I’m beginning to see the problem. Kids are now smarter than their parents. kids won’t blindly listen to you. They won’t follow rules they don’t understand. They won’t let you get away with fobbing them off. They are treated with respect in school by teachers (as far as I can see, in the UK, teachers are contractually obliged to put the health and well being of the children as their top priority, although some don’t I’m sure). They are treated with respect by anyone who had undergone child development training. Some children are able to learn from this. They see the benefits. And their parents’ lack of consistency or support or understanding, irks them somewhat. When they are young and don’t have the tools to communicate their frustration; they go into meltdown.
Child development training is still not required by law, to actually HAVE a child however. Seems a little upside down to me.
I know plenty of parents with children with neurological disorders. Some intelligent, some not. Ten guesses which parents litter my work message inbox with concerns of swearing screaming children? The ones who have managed to successfully integrate themselves into a profit margin that gives them security, or the ones scraping hand to mouth each month working all the hours god sends but still living in poverty? It’s not about money, no, but security is a good start, and there are links with money and education there.
This isn’t a dig at parents. It’s a dig at the system that has allowed any old person give birth, capable or not. And that’s just a fact of life. Some people can cope with children better. Some people cope with life better, some neither. Nature vs nurture, the body can do without the mind. If parents aren’t going to be taught how to parent, how can we expect them to naturally be able to do it by letting them have kids and waiting until they’re older to figure out if they did it right or not?
Years ago it really didn’t matter. You could batter your kids and they’d still respect you. You could take away their liberties and their freedoms and take out your frustrations on your kids. They didn’t know any better! They didn’t have childline, or the internet. School wasn’t a safe haven, it was an extension of strict discipline. Now School is LIFE to many kids. All the do at home is eat and sleep and play Xbox. They might not even realise until life shows them alternatives.
For all those parents still reading who are typing up a shitty comment about how they respected their parents even though they didn’t like their decisions…. well now how many of you are in therapy? Diagnosed with a neurological disorder? Behaviour struggles? Mood struggles? Emotion regulation on the blink? How many of you have gone on to be successful parents yourself? I bet its not all of you. I bet many of you are sitting with your own children on EHCPs,, interventions and behaviour plans, wondering where you went wrong. You weren’t given the tools. The tools weren’t there when you were younger, and you made it work, because you didn’t know any better. It doesn’t work for you because children now know better than you did. They’ve been given the tools.
They are quicker at answering back. They aren’t following behaviour rules because you ‘said so’. They won’t do as they are TOLD. Wellllll shit! Who’d have thought it! What happens to an adult if you’re blindly told what to do without a reason that makes sense to YOU? Would you conform? No. Just look at the varying responses to COVID19. Some people following, some people not, some shielding and wearing masks to the market and some wondering if the government will start protecting them better from traffic, given that the likelihood of being hit by a car is higher than catching COVID19…. Years ago this wouldn’t have happened. Deprived of the sort of opportunities we have today that allow us to educate ourselves (the internet being a major player), more people will have blindly followed because THEY WOULDN’T HAVE ANY REASON NOT TO. Don’t take it to heart. Look around you. You want all the benefits of modern parenting amenities, without the responsibility of having to be a better parent because of them.
It’s pants. It really is.
Kids used to blindly follow. Because even if they did have questions, or worries. It’s not like anyone gave them the right to question or worry. Then child protection came into force.
And the people losing out are still the kids. Just now the parents can’t quietly leave baby in the corner (and rightly so!) But the parents are starting to lose out too.
The government may not be handing down harsh penalties for bad parenting. Or making sure that people have the tools to be a half decent parent in the first place (note: it’s really not all about money at all, but being able to afford what you need is kind of important in a capitalist economy so the fact a two adult working family can still be living in near poverty is the responsibility of the government). But the children sure are punishing. With their hitting and spitting and kicking and swearing.
