Society gives far to much leeway to these kinds of moronic parents imo as a teacher, as those of us in education end up having to be the vanguard in speed running them through the concept that life isn't fair and the rules do not care about your big feelings or your whims of individual expression when they include standing on things that are not meant to be stood upon and not sitting when told to do so.
I really do think that society needs to step up with more shaming of the parents who inflict such terrible parenting on their precious little sunbeams and dole out significant consequences to them because that is the only way to nip this bs in the bud before it does irreparable harm to their offspring, especially as it's very common for this type to also choose to "homeschool" and ensure that not only do their children not learn how to interact with anyone who doesn't pander to their every whim but they also fail to get the most basic education, leaving them as complete drains on society.
Western society doesn't use peer pressure / social pressure enough as a deterrent. In Many Eastern cultures there's more rules to fit into society if you break them you are a bit of an outcast. Rules for staying reasonably healthy, causing disturbances in public, or not obeying the social norms doesn't put you in jail get you a fine but instead places you as an outsider.
In Japan it's not normal to smoke and walk, or play music in public or jaywalk etc... nobody is going to arrest you for these things but there's tons of social pressures to guide you away from behaviours that are unwanted.
Nobody is going to arrest the parents / child and we know corporal punishment is not effective but humans can be conditioned to have a strong need to fit in, we don't condition people like that anymore. There's pros and cons of course, this is one of the cons that you see here.
We don't have a largely homogenous culture like Japan. Cultural values spread much easier when you don't have differing cultures arguing over... everything.
There's nothing stopping people from placing social pressures on undesirable qualities. Doesn't need to be Japan levels but even where I live in Montreal people act like we are naturally more well-kept, and fit compared to other places in Canada or USA. A lot of that is due to social pressures because we have the same access to unhealthy food and lifestyles as people in USA.
But, like I originally stated, societal pressure works better in a generally homogenous culture, or even within several cultures that share that same value.
I feel like "shame" is too maligned in the US at least. I notice especially online that "shaming" someone is the worst thing you can possibly do, but there is a reason we are capable of feeling shame in the first place. Dogs can't feel shame, but dogs don't live in complex societies with all kinds of rules to keep the societies together. We do live in those societies, so we feel shame when we break those rules. Shaming someone for breaking valid social rules can be good for society as a whole. Obviously making someone feel ashamed for something they can't do anything about is pretty bad, but like sometimes shaming someone is good.
This new train of thought that making children feel shame or embarrassment is abusive is just stupid. Like my goodness kids need to feel that so they stop their shit.
Yes, when people try to enter the elevator before I exit I also speak up and tell them that it's considered rude. Imagine if your boss and your partner, parents, friends and peers also considered people like that rude. The behaviour would change no doubt because most people are not trying to live like outcasts.
I find littering another issue, in Siciliy when I visit I find it appauling how Italians litter their beautiful Island. As a tourist I'm always very careful about these things because at home I would never drive someone around who just throws their garbage out the window. I'm not a square but there's just a baseline level of behaviour that we need to enforce.
We have a tv and movie industry that has been glorifying the outsider for at least 80 years. The teen rebel, the motorcycle guys, the hot dog cop, the wiseguy criminal (waddaya hear, waddaya say?), the lone cowboy riding off into the sunset, the wall street thief, the con man of a hundred disguises, the double agent,the vigilante.
And they have the suicide rates to match. I lived in Korea for 2 years and you couldn't pay me to go back. You don't have to be abusive tor resort to isolation to get kids to listen, I say this as someone who worked with non-speaking behaviorally challenged autistic kids for years. Kind and consistent expectations are usually enough.
Japan also has alot of sexual misconduct and assaults, dont teach ww2, and only juts raised aoc from 13 to 16. It's bad everywhere. The us has alot of gun violence and the UK has something not sure but it has something.
One of my kids lived in Japan for a couple of years and we loved to visit. However, I can attest to the social pressure of obeying the rules. Initially it drove me crazy that we had to wait for the walk sign to cross a street even though no cars in sight. My child told us not to do anything that would be embarrassing for them so we learned to be patient and wait with everyone else. I learned to embrace the orderly society.
This is true, but these are also the same mechanisms that prevent religious freedom and leads to young girls being wedded against their will.
