Gentle Parenting Is Producing Feral, Illiterate, iPad Kids | Episode 67

Guys, modern parents are exhausted and their gen alpha children are out of control to the point that even teachers are quitting in revolt.

And as it turns out, shock of the century, gentle parenting apparently does not work.

So instead, you should let your kids F around and find out.

And I'm not joking about that, guys.

I am saying that literally.

Look at this recent headline from the Wall Street Journal.

Goodbye, gentle parenting.

Hello, F around and find out.

Parents are ditching the softer approach to child rearing that has dominated the culture and taking a harder line.

Out feral, they're feral.

Guys, this is the best news we could have gotten for our culture, for our society, for the future of humanity, for the workforce, for future generations.

This is incredibly positive.

We should all be celebrating this finally.

I mean, it is only what society and teachers and Sephora employees have been begging for for the last few years.

But before we get into that and before I tell you why Sephora specifically is going to be excited about that, make sure that you're following our podcast page and please rate the show if you are enjoying it.

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And if you want to stay up to date on all things live events, new shows, new merch, new fun happenings, all of that information will be at brettcooper.com.

So speaking of Sephora, if you do not know what I am talking about, if you do not remember the episode that I did about this in years past, let me jog your memory because this is truly insane.

This is what has been happening at Sephora's.

Lately, Sephora employees have been complaining on TikTok that every time they work a shift, the majority of customers are children under the age of 13 that have no manners.

They go up to the sample section and quite literally destroy everything and make a huge mess that they don't even bother cleaning up.

In fact, some workers are saying that the kids will open up packaged products from a set just to take one or two items, thus resulting in the store losing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars worth of product.

So basically, TLDR, the issue was that there were young people, tweens, running rampant at stores like Sephora in the mall, destroying product, being completely without parental supervision, or the parents were there and were doing nothing about it and were just giggling and laughing because their kids were being cute and funny because they have no control over their children.

And people were speaking out.

And this created a whole conversation about Gen Alpha, about child rearing, about gentle parenting, and the fact that it really was not working in practice.

And all of that took place over the last year.

or so.

And it is these Sephora kids, those types of kids that you saw in that TikTok, that have teachers literally quitting and walking out of schools.

This headline reads, teachers are quitting their jobs in droves as a new generation of delinquent students push their patients to the limit.

And that was in August of 2024.

I also have a myriad of old episodes about that.

This is something that has been going on for a while now.

It has been an epidemic of out-of-control children.

Also, you can see here they have an additional article under this one.

Like, read more.

Generation Alpha slammed as feral and illiterate iPad kids.

So that is the point that I am making is that this has been a problem.

And obviously, all of this cannot be chalked up just to iPads.

There is a deeper problem there.

It all goes back to parenting, specifically, in my opinion, gentle parenting, the trend that now is hopefully on the way out.

So if you don't know what gentle parenting is, allow me to introduce you.

Gentle parenting, in short, is this kind of discipline or lack thereof strategy that does not yell or shame.

It's not strict.

They certainly do not spank their children.

It is focused heavily on a child's emotions, not hurting their feelings, validating everything.

Just watch this video and you can sort of get a taste.

Gentle hands.

Gentle hands, gentle hands.

I know you're having so many big feelings right now.

Mommy just wants to validate them.

Gentle hands, hands are for gentle.

Now, obviously, this is satire, this is exaggerated, but it also isn't really exaggerated.

Because you can go down a rabbit hole of these types of videos on TikTok.

You can see parents literally give instructional videos on how to not tell your child no.

Because the word no, like the word stop, it invokes big feelings and bad feelings.

And you don't want to encourage that in your children.

You want them to feel safe.

And so, even if your child is knocking furniture off of tables, even if they are slapping people and biting people, you cannot be strict with them you have to be gentle because they're just a little human being they can't understand things and they're having big feelings I'm sorry now if a four-year-old is biting you and slapping you something must be done you cannot just say gentle hands but people tried They tried.

They wanted to do the gentle thing.

They wanted to validate the big feelings.

They wanted to see how it would work.

And guys, the results are in.

Did not work.

Teachers are quitting.

Sephora employees are up in arms.

And so something had to change.

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But this was a huge trend for years.

