SOCIETY TALK: Gentle parenting spoiled kids

Gen Zs are a forceful generation. Nobody can deny that fact. However, they have been brought up by the ‘modernised’ tech parent with a soft approach. We raise our children the way we wish we had been raised, because we believe that if we had been brought up a different way, we would have been the people we wished we were.

Every parent wants what is best for their kids. With every decision we make in the way we raise them, we always have that goal in mind. However, the soft love approach with which we have raised the younger generations after millennials is not working out for us in the long run.

Most of these children have no emotional intelligence. They have a high propensity to snap and resort to violence. All the school shootings in America are carried out by people under the age of 25. Members of the violent gangs of Kisauni are mostly young teenagers. Political protests in different countries around the world are carried out by young adults.

While the youth of Nepal managed to successfully overthrow a corrupt government, the violence they used and the destruction they caused was unnecessary. They destroyed their rich heritage and history that was preserved in the form of architecture in a matter of minutes.

In one month, we have seen young girls and boys at St Georges Girls High School and Litein Boys High school riot and destroy school property over disagreement on petty issues. Now, I’m not pro-corporal punishment. In fact, caning was banned long before I entered high school. I’m not pro-gentle parenting, either.

For those unaware, gentle parenting, or the newest and most common form of parenting, is a parenting approach that is centred around empathy and communication. When you see a kid crashing out, you lower yourself to their level and tell them, “I understand your frustration. When you calm down, we can talk.”

I literally saw the video of a young girl in a supermarket in America having a criminal meltdown. She trashed everything in the vicinity, thousands of dollars worth of goods. As a man approached to try and control her, another woman stepped in, saying, “Leave her alone! Let her express herself!” I’m sorry, what?

We are too focused on choosing an empathetic mode of parenting that we have lost the command and respect of our children. Children are wet clay meant to be moulded by rules, boundaries and respect in the home before we release them into society as functioning adults.

If that girl had been a grown woman over 18, the empathetic bystanders concerned for her emotions would have been disgusted by her behaviour, and they would have called the police immediately.

So, how do we teach these kids that these tantrums they are throwing now that we validate by saying “they are expressing themselves” are actually criminal activities with consequences they would have to face in a few years? I believe parents are so far lost in the love they have for their children that they forget that they will soon turn into adults who will have to deal with the repercussions of their actions.

I think we took the meaning of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ too literally. Anytime someone uses that saying, they are considered child abusers who beat the heck out of their kids.

Spare the rod and spoil the child is one of society’s quotes that aims to remind parents to, in fact, parent their kids. Parenting is not just for the parent and the child. The results of your parenting will be felt by the society at large once the child is grown.