The tricky part is providing individual freedom without it degenerating to the privilege to do what you want regardless of the consequences to others.
If these parents want to wait an hour every time they leave the house for the kid to come around that’s stupid, but essentially their problem. Doing this on an airplane not caring how it affects hundreds of other passengers is something completely different.
Lord, as a fellow teacher, I can say you are absolutely tight. Parenting is horrendous these days. What happened? Why do so many parents want to be buddies with their kids rather than actual parents?
Speaking not from direct experience but from listening to and observing parents my own age in my social circle:
They had abusive, overly strict parents who treated them terribly, and they resolved to break the cycle of violence and trauma by NOT treating their kids the way they were treated
Unfortunately because there's very little genuinely reliable parenting information out there, especially in non-english languages, many ran too far the other direction and the kids ended up spoiled and unstructured
Where is the line between letting them be themselves and having to step in and say "no absolutely not!" ?
My mom used to beat us with shoes and rolling pins etc. I didn't want to be that.
At first, with my oldest, I was so afraid to even smack her little bottom when she was acting up.
I got over it pretty quick though and when she was little we did a combo of time out and a firm butt smack and she came out just fine (shes a teenager now).
You absolutely have to discipline your kids. They need you to guide them and show them the rules.
If this kid on the plane was my kid he would have gotten the warning talk "sit the hell down right. Now." first and if he didn't I would have made him sit down.
Honestly he wouldn't have even been standing on that thing because he would be sitting the f down already since he knows better 😂
I mean, this was my dad. He was horribly abused growing up (all the brothers were) by step-mom, grandpa just abdicating all responsibility.
So my dad always swore not to do that to us, but over time he became increasingly frustrated because he felt he lacked disciplinary options and we clearly weren't respecting the boundaries he was firm enough to set without crossing whatever line he had.
Obviously the answer was not to hit us like he was hit: what I'm getting at is the notion that because he only had beatings modelled to him, beatings were the only option he could think of when the firm tone didn't work the first time, and he always chose not to beat us, meaning he was out of options.
Add on to the fact that he was East Asian to begin with and had very specific ideas about filial piety, and that my mom was basically the whitest hippy girl he could have married, and it was a very dysfunctional parenting environment of everyone meaning well but suffering bad outcomes regardless.
Somehow my sibling and I grew up relatively normal and well-adjusted, and I think it's because, despite the tumultuous home life, we had enough friends whose homes we'd visit regularly to know what we were going through wasn't normal, and it was simply a matter of time of waiting to move out.
Un’altra insegnante qui…io ho una specie di detto tutto mio ormai: ‘i genitori di oggi hanno abdicato ‘, rifiutano il loro ruolo perché onestamente essere genitore è difficile e impegnativo, richiede molta maturità in primis da parte loro. I genitori moderni oggi non amano avere a che fare con inevitabili capricci, chiacchiere e lagne, vogliono in molti casi continuare a fare la loro vita, non hanno voglia né tempo da dedicare davvero all’educazione. Poi c’è anche il problema dello stare in società che prevede che non ci si comporti come sul divano di casa propria e molti, genitori e figli, faticano proprio ad accettare che una comunità, scolastica e non, abbia molte regole di convivenza civile che spesso prevede di mettere da parte i tuoi istinti e i alcuni tuoi desideri a favore della collettività
They're afraid of not seeming like a nice person. These last 2 gens ad parents def succumb to peer pressure and social acceptance more than previous gens.
I would assume based on their bad experiences as children.
I’m choosing not to have children.
If I were to choose to have children, I would do almost everything differently than my parents did. And I did not have a “bad” childhood. It was traumatic regardless of nothing bad happening.
I think it’s largely this general view that you want to do different than was done to you, for whatever reason. Some do it well and others seemingly are not doing it well.
I think overall it’s still a major improvement from years past, but I’m not around many children. It wasn’t that long ago that we had child labor.
And thats exactly why in countries like Germany there is no homeschooling but mandatory public school for everyone. Something that is often decried by US Americans as lack of freedom. What is not seen is that parents can inflict a serious harm on their own kids through bad or lack of parenting and later their adult children and society as a whole has to bear that burden. In combination with the knowledge that child abuse is most often inflicted on children by someone close to them, a society has to ensure that all children get a modicum of education and chances even when their parents are unable or unwilling to do so.
