It can be hard to judge how one should parent children, since every family is different, circumstances are never identical and it’s dangerous to assume that one’s preferences are always superior. However, common sense still exists regardless of what people think.
Someone asked parents to share what modern childrearing “trend” they think is downright harmful and people didn’t hold back. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own thoughts in the comments section down below.
#1
“Homeschooling” when you are in absolutely no way qualified to.
Image source: DarDarBinks89, Annushka Ahuja
#2
“Unschooling.” And honestly, 90% of home schooling. I get it if a kid is chronically ill physically or mentally. Other than that, get them to a school with an actual curriculum and trained professionals.
Image source: TheEmeraldFaerie23, Getty Images
#3
Not vaccinating your kids.
Image source: Hungry-Helicopter-46, CDC
#4
I’ve noticed this trend on the playground of parents trailing around after their kids, constantly saying “Good job! Ok now be careful! That’s right, foot goes there. Yep, just there OK now be careful! Good job! Go ahead and step right there…” Like LET YOUR KID PLAY. Let them fall, let them try, let them be scared, let them have their own wins. It’s bananas to me.
Image source: Party_Principle4993, Quang Nguyen Vinh
#5
Over-sharing kids’ lives on social media.
Turning children into content before they can consent messes with their privacy, safety, and sense of identity……..and the internet never forgets.
Image source: Amarawood, RDNE Stock project
#6
Gentle parenting turning into no parenting like maam that child needs boundaries not a podcast.
Image source: Big_Candle_7961, Kindel Media
#7
Nurse here-
Refusing vitamin K for your newborn. I’ve never seen an infant harmed as a result of a vitamin k shot… but I have seen one pass as a result of a brain bleed that could have been prevented with a routine vitamin K injection.
Image source: PMmeurchips, Büşranur Aydın
#8
Sad beige children. Kids need colors to aid in their mental and cognitive development. Children need a childhood more than beige moms need ugly aesthetic pictures.
Image source: VibraphoneChick, Mikhail Nilov
#9
Filming your kid crying and posting it for “awareness” nah that’s just exploitation with a filter.
Image source: No-Front4058, Jep Gambardella
#10
Letting kids interrupt everything because “they’re expressing themselves”.
Image source: MentionFirm903, Getty Images
#11
This isn’t only a modern trend but dad need to chill out with the “my daughter can’t marry until she’s 40” rhetoric or the “hurt my daughter and I’ll end you” stuff. It’s not tough to threaten a 16 year old and forbidding your daughter to ignore boys until they are not under your control is just going to set them up for unhealthy dating expectations.
I have a 16 year old daughter with a boyfriend. He’s a nice kid and he treats her well. They definitely don’t have a future together but I think he’s a great 1st boyfriend that is really setting the tone of how she should expect to be treated.
Image source: CaptainAwesome06, Arina Krasnikova
#12
“boy mom” culture that’s a combination of emotional incest and internalised misogyny.
Image source: RhinoFish, Elina Fairytale
#13
Blaming teachers for their kids’ shortfalls.
Crummy teachers do exist, but most of them really are trying. Most teachers are passionate and caring, but the moment a kid’s grade slips parents are way too quick to put the teacher in front of the firing squad.
It’s had an absolutely mind-boggling stupid impact as well. My son is 7 and has ADHD and autism. He’s generally a pretty good kid, but he’s had more than a few bad days at school.
So far both his first and second grade teachers have danced around the issue when reporting bad days to us. Rather than something to the tune of “he was hitting kids at school and getting in their personal space” he was “speaking out with his hands and needed refocusing.” What the heck does that even mean?
I get it. They talk like that cause they have to sugar coat everything against the Karens and Daves of the world. But those parents who refuse to accept that their kids or their own parenting skills might be the problem and just foist blame onto the first person to mention there’s an issue are making teacher’s jobs impossible. It’s forced teachers into this weird, almost patronizing communication mode just so the bad parents don’t blow up on them.
Image source: Oseirus, Max Fischer
#14
Homeschooling, antivax and all the non sens those tiktok moms influence each others to do.
Image source: ThePretender09, Getty Images
#15
Ridiculous names with ridiculous spelling.
Image source: EatLard, Superb-Cry-8302
#16
Not exposing our youths to stuff that makes them uncomfortable.
This leads to socially anxious teens, who get a panic attack from normal everyday interactions. People who are afraid of their own shadow. Youths who cannot trust that you’ll get through the unpleasant experiences. .
Image source: Mediocre-Plate-675, RDNE Stock project
#17
Letting kids anywhere near that AI. I thought cheating was bad enough in my day but is CheatGPT getting outta hand, our next generation is gonna very dumb if this keeps up.