It really rose to prominence over the last decade, specifically with millennials and early Gen Z parents.

And I think that this happened for a myriad of reasons.

Now, first of all, millennials and the older Gen Zs, we were raised by baby boomers and Gen X who were much more authoritative in their parenting styles.

And some of that authoritative style was good.

And like, I think my mom was very strict in a a great way.

But for others, they saw that kind of strictness as just being strict for no reason.

Just being very cold, very harsh.

You're going to do what I say just because I say so.

And these parents wanted to do the exact opposite with their gen alpha kids.

And the second reason that I think this really took off is because of the internet and specifically because of mom influencers.

Because women's feeds, I don't even have a child yet.

Well, by this time, I will have a baby because you're going to be watching this live on maternity leave.

But at this point, as I'm filming this, I do not have a human child that I am parenting yet.

And my feed is full of parenting videos and moms instructing other moms on how to raise their kids, the right way to do it, how to not be too harsh with your kids, how to be strict, but not too strict, all of these things.

And for the first time, these new parents are turning to these online influencers and digital experts over their parents and their grandparents and over what I would even say is just common sense when it comes to dealing with other human beings.

and raising children.

And the reason why I am painting this whole picture and giving you guys all of this context is to just prove the point that this parenting style did not work.

But you don't just have to take it from me.

Listen to this.

We're teaching our child that your emotions and your feelings are more important than everybody else.

What you're going through is more important than even what mom and dad are going through because you won't do what we ask you to do.

But now I have to emotionally be there to be able to coddle you in a moment.

And what happens then is you're the center of the world.

You're the center of the universe.

Well, what happens when they get to grade school?

What happens when the kids around them don't want to coddle their emotions?

What happens as an adult when your boss, even when you're spouse?

They can't take any accountability and control their emotions because everything is about them.

And this isn't just about the trend of gentle parenting.

It is about the fact, as this man was saying, that kids are not integrated into their parents' lives anymore.

Instead, it is the reverse.

These parents decide that everything needs to revolve around their kids, and that is setting them up for a life of failure.

And my first thought is, I mean, maybe that's one of the reasons why people are so scared to have kids, because they look around at parents.

They see parents' pre-existing lives come to a screeching halt once they have kids, but it doesn't have to be that way and it shouldn't be that way.

Your entire life should not be oriented around your children and about protecting their feelings, especially for the sake and for the future of these children, which brings me to a really interesting thread that I found on X that I want to read you.

This mom was talking about this trend and she said, when I was raised in the late 70s to 90s, as an active kid with many interests, I had after-school activities almost every day and parents who leaned in heavily to steward me.

I needed it.

However, there was a really big difference between then and now.

I remember that my parents would take me to grown-up parties and family gatherings, and after amusing myself as long as I could, I would fall asleep on numerous coat piles.

I did not demand TV or an iPad.

I did not demand to go home out of boredom.

I lived my life around them.

Today's parents are living around our kids.

This inherently makes them little narcissists, the center of everything.

Additionally, it is making adults less autonomous and parenthood less joyful as a result.

It's no wonder that more and more parents are opting out of parenthood.

The model is less successful for all involved.

I'm not saying we should go all the way back to having to be asked if we knew where our children were at 10 p.m., but we do need to think about how we approach things.

And while this might sound completely counterintuitive, I think that this was one of the major benefits that I experienced thanks to homeschooling.

Like, I had all the time in the world to get my school done, to go do extracurriculars, to fit everything else in, whether I was doing gymnastics or rock climbing or dancing.

But when I wasn't doing school or doing an activity, I literally went everywhere with my parents.

Like they had a life and I fit into that.

I would go to the office with my dad and sit and do my Saxon math textbook while he was in meetings.

I would do church things with my mom.

I would sit next to her while she had lunch with friends and either be quiet or try to join in on the conversation and learn how to be social and interact with adults.

I just had to learn how to not be bored and how to behave.

And I had to realize that my parents' world and the world itself did not revolve.

revolve around me as a child.

And like that mom is saying and like that man in the podcast was saying, that is not the case anymore.

And I think that that has informed a huge chunk of these negative childhood behaviors that we are now experiencing on a daily basis in our society.