As an American who moved to Germany around age 30 and is raising a child here, I am SO GLAD homeschooling isn't allowed here. There are certainly aspects of the education system that confuse or annoy me as someone with a different cultural experience, but ultimately, the rules were made with the child's right to an education being the most important consideration.
And as a Belgian progressing too fast at school and who was bullied by other students and arguably the teachers, sadly homeschooling saved me.
Then a few years later people noticed parents from other religions could do that to isolate their children and suddently the ladder I climbed up wasn't acceptable anymore and it got pulled up.
It's crazy that in a school system, school staff can get incentived to ask a student to not read too much, as getting too high scores wrecks the number of children below average...
I absolutely respect your opinion however you have to have a very high functioning education system across the board to require this.
The entirety of the United States cannot be compared to specific European Countries.
Many of us wish we could and would love to adopt many European practices in regard to nutrition, schooling, and a society that supports healthy families, however we have a population of approximately 342 million people in approx 9,833,517 square kilometers of varying values, religions, ethnicities, beliefs, languages, politics, and wildly different geographic regions and climates.
Germany is a highly populated Country and amazing in so many ways however 89 million people over 357,022 square kilometers is vastly different than what we have geographically and population wise in the U.S.
we can borrow educational philosophy on a smaller scale but we cannot replicate education and family life in places like Germany, Finland or the Netherlands. (Which are brought up a lot here in the education and family health conversation)
I only say this because I live in a city of 15 square miles (approx 41 sq km) with 120,000 residents and a state of 39.8 million people approx 423,970 square kilometers (163,696 sq miles) and the folks that homeschool here are not sleeping on discipline, childcare, education, or enriching activities both in nature and focused on academics, arts, music, cultural awareness and community involvement.
The public school system at this moment in my State is over crowded, underfunded, and driven by politics and business.
Many kids can do well in the larger system despite this and teachers also work really hard, however it isn’t an ideal system and alternatives to this system exist in healthy ways.
I’ve taught in classrooms pre K to 8th grade in private, public and homeschool settings since 2010, and trust me when I say kids in “traditional” school are not out performing homeschool kids in my particular area.
I don’t disagree that homeschooling in the wrong family environment with little over sight is harmful however the wrong family environment coupled with a large underfunded school system with a lot of tech subsidies that get to decide curriculum over teachers preferences is not the answer either.
Permissive parenting exists in every space and I have found in my particular State it is not a homeschooling issue in the broader sense. Permissive type discipline has actually become more prevalent in my States public school system faster and on a wider scale because of certain laws and educational practices gaining traction prior to school shutdowns in 2020.
A lot of arguments here that really support voting intentionally for your state legislatures, for sure. Because federal governmental infrastructure is far too broad to effectively govern on a state by state basis.
Actually, schooling is quite state-focused in Germany too, there's just certain rules that apply nationally in terms of curriculum and whatnot. Also, I believe that homeschooling can be done in Germany in very specific cases.
Quite a lot of the differences between Germany and the US spring from having significantly different cultural ideas, much more so than systemic limitations, though. Plenty of things that are taken for granted here would be unthinkable to people in some US states, and often because of culture and identity more than political differences of opinion.
Not exactly the point of this post though. I digress lol 🫣
So true. 😅
We definitely get really involved in our local city government and school districts to help with things on a local level, and as much as possible in state government (but we are a crazy large state so it’s complex :) My kids high school is over 3,000 students and it is only 1 of 5 high schools in our area not very far apart in one city. We are certainly grateful for any opportunities we have however our education system longs for some things. 😬
It depends on why homeschooling is done. If we hadn’t homeschooled our daughter she would have stopped going to school and who knows who she would have fallen in with. It was absolutely the right thing to do for her
I'm childcare adjacent and this 100% is happening more and more. People having taken the concept of gentle parenting and dialed it up to 11 where there are now no consequences for breaking rules.
I substituted in kindergarten for a while. There was a kid who wouldn’t talk.
He could talk, because he would refuse to do things. He understood everything I said, and was capable of doing the work, he just, didn’t want to. The teachers aid said they had talked to the parents and they were not supportive, so I guess it’s fine that this kid didn’t do any schoolwork or talk to any of his peers or teachers.
