From the article:<p>"Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised or lightly supervised. They were able to resolve disputes, which they had a strong motivation to because they wanted to keep playing. They also planned their time and managed their games. They had a lot of autonomy, which also feeds self-esteem and mental health."<p>Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time. Now they are empty. There are quite a few kids in my neighborhood, but the only time you see them is when they get off the school bus. None of them roam the neighborhood or anywhere. There is a huge park in my neighborhood, too. It's always empty. I never see packs of kids walking on the sidewalks going to the theater or to corner stores. School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session.<p>When I was growing up from age 6, my mom would tell me to be home by dinner, and I'd spend all day running around with friends or adventuring by myself. This was the norm for every kid I grew up with.
As a father of three elementary school kiddos, here's my anecdotal-evidenced perspective:<p>I see a lot of other children who are experiencing a simultaneous excess and deficit of parental authority. Their parents rarely or never correct behavior that is disrespectful, self centered, or too demanding. From my point of view, they should be saying "No" much more often - firmly and respectfully.<p>At the same time, the kids are forced into endless regulated, supervised activities and given little or no free time. Or what free time they have is spent on YouTube. Seems to result in kids who are rude, fragile, and ignorant of normal human interaction.
That's strange considering we've been told that kids today are the best behaved.<p>"Today's teenagers are the best-behaved generation on record"<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/5/25/5748178/todays-teenagers-are-the-best-behaved-generation-on-record" rel="nofollow">https://www.vox.com/2014/5/25/5748178/todays-teenagers-are-t...</a><p>"Today's Teens Better Behaved Than Their Parents"<p><a href="https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/the-kids-are-more-than-all-right/" rel="nofollow">https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/the-kids-are-more-...</a><p>"Wonkblog Today’s teens are way better behaved than you were"<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/13/todays-teens-are-way-better-behaved-than-you-were" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/13/today...</a><p>But it's summer ( notoriously slow news season ) and what better to sell than fear to parents. The other parental fear piece within the last 24 hours.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17214841" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17214841</a>
I'm a parent of two, and step-parent to two, between the ages 5 -11. I think a lot about this, and one of the biggest issues I see (besides the many valid points I feel the article raised) is that with the rise of Internet video, we are showing kids to kids more often, if that makes sense.<p>I grew up in the 80's, and cartoons were most of the media I consumed. You usually saw anthropomorphical characters depicting behaviors. When you did see live action, it was usually centered more around adults teaching or mentoring the kids (or Muppets), and when kids did appear, they were polite unless being used to illustrate bad behavior.<p>Today, with so much self-published content, kids are seeing other kids, often acting in outrageous ways to get views, likes, followers, and fans. When media became decentralized, I think we lost a powerful cultural platform for shared experience and norms, and it is starting to show.
> certified parent educator<p>There doesn't seem to be any legitimacy to that claim. Meaning there are places that claim they can certify you, but they themselves have no real legitimacy (e.g. no specific educational track, just a broad philosophy you agree to adhere to).<p>The article is worth reading, but it is more accurate to describe the author as a journalist with three kids, they have no specific qualifications.
<i>> far more children today struggle to manage their behavior [than in the past few decades].</i><p>What evidence does the book cite to support this premise?<p>Also, a plea: let's please answer this question before everybody posts their personal hot takes on children and parenting.
As a father of three here is what keeps me from just sending my kids out to play:<p>Other parents.<p>Other parents see your kids alone and freak the fuck out. Some will call the police, and then threaten you that they will call CPS/DPS if they need to and report neglect.<p>In fact I was out with the kids on their bikes the other day and they were a bit ahead of me when they stopped safely at a crosswalk to wait for me. A woman pulled up and started chastising them for being unsafe because they weren't with a parent, when I walked up. She said "You're lucky I came along because some other people around here would run them over or call the police."<p>So yea, I'm not sure what's wrong with these other parents, but I'd love to send my kids to play outside all day without me worrying that I'm gonna get a cop on my doorstep.
I think it’s Adults who are supposed to manage their own behaviour. Children? Not so much. This sounds like a rehash of the ‘Kids today’ perspective. Children have always been children and Adults have always struggled with their behaviour.<p>Adults have always romanticised their own childhood ‘it wasn’t like that in my day, I’d have never gotten away with that’ etc.<p>I just don’t buy it.
This is a terrible article that just uncritically assumes the worst of the 'kids today!' stereotype (which has been around since Plato's time) as a starting premise. I know it's Sunday but I'm surprised to see such fluff high up on HN.
It's all down to cars. In two ways, one of them less facetious than the other:<p>1) Automobiles have a vast amount of land space dedicated to them. And the land that is not physically occupied by parking lots and roads is subdivided, separated and made inaccessible[1]. And this trend is continuing[2]. It's why other large mammals (bears, moose, wolves) face significant problems in reproduction. Add to this the noise and the light pollution and even if you did not fear that your neighbor, reaching back to pass an organic fruit-leather to the fruit of his loins, would mow down your child, the available outdoors is just not what it was.<p>2) Paedophiles and rapists are greatly facilitated by the availability of fast, relatively anonymous, convenient transport. The same characteristics that make said automobiles attractive to terrorists (when they're not actually directly driving them into people as a weapon that no one acknowledges).<p>1. <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/12/19/roads-impact-on-ecosystems/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/12/19/roads-i...</a>
2. <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6362/442" rel="nofollow">http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6362/442</a>
The part about being “unemployed” to me immediately made me think about the prevalence of future tense pressures for modern kids. I’m in my mid 20s and I went through it.<p>While my parents had good intentions and many others I’m sure did too. You start building this monster of future pressures about colleges, social media emphasizing what you should like, and lots of other pressures you can’t actually resolve in Elementary or Jr. High but you are made aware of them and focused on them by your surroundings.
