A big question for the end of the year: What kind of parent have you been?
Did you follow a plan, or did you go off-piste? On This Glorious Mess this week, we discuss how 2015 was the year that “parenting styles” jumped the shark. Forget Helicopter and Tiger, it’s about Snow Plough, French and Free Range parenting.
If I have a “style”, it falls somewhere in a heap of bits and pieces of all those ideas, but when it comes to how I handled the day-to-day business of being a parent, I knew just who to ask: My children.
It was a terrifying prospect. Will they remember all the things you have done for them, all the tiny sacrifices you’ve made, all the times you put them first? Or will they just see the moments you were too distracted, too busy, too short-tempered?
So, brace yourself, but I asked my five-year-old to rate my parenting out of 10, and make a few suggestions for areas I can improve on.
If you can make it out between my son’s fart noises, here’s what she said:
Also on the podcast today. My co-host Andrew Daddo has a tiger child, there’s a woman who’s decided to make Christmas a NO BUY zone, and exactly what does happen when you write SANTA on an envelope and drop it into the post box? Clue: Something wonderful.
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Top Comments
The rules are simple. One of you is a parent. One of you is a 5 year old child.
What parent would really do this? Is this a humble brag where a five year old has the maturity and understands the mathematical rating system on a 0-10 scale.
Sorry, I don't believe in this. Parents are the ones with the power and the authority, not the child. The problem lately is that parents want to be their child's friend and not their parent, and to put their children in an 'equal' footing, as this mother does with her daughter. Children are not on an equal footing, and for very good reasons. It is so wrong imo and will just lead to power struggles. She doesn't get to give an adult a 'performance review', this is just all sorts of wrong imo.
I agree. I'm guessing working-mother guilt is responsible for much of the need to do everything as your child would like it. You need to be your own judge - your life experience trumps everything.