The practices and norms around raising kids change over time, with each generation of parents redefining the classic role. These shifts take place due to a number of factors, including new research, technologies, or the desire to "do it differently than our old folks did." But that doesn't mean that all of them are automatically better than the older ways.
So when Reddit user The_WhiteMantis asked everyone on the platform to share the parenting trends that they wholeheartedly disagree with, people immediately started sharing their opinions. From making your children the butt of your jokes to never telling them "no," below you will find the submissions that received the most attention.
#1
I’ve seen a small yet growing trend of homeschooled kids where the parents are completely neglectful of actual education and basically let the kid do whatever they want. They don’t follow standardised curriculum for the sake of “letting kids be kids.” If your kid can barely read at 10 years old, you’re setting them up to fail as an adult.
Image credits: Am_0116
#2
The trend of oversharing kids' lives on social media. It's like turning your child's childhood into a reality TV show.
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#3
Not vaccinating children.
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#4
Making your child's entire identity revolve around their extracurricular activities. Let them be kids, not robotic machines for your bragging rights.
Image credits: sweetopportunityy
#5
Never saying no to your child.
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#6
Do gender reveals count? Lighting things on fire, blowing things up and potentially injuring a family member all in an display of obsession over the genitals of your fetus is cringy at best and a small scale natural disaster at worst.#7
I hate when people dress up their baby girls in outfits a woman should be wearing. Like there are little girls outfits that are adorable and meant for a little girl. But no little girl should be wearing a body suit and ripped jeans or a crop top and low rise bellbottoms, it gives me the creeps.
Image credits: hatterhag
#8
I guess this is kinda specific, but my son is autistic, so it applies to me. I hate the “Autism Mom” thing. The t-shirts, the unsolicited “advocacy”…it seems like an attention seeking thing to me. My kid has autism, ADHD, and anxiety, and it takes approximately 5 seconds of being around him to notice. I will fight for him always, of course, but I won’t use him as a badge either. I won’t hide his diagnosis from him, but I won’t let him use it as an excuse either.And some of those shirts get borderline threatening too…”If you want to know fear, fight an autism mama bear”…or something like that.
Image credits: ChelleDotCom
#9
Pranking your kids or playing jokes on them. Not all kids understand it’s a joke and it really upsets them. I hate seeing videos of parents thinking it’s ok to throw things at their kids or make them do dumb stuff for amusement. Like the cheese challenge thing. Throwing food at babies….awful behavior.
Image credits: Violet_Mermaid
#10
Not teaching children proper manners/behaviorPlease and thank you go a long a*s way in this life.
Also not helping kids with conversation skills. Conversation usually goes back and forth. With no phones involved.
Image credits: Fun_Intention_5371
#11
Not exactly a trend but: having like 5+ kids and forcing the older ones to basically raise the little ones. i know that sometimes the parents are not well informed about contraception, but it’s still not the kids’ problem! it’s one thing to have them help once in a while, but anything that stops them from living their own lives to raise YOUR kids is just ridiculous.for example: not being able to take an extracurricular activity because they have to be home watching their siblings.
#12
Driving your kids 200m to school.
Image credits: Christine4321
#13
Giving your child an iPad as soon as they can hold it.
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#14
Confusing gentle parenting with permissive parenting.You can be both gentle and authoritative. Authoritative is *not* authoritarian; it is the role of a parent to provide structure and boundaries for their children while also allowing them to feel their emotions and deal with the ups and downs of being a kid. Go ahead and soothe your children when they are upset and give them a safe space to calm down but you do not have to cushion their world for them in order to avert a meltdown.
Image credits: heirloom_beans
#15
Never telling your kid no. You’re creating a monster that is going to ruin your life some day. Boundaries and consequences are essential to any kid- well human even- being successful in the world we live in.
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#16
“Gentle parenting” b***h hold your kid at the doctor if they need a test done. “I don’t think she wants to do this test/use this medicine” B***H SHE NEEDS IT. (I work in a doctors office).
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#17
The sad beige mom trend. If you want to make the rest of your home sad and beige, that's up to you. But my God! Please let your child's nursery have some colour for their own development and well-being.