Image source: PutMindless2851, Ron Lach
#18
Emotional enmeshment with your kids. Your kids aren’t your best friends. They are your kids.
Image source: AlwaysSomethin6722, Getty Images
#19
Permissive parenting disguised as gentle parenting
Letting the iPad raise your kid
Bad parental leave policies & high cost of living that exhausts parents and forces kids into daycare the day they’re born so they never get the proper attention they need to learn to read, do math or behave as kind, functioning members of society.
Image source: Lambamham, Ketut Subiyanto
#20
Before this thread kicks off: permissive parenting is bad. It’s where the kid runs the show and has no boundaries.
Several people already posted gentle parenting, and the two are not the same and have drastically different results.
Gentle parenting should come with boundaries, natural consequences, discussion about behavior: it’s not for the lazy. It’s teaching kids to learn to regulate their emotions and gain confidence and self-worth in a home where they aren’t simply controlled and punished physically or arbitrarily when a parent is tired or annoyed. It’s consistent, loving, and kind.
Permissive parenting is iPad and do what you want with no boundaries, consequences, or discussion about behavior. It’s where you see very entitled kids that think the world revolves around them. It’s lazy parenting.
Image source: laurenderson, Ketut Subiyanto
#21
Treating kids like a project to optimize instead of people who are allowed to be bored, messy, and human.
Image source: Top-Park6991, Julia M Cameron
#22
Leaving your child with a screen is extremely damaging. Idc that life is now harder, that we have less time, work more, struggle greatly. These machines are making our children dumber and likely to be servile. They’ll struggle more in school, they won’t develop their critical thinking skills and some can become weird tech zombies. Don’t do it.
Image source: icemagnus, Vika Glitter
#23
Parentification
Having big families and expecting the eldest do/help with child care. There is simply not enough hours in a day to give each quality time, in some way children end neglected. I have seen it many times in big families, including mine. Is heartbreaking and traumatizing.
I saw a post of a mum having a second child because her kid is severely disabled and she is in her in her 40s so she needs to ensure someone will take care of the sibling. I have no words but another example of Parentification.
Image source: CocoaCandyPuff, Patty Brito
#24
Not reading. Read to your kids. Read for yourself. It matters less than feeding them, but not a lot less.
Image source: CommonwealthCommando
#25
I don’t have kids but several family members do and I’ve observed something that I think needs to be addressed. Kids need a degree of autonomy in a lot of things, but at the same time there are a lot of decisions kids shouldn’t be allowed to make. Not as in they need to make the decision the parents wants, but more that the decision should never be theirs to begin with.
Kids have a lot of feelings and thoughts but they are simply not equipped to make a lot of decisions, and that goes double for the super sheltered and helicoptered kids out there. A child who has been kept from discomfort and challenge their whole life simply cannot make a decision around an uncomfortable obligation or experience, because they aren’t equipped to. All they’re doing is causing a problem for everyone and setting themselves up for failure before long.
#26
Gender reveal events – incredibly lame.
Image source: Hootinak
#27
Refusing to ever say no because you don’t want to “traumatize” them.
Image source: CardiologistFluid141, Pavel Danilyuk
#28
Claiming you are doing “Gentle Parenting” when you aren’t. Gentle Parenting is treating your children like human beings with emotions and needs. It isn’t a magical buzzword that lets you be a negligent parent with no repercussions.
Image source: kitskill, Andrea Piacquadio
#29
Weak parenting. Normalizing children being exposed to adult(serious) stuff. Monetizing childhood of kids being an influencer parent.
Image source: IOnlyPreferSociopath, Curated Lifestyle
#30
Having every bump in the road being something that means the child has mental health issues or is neurodivergent. I’m so grateful personally that mental health is being recognized more and that we are getting more diagnosis early for things like autism, etc.
However, if your teen daughter won’t get out of bed after a breakup it doesn’t mean she has xyz issue…it means she’s a 16 year old girl going through her first major breakup. Yes she may need a therapist, but what she probably needs more is her mom/friends, ice cream, and movies.
Image source: Mediocre-Afternoon42, cottonbro studio
#31
Not exactly a modern trend but one that pops up every single generation.
“Kids these days are weak and soft and stupid and lazy and they will be the death of us.”
Every single generation since antiquity has been those kids in their day, and there has always been somebody saying that about them. But those kids those days obviously didn’t obliterate the world or turn it into a soft decadent blob, because otherwise we would not be here right now. Our parents were those kids those days in their day, too. Dumb people have also always existed, rather than only experiencing an extraordinarily sharp uptick within the past 10 years.
