5 Parenting Trends People Don’t Like

Parents who run social media accounts for their kids might want to look away now, as the internet has given its verdict on some of the modern-day parenting ‘trends’ that need to quietly disappear, with some pretty strong opinions being shared.

Here are five of the most popular themes in response to SouthOwn6943′s post asking: “What is a modern parenting trend that needs to die immediately?”

“Kids Instagram accounts” was the most up-voted response at the time of writing, with over 8,000 people agreeing the parenting trend, where parents manage an Instagram account on their kids’ behalf, needs to go.

It’s perhaps unsurprising this was top of people’s lists, with a growing backlash against sharenting due to fears around children’s safety and the potential for cyberbullying as they grow up.

Parents running social media accounts for their kids in general was also a common bugbear.

“There were a few parents I knew had Facebooks for their kids as online ‘diaries’,” said one commenter. “They were public and shared almost every detail of the kids’ lives up until they either gave up on them or deleted them. Bonkers.”

A helicopter parent is defined as someone who’s closely involved in their child’s life, but in an over-controlling way – especially when it comes to their education.

Another Redditor noted “helicopter parenting and turning every activity into organised competition” should also go, noting it is “robbing kids of important developmental skills and independence”.

Almost 900 people had up-voted their response at the time of writing.

“To add to this, over helping children,” said another commenter. “Very few children now have any problem solving skills. They don’t have any idea how to even begin to tackle any kind of obstacles, nor the resilience to make repeated attempts. And I’m talking about even fairly simple problems like opening a banana independently.”

Plenty of people had thoughts on Top-Park6991′s comments about parents who tend to treat their kids “like a project to optimise, instead of people who are allowed to be bored, messy, and human” – over 3,800 people up-voted the post.

People noted that parents who push their own dreams on their kids fall into this bracket. One commenter said: “It’s the ‘gardener vs. the carpenter’. We have much less control over who our children become than we think we do.

“If there’s a dandelion seed in the ground it’s not going to become a tulip no matter how hard you try. All you can do is make sure the soil is nourishing so they can be the best damn dandelion in the yard.”

Vitamin K helps our blood to clot and stops bleeding – but newborn babies are born with low levels of it. As a result, some babies can suffer internal bleeding, which can, in rare cases, be fatal.

Every new parent can choose for their baby to receive a shot of vitamin K after birth, but there are some who refuse it. A study noted parents typically do so because of concerns of harm from the injection or a desire to be “natural”.

One nurse noted: “I’ve never seen an infant harmed as a result of a vitamin K shot… but I have seen one die as a result of a brain bleed that could have been prevented with a routine vitamin K injection.” Their comment was up-voted over 3,000 times.

The NHS notes if parents are worried about giving their baby an injection, they can ask to have it administered by mouth instead – but they’ll need further doses.

Acting like your child’s friend, rather than their parent, also got the thumbs down from the internet masses. Redditor AlwaysSomethin6722 said: “Your kids aren’t your best friends. They are your kids.”

Some parents might create an enmeshed relationship with their children, where they treat them more like a confidant than a child, which therapist Alex Howard previously labelled as “toxic”. Read more on the signs you were raised in an enmeshed family here.

Another user chimed in: “I’ve had a number of parenting conversations in the past decade and a line I’ve said that always gets a good chuckle out of other parents is ‘I’m not my kids friend, I’ll be that when I can walk in a bar and have a beer with them… and maybe not even that early depending on how they turn out’. It’s amusing to me that it’s amusing to them because that seems ridiculously obvious to me.”