“Don’t you ever say no?” an exasperated fellow grandmother asked her adult daughter recently. Rather than tell their children off, today’s “gentle” parents spend ages explaining why it’s not a good idea to lob a toy car at their baby sister or climb on to the kitchen table. Grandparents, by contrast, I find are much more likely to just say no.
David, whose grandchildren are four and two, says: “Sometimes I just can’t help reacting with ‘Hey! Don’t do that!’ when the four-year-old is doing something that could end in disaster, like swinging on a chair near a glass cupboard, or grabbing something precious. If his parents are around they very carefully and deliberately explain to him. Sometimes there’s a bit of tension.
“What’s slightly irritating is that my son-in-law usually says something like, ‘you know that grandpa worries about that’, not ‘you shouldn’t be doing that’.”
Shorts
Grandparents have seen so many parenting trends come and go, from Penelope Leach to Tiger Mothers, that it’s hardly surprising they raise an eyebrow at gentle parenting. Monica, 58, whose grandsons are seven and nearly two, says: “The current parenting zeitgeist has gone back to something I saw in the 1980s, that the most important thing is that children can express themselves wherever they are.
