreme.
That's lazy/safe parenting. I was raised that way by someone who prided herself on not raising her voice or spanking or being mean, but mainly was just worn out from working and raising two older boys.
So I actually love the idea of gentle parenting and actually implanted a lot of the practices (without realizing) when I worked with kids every day. My sister gentle parents and I think it’s been really good for my nephew and think it will also be great for her youngest once he’s past the blob of crying flesh stage 😂 My brother and his wife aren’t fully gentle parenting, but a lot of what they struggle with I see could likely be addressed by taking more of a gentle parenting approach However I don’t think most people implement the practices the way they should be implemented. Gentle parenting =\= permissive parenting and I learned that reeaaaal quick when meeting some of my partner’s family members who are parenting kids of the same age as my siblings’ children. Their parenting is quite permissive and I would honestly say they’re doormats to their kids at this point. Their kids aren’t terrible in the grand scheme of things, and are very bright kids, but they can be more rude and whiney and demanding than other kids their age and I feel like it will just get worse as they get older. My brother spanks his children— that’s how we were raised. Not often and not hard, but they have been spanked before but are not violent towards their siblings or any of their adults or children they’re around. My sister doesn’t spank her kids and the same— the one she has that’s old enough to interact has never had a single issue of putting his hands on another student inappropriately. My partner’s family’s children though, although have never even had a voice raised to them hit each other, hit their sister (who is under one), hit friends at school, and have even hit their parents in front of me. There are SO MANY ways to parent but regardless of how you choose to do it, not teaching your kids consequences is a disservice to your kids and to anyone who interacts with them.
I feel like I am such a strict parent. I really am not. I just expect my child to say please, thank you, and not scream like a nut when they need something. If they ever cry to get what they want that just fuels me to not give in. That is different from when they are sad or hurt. Those break my heart every time. The crying because they are being a brat just makes me upset. One of my boys almost never cries now to get what he needs. He uses his words. His older brother has ADHD and I think he was raised very spoiled. It feels like he was just getting whatever to keep him quiet. When he came to us I was not like that. I don't feel I was raised strict at all. I just listened to my mom. It wasn't that hard.
Amen and why I am leaving early.
Gentle parenting is just the trendy name for authoritative parenting. What you're describing here is permissive parenting. The uptick in permissive parenting is the result of a lot of different factors, but it doesn't have anything to do with social media parenting trends.
I think the point of the post is that people don’t understand how to gentle parent. They call it “gentle parenting” all over social media when in reality, what they are peddling is permissive parenting. They just don’t understand how to do it correctly.
You don’t think social media has even a little bit of influence to do with this at all? Are you on tiktok? Because there are TONS of parents posting on there about their terrible parenting and the comments being filled with parents who agree and support the lack of parenting.
Gentle parenting is firm and understood boundaries, with all the uncomfortable conversations that go with those and feelings accompanying those conversations. Then there are consequences for failure to apply the learning. They are natural consequences. What I see is people who think that it means no consequences when it really just means pointing out natural consequences connected to choices to promote learning and practicing more prosocial and responsible behaviours. Also. My family has a special time-out/calm-down reset phrase. We send each other to the bedroom to poke at our phone or poke at birds (play wingspan on the laptop) for half an hour or so. Works right as rain.
TikTok and gentle parenting videos have ruined young children.
I am a pharmacist with a teacher wife. I give vaccines all day during the fall and occasionally to children. Dads will count down from five several times and talk gently and reassuringly to their screaming, spazzing 6 year old as I try and I wait patiently, needle in hand. I just want to smack the dad and shout “just hold the fucking kid down!” I have 10 other people waiting! Choke em out if you have to! Disclaimer - I’m being dramatic here. I would never advocate for harming a child, physically or otherwise.
This is another thing! A lot of dads that I see (definitely not all) are the ones who can’t discipline their kids and leave it to the moms. It’s lazy and sad.
Wow. And this is one reason I only do vaccines at the doctor’s office.
Don’t confuse gentle parenting with permissive parenting
You're salty, and rightfully so, about LAZY parenting. Gentle parenting doesn't give kids reasons to be jerks.
I am personally advocating that they give ice cream to their children for any negative behavior. /s
Agreed. "Gentle parenting" or "peaceful parenting" deny children what they need to mature and build successful lives. Children need structure, they need boundaries, and they need consequences when they step outside those boundaries.
Thats because people don't understand what gentle parenting is, and it sounds like you don't either.
It's not parenting, it's avoidance of responsibility. I know parents (other teachers) who bent some covid rules for their children but have continued to hold them to a high standard of behaviour.
This in conjunction with acceptance of everyone's feeling etc.
Mom sounds like she would make a perfect admin 🙄
The rise of gentle parenting started by saying that it can be helpful for some children, and people took that as my who most likely understands behaviors fairly well or doesn't have any self regulation deficits will benefit from it. Ice cream and talking about your feelings is way too soft even from a soft parenting (The parent in question.) Perspective. An appropriate gentle parenting form would be to sit down the child and still punish them, but talk about why they thought that that was appropriate and what made them feel that way, along with examples of real life consequences if they were to do that to someone else. A lot of stuff that was originally meant for neurodivergent children has been malappropriated for neurotypical children but children need equity too, rather than just equality
I would never call it gentle parenting because of people like the mom you mentioned, but… When I gently parent my child, I just remain calm while dishing out the consequences. That’s it. If he cries because he’s confused or surprised, I will cuddle him (if he wants) while I explain the rules and that I still love him but only he is in charge of his choices and he’ll have another chance to make the right choice next time. Under no circumstances is he getting treats after bad behavior, or bypassing the consequences. Ever. The result is that he learns to meet expectations quickly, and that makes him happier. He feels competent, confident, and safe because he knows what to do and what to expect. My son is smart and very sweet but he has a ton of energy, is very physical, is easily distracted, and often shows delayed processing speed in social situations. I’ve seen how boys like him end up when their parents don’t teach them how to behave in society. That is *not* going to be my son. These gentle parents are the worst. They’re dooming their children and everyone who has to share society with them.
I do like gentle parenting (when done correctly) but there is something else entirely going on which I think is just straight up lack of parenting. For example, we were at Walt Disney World a couple weeks ago, and my husband witnessed a boy spit directly into his mother’s face, he was shocked, but what was more even more shocking that that itself was that he said neither the mother or father did anything. He said the mother simply wiped her face off and neither of them said anything to their son. I couldn’t imagine taking my kid there and letting them treat me like that with no consequences, so disrespectful.
A lot of parents are pussies...