The thing is, you can’t suddenly be a half decent parent after your child is in meltdown stage. Because you missed it. You missed the point. You missed the moment you could have made a difference. It’s not about waiting for the meltdown and dealing with it in an authoritarian way. If your child is having melt downs directed at you, on a regular basis; they don’t respect you. You aren’t meeting their needs. All you’re doing is trying to stop the melt down to meet YOUR needs. If you knew how to prevent them, i’m sure you’d do it, you are loving parents after all. But your not. Because your child is having a melt down. How would you respond to an adult having a nervous break down? Would you pander to it? Ignore it? Shout at them? Expect them to see reason? Or would you take it on the chin and meet that person’s needs when they aren’t having a break down to help prevent another one? And by meet their needs, I mean THEIR needs. Not masked as YOUR needs. (The number of parents who have trouble at dinner time because THEY want their child to sit up at the dinner table every night, not because there is a valid reason for their child to do so and there’s something wrong with their child) You’ve got to tear apart your expectations and really think about WHY. And if the WHY doesn’t satisfy your headstrong child, then bingo, you’ve found your problem. SO find a different way to persuade them to see your point, or stop expecting them to conform to rules you blindly followed that may not apply anymore, or get used to the meltdowns. Try imagining they’re a human with thoughts and opinions different from you. Try taking a step back from the reality you’ve believed for so long. You might learn something.
But it’s TOUGH. Real tough meeting the needs of a child that will continually question and defy you because they know things that you never did. It’s tough to show unconditional love in a calm and secure manner, when your own life may be chaos. I get you. I have to do it for 30 kids. Granted, I have training and only 6 hours of contact time a day. But it’s full on. And, unlike a parent, I CAN’T tell them to fuck off under my breath. I can’t shout by accident. I can’t walk out of the room. I can’t drag them down from wherever they’ve climbed to. I have to be the perfect secure option for attachment. If I’m not, I could lose my license to teach and, more importantly, negatively impact a human being.
And to keep us under the thumb, councils won’t even give us permanent contracts, just temporary ones. So we are having to prove ourselves over and over again, nobody dares make a mistake on a temporary contract.
So I feel your concerns. But trying a bedtime routine for a week then giving up because your son ‘doesn’t get on with it’ won’t change anything. Ignoring your children for hours to stare at your phone, just to shout “behave remember what so and so [insert more responsible adult] said” when they start to act up, won’t change anything. Deferring your parenting to others (school, family, police, social) when it suits whilst pulling the ‘i’m the parent’ card when someone makes you feel inadequate, wont change anything. Making excuses for your child in front of them, won’t change anything. Letting your child swear at you without consequence, won’t change anything (yes I know it’s hard to reprimand every example, but you HAVE to! THAT’S WHY MY JOB IS SO DAMN STRESS FULL)
Nobody listens to my advice. Every parent who dismisses my support with ‘Well I must be doing enough because I’ve been praised by [insert appropriate authority figure] for my parenting’ makes me shake my head. Of course you will be praised. What else is anyone official supposed to say? Other than a police officer facing a dire parenting strategy that they can remand, fully backed up by rules and legislation. We can’t criticise. We aren’t allowed to. Why do you think I post anonymously? We don’t want to rock the boat, we have bills to pay, too!
I know how hard it is to tell someone they’re parenting wrong, too. I had to teach my own parents how to do it. They suppressed, ignored and fought every part of me that made their life difficult. Because the rules they had learned to live by, I didn’t understand. And they couldn’t validate their viewpoints other than to make it clear it made their life easier not to have to give my opinion merit.
Luckily I had the education to explain that ‘making their life easier’ wasn’t in my remit. I had more questions than answers. Other kids may have shut up because they didn’t know any better. But that just wouldn’t wash with me. It wouldn’t wash with my parents either, had they known what I know, when they were children.
Love my parents now. Changed my life around now. Got answers now. Now I see it as my job to use my career as a way to help other children explain themselves. Because the people who build you up, are often the ones who absentmindedly tear you down, just by being part of this neurodiverse species we call ‘human’. And there are better ways to get your point across and change your outlook, than by swearing and screaming. Even if the daily mail would have you believe otherwise.
FaerieFalls 