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#18
Child vlogging, its a bit weird tbh and I feel like things are gonna go to s**t for the parents when the kids become adults.
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#19
Loud cartoons and games on tablets in public places.
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#20
Being overweight and allowing your children to follow the same path of obesity.(Yes I get sometimes it's genetics, but genetics is not why appx 1/3 of Americans are obese and why the rest of the world isnt).
Image credits: Chemical_Party7735
#21
Giving them "unique" names.#22
Parents not having even minimal standards for their children’s behavior, and expecting other people to be alright with it. I really don’t care that he is having “big feelings.” He is lying in the aisle of the supermarket, screaming at the top of his lungs, having a full blown tantrum because you said no. Grow a pair.
Image credits: GoodFriday10
#23
Taking your kids to a restaurant and putting screens in their hands. How are kids going to learn how to behave in polite society if you don’t train them how to behave in social situations?
Image credits: contrariwise65
#24
I disagree with ALL trends. Parenting is not supposed to be trendy. Figure out what works for you and your family and do that, but don’t expect everyone else to do the same.#25
I’m gonna go in a little bit of a different direction: parents not watching their own behavior when it comes to screen time, frustration tolerance, discipline, etc.You’ve got to dig deep and figure out how to role model the behaviors you want your kids to do. If you are on your phone 24/7 and throw a fit every time the slightest thing inconveniences you you aren’t gonna have a good time with your kids doing anything different.
Image credits: kimtenisqueen
#26
Those “boy moms” that are grossly obsessed with their baby or toddler boys. Ew, f**k out of here with that emotional incest s**t.#27
Not (sensibly) challenging their comfort zone. How are they supposed to grow self-confidence when they're never challenged?
Image credits: TheDadThatGrills
#28
The lack of discipline and manners taught to the kids. I get soft parenting, I'm on board with no hitting and all of the abuse but kids still need to learn boundaries about what they could and couldn't do.
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#29
Weird orthorexic parents who make their entire personality their kids' hundreds of allergies . Gluten free, dairy free, nut free , meat free . EVERYTHING FREE! I’m sorry, I do not believe them .
Image credits: Lucyinthskyy
#30
Lawnmower parenting. Not only do they hover over their kids, they mow down anyone who does something they don't like. They're the "you can't wear that shirt where my kids might see it" and "you'd better allow my child into this 21+ establishment but not show them anything inappropriate" type.#31
Letting them harass and even assault strangers to let them "get it out of their system". Mam, your toddler is like US healthcare, the system is f****d.#32
Helicopter parenting, or whatever you wanna call it.As a child that was sheltered and despite my wishes, parents would always intervene and I became way to reliant on that.
Wasn’t until my mid-20s that someone helped me realized what was going on and I had to relearn how to live basically.
Sure my parents did what they thought was best, it ended up really screwing me later in life and I’m still in the process of figuring out what it means to be independent and how to fight for myself.
Image credits: DarthArtero
#33
Having kids because your religion tells you to.#34
Not letting your children be inconvenienced or uncomfortable. Over protection maybe.This statement excludes any form of abuse. It's sad I have to note that, but it's the internet.
Kids need to learn how to manage life not revolving around them. And they can't learn what they are not exposed to.
#35
Over pampering. Lack of disciplining.#36
Imho using chores as a punishment is a great formula to raise a slob. Chores should be portrayed as something you do to maintain a nice living space, help your stuff last longer and overall make things easier.#37
- Increasingly separating children's and adult spaces/activities (even in your family life) because you're scared the children will misbehave and/or be bored.- everything becoming somehow more, not less gendered. All the boys and girls in my vicinity are either in blue/green/grey or red/pink/purple colour pallets. I wouldn't put a boy in a pink tutu and go "haha gotcha" when people think he's a girl but I don't get why a baby boy couldn't wear brightly coloured outfits and needs to dress like a German mechanical engineering student.