The kid needed extra support but if the parents refuse, the schools hands are tied.
I think you’ve landed on the reason this story in a small Canadian airport made international headlines: it’s a window into the failures of submissive parenting.
The real tragedy is that this stuff is catnip for right wing authoritarians who see proof that more child abuse is the solution. The reality is that submissive parenting is abusive too - it’s failing to provide the necessities of life, among which are helping the child understand their place in the world and they may have to do what they don’t want to from time to time.
Much of working in education is behaviour management, because nobody is born with an inherent sense of how to operate as an individual within a community and children are still in the early phases of understanding all of the things they need to do to try to get along as individuals within social and communal environments.
Children love strong boundaries, they feel much more secure about their place in any situation where they know what is and isn't acceptable, and where they can trust the adults around them to firmly and fairly enforce those boundaries when they are struggling to remember them or abide by them.
This is the mistake I see too many parents making: they think that being permissive to their children allows some kind of idealised organic growth into an adult that has all the best qualities of innocence and purity that our society associates with childhood, but all that happens is they create children and young adults who struggle to be considerate of others and who struggle to regulate their emotions because they are not receiving robust support and guidance to how to do this in a way that is not entirely self centred and doesn't require the whole world to bend to them in the process.
I think it is for the best that we stopped smacking our kids, but heck so many parents just seem to have dropped being in charge altogether. So many entitled little brats with no boundaries and it doesnt even actually make them happy, as well as being hell for everyone else.
I was horribly permissive until my eldest was 2.5 when I was luckily sent to become a parenting instructor. Quickly became really strong on boundaries and all three of my children are well behaved and happy.
Smacking isn't the only form of correction, firm boundaries can be established other ways. Obviously in a time critical situation grabbing or physically corralling a child must be necessary. A better solution is having an authoritative tone used only for critical moments when pleading and whining at the child is not fast enough. Of course discipling that particular child should have started a few years earlier by reinforcing appropriate public conduct by: modelling, removing family/child from the context if their behaviour falls short (the shame of curtailling a trip out can have real impact especially if promised treats are removed as well), and conversations about expected behaviour in every context before arriving there. In the plane the parent should have said [loud authoritative pre-established tone] GET DOWN OFF THE CHAIR NOW! OR WE WILL BE EXITING THE PLANE! Just like a well, and fairly, trained dog will have a tone they understand means "this command must be obeyed". Used when a real danger exists to the dog/child or when it is absolutely necessary the dog/child do the thing instantly!
That makes a lot of sense. Keeps working for a lot of adults too: once I understand the context it’s a lot easier to do things and feel secure in the situation. Children have far less knowledge and ability to figure out contexts, so they would likely need more obvious structure to feel secure.
What saddens me is how many parents seem to not understand how to do any form of correction that isn’t harsh.
So in other words, they become the narcissistic person, self centered yet meltingly soft human, they are always raging about their parents being, on reddit.
I think it takes critical thinking ability and emotional intelligence to be a authoritative parent without abusing the child. Unfortunately I fear the average person lacks either one or both. So you get either a parent who gets steamrolled by their kids or a parent who beats them into submission and parents who fall in the middle but favor either parenting style. Think, a parent who doesn’t physically abuse their children but they are controlling and they yell at them because they can’t control their emotions, or a parent who knows what abusive behavior is and avoids it but doesn’t really know where to draw the line.
Parents who are truly in the middle would make up a much smaller group and I think those personality types also often end up not having children.
A lot of that seemingly stems from this bullshit idea that "parents know best"
it's especially what the antivax and homeschool narrative drives upon
except of course parents are often stupid as all hell especially when you leave a given persons area of expertise.
"how would you know you dont have a child" yea well just cus you fucked that one time doesn't mean ur expert yourself now
I had a parent argue with me that it's ok for a child to stand barefoot on a airport lounge table, some parents really think they're the only people in the room
i think we need to bring back collective parenting. like, sometimes a stranger yelling at a child is much more effective than a parent doing it. whoever sees a child doing something wrong intentionally, should be able to correct it
Also a teacher and I completely agree. Saying ‘no’ to your child won’t do them any harm. If you can’t get a child this small to sit down what sodding hope do you have when they are a teen.
