Don’t blame children’s behaviour on ‘weak’ parents 

This morning, as I was sitting in the car decompressing from a morning spent with my two toddlers before starting my ‘official’ working day as a teacher, I stumbled across comments in The Times from the Department of Education’s ambassador for attendance and behaviour, Tom Bennett.

In it, rather than taking responsibility for the rise in exclusions, Bennett – implied that weak parenting is partially responsible for behaviour issues in schools. 

According to the behaviour ‘tsar’, schools have had to become more disciplined; in part because lots of parents rarely say ‘no’ to their children.

‘Some parents have very weak boundaries with their own children,’ said Bennett. ‘They allow them to be on their iPads and phones all day and think that’s loving and caring because that’s what they want and “it’s making my child happy”.’

Now that more children than ever are being violent in the classroom and getting suspended, Bennett says mums and dads should be looking at their own parenting techniques.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

Look – I’m an English teacher. 

I’d be the first to be concerned by kids who are more familiar with swiping on social media than with turning the page of a book. 

And I certainly don’t want to be battling violent and aggressive behaviour in the classroom when it’s my job to teach and nurture children, not be attacked by them.  

But the fact is, the rise in school suspensions or poor behaviour isn’t down to parents having ‘weak boundaries’.  

As a former teacher himself, I’d have hoped Bennett would know better – although the truth isn’t quite as headline-grabbing as blaming overstretched parents for this generation’s issues.

Because what I see in a single week at work reinforces the sheer preposterousness of Bennett’s words. 

My experience on the ground is that it is very rare to come across a parent who thinks the best way to show their ‘love and care’ is to let their child sit in front of an iPad for hours on end.

If I think back to my last few years as a teacher, most of the children who exhibited the worst kind of behaviour certainly didn’t have parents who were ‘weak’. 

And they certainly didn’t have parents who were reluctant to say no or too lazy to take their phone away. 

What I have – and do – come across regularly are parents who are struggling with their own mental health, who have insecure housing or immigration status, or who are floundering under the cost of living.

Parents who are working back to back shifts to make ends meet, even if that means getting home after the kids have gone to bed.

Parents who are ill-equipped to deal with social media addiction in their teenagers – not because they don’t care or are lazy, but because this is an unprecedented problem that requires solutions bigger than phone bans at home.

What’s actually ‘weak’ isn’t modern parents, but these excuses offered by the government tsar to offload huge, systemic – in many cases, political –factors onto what individual, overburdened parents are doing in their homes.

After I read Bennett’s words this morning, I admittedly did instinctively think back to my own weekday mornings with my two children. 

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While there wasn’t any 6am Peppa Pig session today – nor was there any shortage of the word ‘no’ – I’ve definitely not been averse to it in the past when the alternative is trying to use an iron whilst holding an eighteen month old (something I dare Tom Bennett to try). 

But then I put my phone away and walked into work, where – like in schools up and down the country – there are conversations happening about how to cut costs amidst budget cuts and more pressures than ever without having to resort to cutting subjects or making staff redundant.

And I couldn’t help but feel like the juxtaposition of my own morning perfectly summed up why the likes of the government behaviour tsar are so utterly wrong when it comes to the manifold crises in education. 

What Bennett said is hardly new. We have heard it before.

Today’s parents are supposedly lazy and disinterested, seemingly too busy scrolling our own phones to ever bother to do something as boring as establishing a boundary with our kid or reading to them.

But the behavioural issues we are seeing today are symptoms of political decisions made over a decade ago inflicted on a generation that weren’t even born yet.

While £30m has recently been pledged for a youth club in each London borough, the mass closure of youth centres in the 2010s forced children inside, glued to screens.

This all coincides with economic circumstances that means parents have less time than ever to actually keep on top of how their children are spending their time.

As a parent of young kids myself, I could talk for hours about the pressures facing parents today.

How it feels like we are economically punished for having children through poor statutory maternity pay or childcare that costs more than a mortgage.

Or how it feels like the cost of living crisis means that we are forced to spend more time making ends meet than nurturing and bonding with our own children.

Ultimately, if the government cared about improving this generation’s behaviour, they would be funneling funding and manpower into tackling these issues instead. 

But I suppose, it’s far cheaper, easier and more headline-grabbing to vilify so-called ‘weak’ parents instead.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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