“The [advice] you’ll get nowadays will be much more along the lines of gentle parenting; being friends with your children, not holding them to account,” said Birbalsingh, headteacher of Michaela Community School in north London. “It will be very much about understanding the child, communicating with the child’s needs.”
Senior secondary school teacher Maria Blake* told me that in her 13 years of teaching, behaviour has steadily declined – and she believes that gentle parenting is partly to blame.
Blake says Parents’ Evenings have evolved, too. “Previously, if we said a child is not doing what they need, the parent would turn to their child. In the past few years, they’ve started turning to us to ask what we can do to encourage them to do better,” she says. “If we point out that a child isn’t reading at home, it might now be met with a shrug rather than asking for reading strategies.”
“Sadly, parents sometimes question whether children need to be in lessons, too. I’ve been told I need to ‘respect how they feel’ and ‘understand their boundaries’, which makes our job hard,” she says. “School is about teaching children to make independent decisions but also that there are consequences to choices.”
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Read MoreBlake agrees that the corridor crowds are predominantly from working-class families. But she sees the effects on all children as middle-class students feel rules can be debated and individualised. “Some children don’t know the word ‘no’ and look at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language. Students used to moan about being caught not wearing uniform but accept our authority. Now they can’t believe we’re questioning them,” she says. “Others act as if I have to listen to their views, but we can’t debate what time school lunchtime finishes or our uniform policy. Sometimes it feels like we’re 50 per cent teacher and 50 per cent social worker as everything is a negotiation.”
However, she is clear that children need boundaries and structure: “without these, the world can feel unpredictable and unsafe“.
Primary school teachers are also experiencing a lack of family support for literacy learning, despite the huge advantage parents give children by spending 15 or 30 minutes a day reading one-on-one with them.
She thinks that in most schools – though perhaps not Birbalsingh’s – gentle teaching methods have rubbed off in the classroom. “Both teachers and parents are afraid to say: ‘no, that’s wrong’. We have a behaviour compass with different types of learning behaviour, including perseverance, creativity and independence,” she explains.
Johns can see the positives of gentle parenting, too. “Children realise they have a voice and people do care about them, especially if there is bullying or unkind behaviour; schools have behaviour policies to protect all children; parents are aware of the need to listen to children and give them respect.”
Extended screen time also has a negative effect on classroom behaviour. “During lockdown some children would be on screens for hours – what else could working parents do?” says Johns. “But now, many children don’t know how to respond to behaviour expectations off-screen and we are seeing the impact of that in schools.”
Blake agrees that the pressure on both parents to work is also having an effect. “More middle-class families have two full-time working parents. Gone are the days when stay-at-home parents sat around the dinner table or had a long, relaxed bedtime with their children. I think this lack of calm conversation at home is why kids shout at each other rather than using ‘indoor voices’.
But she also believes there are also positives to the current approach to parenting, one of which is that children are more able to say when they’re unhappy or if something is worrying them – and explain why.
*Names changed to protect teachers’ anonymity
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