10 New Parenting Trends I'm Willing To Trade In And The 10 Old Ones I'll Gladly Take In Their Place
Parenting, like other areas of life, is subject to fads and trends that come and go.
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It's no surprise that as the world around them changes, parents figure out better ways to handle some common issues with kids.
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If you thought the Y2K trend of mommy blogging changed the parenting game, imagine what social media has done to it.
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Here are some looks at good things past parenting has offered, as well as some current trends we desperately need to ditch.
1.Retire: Gentle-ish parenting
Gentle-ish parenting is best described as someone who says their parenting methods are in the name of gentle parenting but are somehow not achieving the same goals. Whether it's not setting firm boundaries or enforcing boundaries without trying to understand the emotions behind actions, half-assing something that's for the greater good may do more harm than good.
2.Bring Back: Family dinners, every night
Sitting down to dinner together at the same time seems like such a hard ask nowadays because of the heinous schedules we all juggle to make sense out of our days. Still, it was bonding time that was built into every day once upon a time, and we could all do with more of that in our chaotic lifestyles.
3.Retire: Staycations
Many people who do like to travel learned to settle with staycations during the pandemic, but for parents, it's long been a solution to tackling the expensive and sometimes stressful reality that comes with traveling with kids. But those who have the means deserve to try the opportunity, even if your toddler screams their head off on a five-hour plane ride about it. That's not to say not to be courteous and conscious of the people around you (or with yourself in those extra-tough situations).
4.Bring Back: Basic birthdays
Kids birthday parties have become SUCH a production. There was nothing wrong with having a few people over to have cake and hang out. The simpler the better, and the more people who could participate.
5.Retire: Gender reveals
Aside from the fact that it shouldn't matter, it's just another unnecessary enforcement of the gender binary that you can easily pass on.
6.Bring Back: Playing games together
Whether they're board games or video games, that time connecting and navigating something is meaningful to growing kids, even if they groan about it. There's time for solitary activity, but it's important to learn your go-tos for family time.
7.Retire: Bulldozer parenting
A lot of bulldozer parents are truly well-meaning and trying to protect their kids, but take it a bit too far. By eliminating anything that could cause their kids to struggle or feed badly, they rob them of the ability to learn how to cope with those situations, which makes it worse when they do inevitably encounter something negative that they have to deal with on their own.
8.Bring Back: Time outdoors
We've all gotten too good at holing up indoors. Childhood is all about exploring and developing a relationship with nature through that exploration. Let your kid play with worms in the garden or water flowers. Play sports or have a picnic, but find a reason to break out.
9.Retire: Stage (or sports or social media) parenting
There are plenty of kids who look truly happy and engaged in making content for social media (or performing in some other arena like dance, music, or sports), and that's beautiful for them. It's incredibly uncomfortable, however, when you come across a page where you can tell a child is uncomfortable or reluctant to make content. If that's not your kid, accept it instead of insisting and contributing to more significant issues in turn.
10.Bring Back: Chore charts
For some reason, people seem to feel off-put by giving their kids regular chores to do. While some of us were asked to handle more than we could growing up, that's not to say that reasonable, scalable responsibilities are beyond kids' capabilities.
11.Retire: Tablets at restaurants
Depending on where you dine, hearing people in a restaurant can be hard enough without having to talk over "Baby Shark" for the hundredth time.
12.Bring back: Doing nothing
Today's kids are really outraged by the idea of having nothing to do. It's okay to be bored. Life doesn't always offer you on-demand entertainment, even though it feels pretty close at this point. There's something to gain from figuring out how to pass the time yourself.
13.Retire: Pranking your kids
Some pranking among family is fine and funny, but sometimes, people cross a line. To me, those videos where kids open their dream gift, only to find the box empty or filled with something they didn't want, aren't funny in the same way videos of people scaring their animals aren't funny. It just feels like going out of your way to possibly hurt someone's feelings.
14.Bring back: Being a stickler for manners
I don't know about you, but nothing pisses me off more than a rude adult. And somewhere along the line, if you don't check your child's ruder tendencies, they will ultimately become a rude adult. Nip it in the bud by walking the walk and talking the talk when it comes to being polite and respectful.
15.Retire: Prefix-suffix names
It's your call to name your kid whatever you please, but there's been an influx of Bray-, Brix-, -ana, -den, -ly, names, and at this point, the combinations are more dull than creative.
16.Bring back: Focusing on social skills
If you've noticed kids today are pushed on the academic track a little early, you're not alone. A lot of the focus of early childhood learning has gone from social to intellectual as we try to improve the experience and "catch up" with other areas of the world in performance metrics we aren't entirely sure mean anything. What we do know is that kids struggle more in social situations than in years past, and we can arm them with the tools to succeed early on.
17.Retire: Bad competitive energy
Some of today's kids are pretty aggressively competitive, even when they're told that winning doesn't matter. A lot of areas of society don't model great examples to this end, which is why it's important to keep it healthily competitive at home.
18.Bring Back: Letting kids enjoy their own homes
I don't know about you, but over the years I grew up, I explored every nook and cranny of my childhood home. I even earned a reputation for being able to find anything, anywhere in the house. In a lot of today's homes, people restrict kids from areas in the name of "boundaries," but it can send a confusing message about a home belonging to everyone in it. There's restricting things for safety; otherwise, kids should be able to get to know their space.
19.Retire: Overpacked schedule
When your kids want to do it all, you want to encourage it if you have the means to. That said, you owe it to your kids to give them downtime, too. If they're always on the go, they can't get used to relaxing and finding the things that bring them peace.
20.Bring Back: Simple school lunches
A sunflower butter and jelly sandwich is easy, which parents who are sending lunch need in the morning. But those simple sandwiches aren't just going to bat against sugary snacks anymore. They've got creative, colorful bento boxes to go up against, giving parents another unnecessary standard to live up to.