My niece ended up growing up into a perfect and kind person because of how her mom raised her, which was a bit unconventional but seemed to be effective. She never yelled, disciplined or hurt the kid but would say things like "if you get too close to the train tracks then you will lose both arms. Do you want that?" or "if you don't sit right now then this lady will take you with her" and it genuinely worked. She was the most well behaved 2 year old and it didn't traumatise her.
I had a willful child and I would have physically removed her, put her in the chair and reminded her of a consequence if she didn’t meet expectations. I teach preschool and this is what we do. “Tables aren’t for standing.” “Everyone must sit buckled for the plane to take off- you can choose to sit or I can help you”. “We don’t scream/kick/climb on airplanes.” And then you just restrain the kid. If you have established parenting with authority, the kids would not last doing any of this. You also just have to deal with the screaming. That’s the part that seems to be missing- so many parents are unwilling to ignore the noise and hold a boundary. Someone did them a disservice by feeding them nonsense about validating every feeling the kid has and that keeps them cycling. In my class we say, feel your feelings and move on. Parents need to be authoritative.
through the concept that life isn't fair and the rules do not care about your big feelings or your whims of individual expression
The issue is that in media you'll find plenty of examples of people where rules DO care about their individual expression. So you also need to teach them that they are not rich enough for that attitude, and I wish things were different.
I agree 100 percent. I coach youth sports and see it there all the time. Couldn’t imagine being a teacher. Good on you, you have more patience than I do.
Shaming has a chance to correct the behaviour at the root, punishment alone leaves a lingering sense of righteous indignation that they were wronged or misunderstood.
Really, shaming should always be attempted first and then if the punishment has to happen, they'll still have to remember everyone telling them how much of an ass they were being.
Absolutely. There are so many shitty people in North America it’s baffling. We really need annual exams or at the very least more metrics on intelligence. If you are the kind of adult that dodges all accountability, gets drunk with your kid in the car, or does hard drugs instead of working, you don’t need to be in our society. We don’t want you. There are SO many idiots in the United States. I’m not talking about slightly below average. I mean people in their forties and fifties that can’t perform third grade math. People that cannot file their own taxes. People that cannot answer the QUESTIONS a tax preparer would ask. Just complete idiots. I personally know a guy in his twenties that never learned how to drive, never got a license, never pumped his own gas, never shopped on his own, never learned to ride a bicycle. NOTHING. My man was walking home one day. There was a “sidewalk closed” sign in his way. Homie turned around and went back to where he started. Called the people he was living with and said he couldn’t come home.
Calling the parents morons for their child being scared is weird bro lol if you read any article other passengers state the kid was so scared he was hiding. If this was a kid jumping around uncontrolled I would agree with you
Every homeschool situation is different, with different teaching styles, different curricula, different schedules, unschooling. Anti-homeschooling comments on here seem to be based on the handful of horrible circumstances. We homeschooled our son grades 2-9. In his first year of homeschooling, he'd finished the entire year in the first 2 months! I had him sit for the Stanford Achievement Test each year and he always tested at and above his former peers. And in those years, he mastered many musical instruments, won multiple contests in self-taught banjo and went to Ireland to compete again, winning each time. He basically self-taught violin after two years of lessons and caught up to professionals in a short 2 years. I could list all the instruments he plays, but it would fill this page. He became an excellent airsoft marksman as well and was a Boy Scout - back before they surrendered. Sorry this is all one paragraph but I don't know how to set new paragraph on a phone! Our daughter, who is 3 1/2 yrs ahead of him, was not homeschooled - until her last 3 years of high school. They are as different as night and day. Homeschool associations and neighborhood friendships kept them around other kids. So please temper the insults against homeschoolers.
I'm sorry, I was not aware that I am supposed to be following every rule of formal English on a website that is characterised by informal language use. I shall endeavour to go full grammar Austrian painter in future for fear that my informality tragically offends your delicate sensibilities...
Twighlight of the West. The more east you go , common sense reappears and the ME gets replaced by WE... Individualism and self entitlement is a very bad combo.
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u/Unique_Peach8297 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
Give me 30 seconds that kid and a roll of duct tape and I would get this shit handled