#38
Teaching your kids about failure by beating them at something and then constantly teasing them for it.There was a video that made the rounds on Reddit last week of a little girl crying out of frustration because her dad had been constantly whooping her at a video game. Every single thread was full of people saying “dad’s teaching her right!” But I heavily disagree. Beating your children at a game and then teaching them to take the L is one thing; but to get up, walk around your clearly distressed daughter who had been crying before the game was even over, and then striking a victory pose while you look her directly in the eyes is a horrible way of teaching that lesson (that’s what dad did in the video); and to the surprise of no one, the girl tries to kick her dad, which he then starts rubbing it in her face more when she misses.
As someone who was parented that way, it does none of the b******t parents think it does to the kid’s development. All it does is make them resent you and it shows them that being a sore winner is the right way, when a sore winner is far worse than a sore loser.
Image credits: Turnbob73
#39
Letting the tablet raise them.
Image credits: ModsR-Ruining-Reddit
#40
The Easter "baskets" kids are now getting. It is like a mini Christmas. Hell-I've seen kids that actually get a lot less for Christmas. It's is just disgusting how material we are and in turn making our children. Especially in a world where many people can't even buy sufficient groceries for their family.
Image credits: SweetBaileyRae
#41
The amount of surveillance/tracking apps and more that parents have on their kids. It gets really sad when they hit college and they are looking for ways to detach from their parents knowing what/where they are up to 24/7.
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#42
Lack of discipline, and treating kids like little adults, allowing them to make grown up decisions.kids appreciate being given clear boundaries, they also appreciate that an adult is in charge, so that they don't have to be.
#43
If it's from Korea, it's the trend of putting their kids through private education to the point where they have no life beyond school and education. If they manage to get into uni/college, they have no idea what they are doing with their lives. Their parents have controlled every aspect of their lives since birth, so when they are an adult, they don't know how to make any life decisions on their own. Life goal? Career goal? It's whatever their parents would want them to do. To Korean parents, kids are an extension of themselves. (I'm sure other cultures can relate to this phenomenon.).#44
Raising children as "genderless".#45
Using their child to promote their own political objectives.#46
It seems like there can't be a happy medium for many people. Either they are letting the kids run the household, or they are so afraid of being 'soft' that they borderline abuse their kids to make them 'strong'.
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#47
Not letting kids wander about the world.Yes, the world is fraught with dangers but if your kids has never walked around by themselves, how will they ever learn to navigate their own lives independently? .
#48
Sleep training by letting them cry when they are so young.#49
The absolute obsession with counting "screentime" and keeping children away from anything technologic -- even here, under this post, there are numerous people being against teaching children technology from a young age.I was born in the 1970s, and even I can see that's the direction the future is taking. By not allowing children to access smartphones and/or tablets until they are school-age (or even older!?) is not doing them any favors. Teaching proper etiquette and about the dangers is the way, not abstinence.
It's really ridiculous when it starts to look like American sex ed, where they think teens won't have sex if they're not told about it.
I'm 100% in favor of teaching young children how to use the things, and what to expect. Not just pretending they don't exist.
#50
Blaming non-parenting on covid.#51
I can't stand putting kids in sports/activities these days and pushing them to become athletes. It is one thing to expose your kid, they enjoy it, and you let them keep doing it. It is a completely different thing when you see kids in elementary school playing in every league their parent can enroll them in and doing training camps. If they are really good and you give them the tools, ok, but if your kid is mediocre at best then you are setting them up for disappointment.#52
"If the child does not understand after several repetitions, then you can hit." This is just a terrible trend, because in the process of learning about the world, the child does everything that seems unusual and interesting to him, and when parents, instead of teaching why something cannot be done, beat the child, then he eventually loses confidence in them and begins to fear for his mistakes in front of them in the future.#53
I don't like the idea of letting them spend their life staring at screens. Instead, I tell them to go out and find some neighbourhood kids to get into trouble, and if any adult has a problem with it, they should keep their distance, and tell them to go talk to me.#54
A lot of kids eating in KFC etc after school. Or getting a Donut. Rather then have a home cooked meal. It seems to be something i have noticed a lot off.#55
Having them dress up like the fleet is coming in.from Bored Panda https://ift.tt/6XC4afZ
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