The reason children aren't behaving (at least in the U.S.) is because a large number of parents never <i>practice</i> parenting and never seek out advice from reliable resources.<p>For example-- I've heard numerous vacuous rationalizations from parents young and old for spanking their children. What's the research say on spanking? The vast majority over decades says that it doesn't improve behavior and in fact increases the likelihood of aggression in children.<p>So why would parents continue doing it? It's the same reason an ineffectual guitarist keeps starting over on Stairway to Heaven. Because, "Gosh, I had it perfect <i>once</i> out of 200 failures in my bedroom by myself last week."<p>So it is with parents: "Gosh, I don't get why they're acting out, they were <i>so good</i> that <i>one</i> time out of 200 outbursts while I was paying a moderate amount of attention to them last week."<p>Edit: clarification
Having seen a whole tide of articles like this recently, I wonder how long it will be before popular opinion and parenting practices trend back toward giving children appropriate amounts of autonomy.<p>I hesitate at the thought of raising children here (or at all) for a variety-pack of reasons, one of which is that I was rather over-protected as a child, and I'd rather not pass the results of that that on to my kids.<p>Any current American-kid-havers care to comment on how difficult it actually is to raise non-sheltered kids in the modern age? Is it a big problem or perhaps overblown for the NPR crowd?
I'm not sure what are the root causes of the kids' behavioural crisis (I'm not even sure there is one), but let me tell you with 100% confidence what will not solve them: Yet another parenting book.
We've been reading and seeing this shit since Socrates.<p>“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”<p>Lets frame this a different way.<p>1. Crime has gone down in all measurements. (Theories state its likely lack of lead pollution.)
2. More people renting, and less engagement in the community.
3. People whining about kids these days
4. Older adults realizing they dont younger generation doing what they did
5. Kids now have more inhouse distraction (computers, games, etc) that their friends are on
6. Parent(s) working long hours and cant take kids to friends houses
7. Scare articles like this one whipping parents into a frightful frenzy
20 years ago, my father attributed the general "change in children" to the widespread availability & use of household air-conditioning.<p>Granted this won't be true throughout all climates, but I recall thinking it had a lot of merit at the time and I continue to think so today. My father would tell me that, when he was a kid, they'd either sit at home in a 90F+ house on Long Island with the windows open -- miserable, as I can attest from living it when we'd visit as a kid -- or they'd go outside and play "stick ball" in the same weather with their friends. For them, it was an easy choice.<p>Today, children either play on their devices at home (often interacting with 'friends' online) or they go to the home of their friend and, likewise, they often play indoors.<p>I truly believe that the climate-controlled dwellings of today are a large part of the reason; I know that personally I'd generally far prefer to be indoors in my climate-controlled 72F dwelling versus outdoors riding a bike or similar and I'd imagine the same, unfortunately but not surprisingly, holds true for children as well.<p>As a fairly new parent with another on the way, I'm not sure to what extent we'll try to combat this; as a child myself "screen time" was often a point of contention though in my case it was also the early start of my career.
Spanking. No kiddin. You don't need to put your children in a hospital. But a little slap in the buns never killed nobody, and as a last resort toll. can be really effective. Of course, go for ligth mesures before, and then scalate.<p>Take the things the kid like first, for a while, like no videogames fo a week, or two. If the nocive behavour dosen't go away, increase the time.
From what I've seen, parents aren't parenting like they used to. Mom and dad, if they're even in the same household, often both work full-time jobs.<p>These fundamental changes in the average family have consequences.
> asks why so many kids today are having trouble managing their behavior and emotions.<p>...For starters, is there evidence that this is actually a thing?<p>Once it gets down to the details it sounds like Generic Parenting Advice From Any Point In The Last 50 Years: don't use bribes, make consequences clear, give kids some control but not too much, when you're overwhelmed walk away... but the initial premise is a pretty big one to just throw out there unsupported.
Most children are raised with single parents.<p>That implies daycare and possession schedules.<p>Both have the potential to drastically screw up a kid. (Imagine being bounced back and forth between two homes throughout the month. It would drive you mad.)<p>Strange that he article doesn't mention it. The utter lack of stable and consistent housing for children (due to possession schedules) is perhaps the biggest societal 'experiment' ever run.
Why the text only version link? I prefer the formatted: <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/02/611082566/why-children-arent-behaving-and-what-you-can-do-about-it" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/02/611082566/why-chi...</a>
I think this has a lot to do with the housing crisis.<p>Hear me out...<p>When I was a kid I was lucky enough to be raised in a new development community packed with YOUNG families. Imagine this. These were 1st, or maybe 2nd home buyers (age 23-32) who were STARTING their families there. It was a time when young people could afford a nice home in a safe neighborhood, AND support kids.<p>The result was amazing. Kids. Lots of kids. Kids roamed the streets. The sense of community was abundant. Halloween and Christmas were a BLAST as all the families went to great lengths to dress up their home.<p>Nowadays? I live in a different neighborhood. People are RENTING. There's no safe, nice, affordable neighborhood for new families to settle. Sense of community as a result is diminished. People don't feel planted and invested in the home so they're less likely to be invested in the community. I don't see any kids these days. Halloween, could be any other day.
Because the generation that gets all high and mighty about their childhood being more fun and outside (i.e. Gen Xers) are now the ones that are raising the next generation of children to be safe and are also complaining about it.
You know who are terrible models for learning human behavior? Children. Why do we expect our children to learn good models of human behavior by interacting with other children?