i gave a kid too many bananas, therefore gentle parenting is bad
thank you business insider for your brilliant insights
I've been gentle parenting and not disciplining and all the bad millennial parent stuff. I never once instructed my kid to say please and thank you and yet since I set an example of doing those things and I conduct myself in a manner that is prosocial my kid also does those things and has never been described as a little monster. They're almost 3 and I've not experienced this "terrible twos" thing.
Not that they'd deserve to be called a monster or anything similar if they were the most misbehaved little kid ever since, you know, they're a kid.
People say you can't reason with a toddler but they (all toddlers not just mine) understand a lot more than people give them credit for. They understand when you're talking about them as if they aren't there and will respond accordingly. They are people with a different set of priorities to yours that's it.
They are people with a different set of priorities to yours that's it.
100%. They're just little people.
I think it comes down to kids often being a reflection of their parent (socially) and a lot of people not being conscious of how what their actual behavior is (or in particular the social behavior of the media figures they passively consume) is. In my experience, people whose kids misbehave in public (which oh no, they are getting a little loud and maybe breaking something accidentally or on purpose, who cares) are a lot more playfully sarcastic or misbehaving in public than they think they are.
It comes down to a level of conscious consistency that pretty much everyone I know does not follow. Those I know that do follow it seem to have very well behaved kids, even with no disciplinary measures.
If I'm sarcastic in public i try to say "daddy's pretending" or something similar. I am a bit of a silly guy but I'm aware of the eyes that see everything i do
My friends are teachers and they constantly rant about how atrocious their student's behavior is and they blame millenial "gentle parenting" which always rubs me the wrong way but idk what to say to them about it. Well, it's rather that they're saying people are trying to do gentle parenting but getting it wrong and doing "permissive parenting" instead. But like, I'm pretty sure their behavior is a result of deteriorating economic/social conditions, not because they're "iPad kids". But they're the ones with direct experience so I don't feel right arguing about it with them. I don't spend time with kids all day and talk to their parents.
Also I have a lot of school trauma from being undiagnosed neurodivergent so I never know if it's just me being triggered by their teacher-like behavior or if it's a legit annoyance with the way they talk about children.
It's definitely gentle parenting and not the fact that we have a nation of frothing psycopaths
I have a couple teacher friends who are exactly like this, frequently. It infuriates me no end.
What really annoys me is the way they just describe both children and parents like they're innately bad people who choose to be bad and angry all the time, as oppose to maybe just being affected by their environment and material conditions.
People do not understand the difference between gentle and permissive at all because their parents' boundaries were enforced in such a way that there's no distinction to most people my age and older especially.
This is something i just decided in my head but it does explain it well enough to help me sleep at night
I work with teachers who say this to me directly. But you have to remember, these kids only know the world they were born into, and in that world, sometimes, it just goes to total shit and everything shuts down, and you stay in the house for two months.
THAT'S NORMAL to these kids. They don't understand a world where that isn't NORMAL. So I'm not too surprised when people tell me they have the "worst class they've ever taught" this year, or the last year. It's a phenomenon that has only cropped up since "the end of covid".
What does anything matter to a kid who's understanding of the world is the above? That sometimes, everything becomes weird, a scary, and fucked up, and you have to stay home. I'd be a terror too probably...
Also, from my experience and i don't want to sound even older than i am, the other parents at the park are not parenting at all. Like they look at their phone as their 4 year old tells me everything they did that day because I'm the only adult around who listens and responds to them and i get so upset taking about it afterwards to my wife. Bro your kids are so smart and being amazing older friends to my toddler but you don't even notice that they're talking to some scruffy guy in a ponytail?
Okay rant over for now but don't act like not doing fuck all is a parenting strategy
Yeah, I feel you on this one too. I'm 38, and I feel the same way when I'm at the park and I see people like this. I'll be honest though, 90% of the time, it's the Dads. I don't know what to make of it, really. My kids are awesome, and thanks to this wonderful system we have, the weekends are the only time I get to spend a full day with them doing shit. I can look at my phone when I'm fucking off at work.
There is definitely an extreme that goes too far. Balance is needed here.
There’s a group of people homeschooling their kids doing “radical unschooling” where they believe they don’t need to be instructed or taught anything, that they will learn reading and math and all of that naturally in life. They don’t impose any bedtimes or screen limits and thus their children are on a screen 90% of the waking day and on a bad sleep schedule that is misaligned from all their peers
These people are, in my opinion, abusing and neglecting their children and making bad excuses for being lazy.
Yeah those people are fucking idiots. Children don't naturally skill up as they age like a fucking video game.
I meet an unschooled kid once, he was 14 and illiterate and literally just played Minecraft all day.
Seriously, unschooling just strikes me as a progressive sounding way to frame embracing "iPad child syndrome".
Agreed but that's definitely not what gentle parenting is about
All boomers know that when they were parents no 16-month ever vomited. No, the real cause is teaching children to deal with their feelings.
Also it's definitely good to take advice from someone who calls kids "little monsters"
Also a good sign someone actually has kids
As an in-demand babysitter for the property-owning intelligentsia of Toronto
Baby would have been born in '06. That makes it very unlikely the parents were Millennials. Most likely Gen X'ers unless they were young like 20. Most people don't have kids when they are 20. Also the kid is 1 and a half. She's malding that a 16 month old doesn't have good impulse control or manners. No shit, you don't say.
