“You’re Traumatizing Your Child”: Parents And Teachers Are Sharing The Modern Parenting Habits That They Absolutely Can’t Stand

Raising kids has never been easy, but parents today have unique challenges and unique ways of dealing with them. Recently, parents and teachers on Reddit shared the modern parenting trends that need to go, and I'm curious what you think. Here's what they had to say:

2. "Treating kids like a project to optimize instead of people who are allowed to be bored, messy, and human."

—Top-Park6991

3. "Gentle parenting turning into no parenting. Like, ma'am, that child needs boundaries, not a podcast."

—Big_Candle_7961

5. "This isn't only a modern trend, but dads need to chill out with the 'my daughter can't marry until she's 40' rhetoric or the 'hurt my daughter, and I'll murder you' stuff. It's not tough to threaten a 16-year-old, and forbidding your daughter to date 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 first boyfriend who is really setting the tone of how she should expect to be treated."

—CaptainAwesome06

6. "Ridiculous names with ridiculous spelling."

—EatLard

8. "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."

—Mediocre-Plate-675

9. "Emotional enmeshment with your kids. Your kids aren't your best friends. They are your kids."

—AlwaysSomethin6722

11. "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."

—Party_Principle4993

12. "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 fuck does that even mean?

I get it. They talk like that cause they have to sugarcoat 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 teachers' jobs impossible. It's forced teachers into this weird, almost patronizing communication mode just so the shit parents don't blow up on them."

—Oseirus

14. "Overcommitting kids to sports and other activities."

—FishAroundFindTrout9

15. "Babying your kids and not giving them any chores to do. I remember a friend who wanted to stain her deck. She was quoted a lot for that small job. When I told her that her 16-year-old 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."

—sonia72quebec

17. "Pranking your children. The poop prank, the egg thing, any prank where the objective is to frighten, stress, or freak a child out. Any 'joke' where they’re the butt of the joke. It’s funny to you, but you’re traumatizing your child. You’re eroding their trust by tricking and humiliating them. Just stop it."

—ennuiandapathy

18. "Letting kids do pretty much whatever they want in public places."

—UsefulIdiot85

20. "Putting airtags on kids or having Life360 on when the kid has never had issues with running off or getting into trouble. We went thousands of years without parents having live updates on where their kids are, and child abductions/missing kids reports were going down long before people started tracking their kids 24/7."

"For younger kids, if they’re just going to school, they're already supervised by an adult at all times. For older kids, it denies them the ability to get into the safe amount of trouble that will help them learn in the long run and incentivizes them to just leave their phone behind when they’re going off to do something stupid, which is infinitely more dangerous. It’s a sign of a truly paranoid and distrustful society, and it's just creepy and overbearing."

—afuckingwildcard

21. "Parents are trying to outdo each other with little Christmas gifts for the whole school class. I'm so over it. Little packs of sweets, toys, or other random plastic crap. Happened at Halloween, and it’s worse now that it’s Christmas. Seriously."

—Lexiepie

23. "Teaching your kids to weaponize 'therapy speak.' I’m a teacher, and I constantly hear stuff like 'You’re not hearing me,' 'Oh, so my feelings aren’t valid to you?,' 'I’m practicing self-care by not doing this,' 'You’re violating my boundaries,' etc., when I tell them to do something, reinforce expectations, introduce a consequence, or when I don’t tolerate their blatant disrespect."

"I’m all for teaching children to advocate for themselves and how to identify and process their emotions, but it seems that many parents are teaching children these things purely as a way to excuse shitty behaviour."

—aspennfairy

24. "Following your kids instead of guiding them. Your kid doesn’t like veggies? Your job is to lead them to at least eat them without complaining, not to follow the child’s desires and allow them to never eat veggies."

—while_youre_up