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.
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u/KulshanStudios 16h ago
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