Image source: GingerTea69, Getty Images
#32
Thinking your kid is going to play professional sports. Look only 7% of HS athletes go on to play college athletics at any level. In sports where there is a draft (Football, baseball, hockey, basketball, softball, soccer) only 2.7% of draft eligible athletes get drafted. That means in those sports IF you play HS ball, you have a 0.19% of going pro.
Your 8 year old is probably not part of that 0.19%. You dont need to spend 10s of thousands of dollars on them playing on the very best travel teams. Let them be kids.
Image source: Swimming-Employer97, Kampus Production
#33
Using your child for online content, especially disabled children. .
Image source: Difficult_Regret_900, RDNE Stock project
#34
Parents calling their toddlers “bestie” and then wondering why the kid doesn’t listen.
Image source: Overall_Mongoose_999, Karola G
#35
How about bringing your kids to concerts they have zero interest in, rather than getting a babysitter? Concerts used to be the last bastion of adult recreation outside of bars. But every show I’ve been to in the last 2 years has been a zoo of young, screaming children running amok, parents doing nothing about it but then getting all confrontational with adults using adult language within earshot of their kids who should be home in bed, anyway! Meanwhile, who gets to actually enjoy the music? No one!
Image source: Accomplished_One6176, Luis Quintero
#36
“Boy moms.” Just ‘Boys will be boys!’ in a different font with more icky Oedipal vibes.
Image source: sombredolores, Kyle Nieber
#37
Treating children as mini adults rather than kids.
Image source: Decent_Writer_2917, Diana Light
#38
Babying your kids and not giving them any chores to do. I remember a friend that wanted to stain her deck. She was quoted a lot for that small job. When I told her that her 16 year could do it, she didn’t believe me. Well after a couple of youtube videos and some advice from the hardware store he did it! He was very proud of his work.
Teach your kids how to do stuff. Cleaning, cooking, repairing stuff… It’s not normal that a teenager doesn’t know how to vacuum and mop the floors. They should know how to wash their clothes and take care of the things around the house.
Image source: sonia72quebec
#39
Elf on the shelf. Bin that thing.
Image source: Perky356, Natalia S
#40
Using your child as content for social media. The absolute absence of privacy that some of these children experience from literally the moment of conception is disturbing.
Image source: LittleOne666, Norma Mortenson
#41
Giving kids phones too early. The parents who don’t do it have their kid ostracised and really nobody under 16 really needs a phone.
Image source: Nomoreorangecarrots, Tima Miroshnichenko
#42
Overcommitting kids to sports and other activities.
Image source: FishAroundFindTrout9, RDNE Stock project
#43
That everybody is a winner; we need to stop handing out trophies to everybody; and be a parent, not their best friend.
Image source: Maurakutney, RDNE Stock project
#44
Not teaching neurodivergent kids how to navigate adult life because it’s difficult and feels like forcing them to not be themselves. They are taught that society should accept their differences and that they shouldn’t need to mask or pretend to be anything they aren’t. Which is a nice thought and works in schools that accommodate their disabilities, but then they get thrown out into adult life which actually won’t accept them for who they are and will not accommodate their problems. Learning to cook or pay bills or get to places on time is a lot more difficult when you are neurodivergent, but if you aren’t taught any strategies while growing up, it’s like being thrown into deep water without knowing how to swim. Kids need to be prepared for the world that exists, not the one we wish existed.
Image source: mahtaliel
#45
Not talking about physical altercations. Kids will hit and kick and hurt you and others both intentionally and unintentionally. Not talking about it doesn’t make it go away it just leaves everyone less equipped to deal with it.
The other would be continue with diapers until the kid ”is ready” or ”says he wants to” or until summer vacation arrives. We are thought that diapers can lead to skin and bowl problems and you should start training as soon as possible but at least by two years old at the regular physician check up’s. Our daycare center were surprised our son was diaper free at that age saying no one is listening. I have nieces with diapers at 4 years old without a medical reason just no one having the time to take the step. It will be messy no matter the age, just do it.
Image source: SpicyLittlePumpkin
#46
Doing everything for our kids. They never learn to problem solve.
Image source: Holiday_Potential263
#47
Pacifying your toddler by handing them a screen.
Image source: Moof_the_cyclist, George Pak
#48
Parents ceding authority to their kids as if a 7 year old should have an “equal say” in the matter.
Image source: AmigoDelDiabla, Monstera Production
#49
Tablet babysitters.
Image source: Radarker
#50
Lack of routine, rigidity, and discipline. Kids feel *safe* with these things. People need to understand that a lot of behavioral or mental and emotional issues in children come from them feeling unsafe due to NOT having these things from their parents or the adults in their lives.
Image source: Cityofcheezits
#51
Gentle parenting turning kids into misbehaving beings and then parents just showing off about it.
Image source: yuolou
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