And to be fair, as a caveat and a kind of disclaimer, I do think that there is a balance between not upending your life for your kids 24-7 and not avoiding your responsibilities as a parent.

There is a fine line that you have to walk, case in point.

There are parents who want to send their kids to school to read, but do not want to read them at home because quote unquote, it is boring.

That is something that my generation is literally openly saying.

I'm not being dramatic.

This is a quote.

This is from The Guardian.

It is so boring.

Gen Z parents don't like reading to their kids and teachers are worried.

Yeah.

Understandably, screen time has increasingly replaced story time and experts warned that this could lead to children falling behind.

I mean, yeah, do you want even more teachers to quit?

Do you want even less resources for your children?

Like that is what this is leading towards.

You obviously cannot make your children the center of the universe and teach them that that is what they should expect, but you also do have to step up and be a parent.

Like teachers are obviously there to teach, but they can't do it alone, especially in classrooms with 30, 35 plus students.

And between this and the awful behaviors, I do not blame them for walking out the door and quitting.

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Now, I think another recent parenting fact that is not helping children out at all is the fact that parenting has become so incredibly performative.

And when I say performative, I mean that moms and dads now care more about how their followers view them and how people online view them than they care about not raising little hellraisers that make these teachers want to walk out and quit.

You know, they film themselves gentle parenting, trying to get brownie points and accolades online.

Meanwhile, their child is literally on camera throwing a chair at them.

And no, this is not an exaggeration.

Just watch.

Are you ready to be nice?

Okay, we're gonna sit out here until you're ready to be nice.

We don't need to be.

Okay, no, hands are not permitting.

She's trying her best to stay calm.

Are you ready to be nice?

Like I told you guys in that first video, it was not satire.

Let's be calm.

The child throws a chair.

Let's put our hands down.

I'm sorry.

That is when you turn off the camera.

That is when you take your child inside.

They go into timeout.

Something has to be done.

Posting this online and getting clicks for being this virtuous, gentle parent.

expert, whatever it is.

It is not worth these behaviors.

And it's so unhealthy for the child, but it's also unhealthy for the parents.

It's unhealthy for the parents because they are spending more time filming themselves, worrying about what people online think, trying to follow these newfangled parenting trends than they are actually focusing on raising and guiding their children well.

I mean, in one study on motherhood, this was done recently, a mom specifically said, quote, social media makes you feel like you're the only one failing.

Yeah, well, it's probably because moms are chasing these picture-perfect lives and picture-perfect styles of parenting that they see on TikTok, and they're consistently falling short because, shocker, very little of what you see on social media is actually real or obtainable, and very little of these idealistic, gentle parenting styles actually work in practice and so they are feeding these parents a lie these parents constantly feel like they are falling short and they're failing when they're really just set up for failure from the get-go they are unrealistically trying to do it all because they're comparing themselves to unrealistic expectations and trends that are being posted online but thankfully and this is the reason why i brought all of this up thankfully things are starting to change people are walking away from gentle parenting.

They are walking away from these trends in favor of the revolutionary concept of natural consequences.

Guys, can you believe it?

It's like we've made a whole circle here.

We tried something new.

We saw it didn't work.

We are back at what I believe is the core tenet of good parenting, which is natural consequences.

AKA, F around and find out, as you saw in that first headline from the Wall Street Journal.

And this means that instead of using gentle hands and validating all of these big feelings and sitting back while your children are literally throwing chairs at you, you let them experience the consequences of their choices and their actions.

This is what was written in that article.

Carla Dillon, who's a mother, tried lots of ways to discipline her rambunctious 13-year-old, including making him write out the same contrite sentence 100 times.

But when he sprayed her with a water gun at a campground after she asked him not to, she saw only one option.

She threw him into the pond, clothes, and all.

Some of the best lessons in life are the hard ones.

The article goes on to say that F around and find out is based on the idea that parents can ask and warn, but if a child breaks the rules, mom and dad aren't standing in the way of the repercussions.

Again, revolutionary concept.

Can you believe that, guys?

The children will have to be disciplined, that they will have to face repercussions.

Won't bring your raincoat?

Walk home in the downpour.

Didn't feel like having lasagna for dinner?

Survive until breakfast.

Left your toy on the floor again?

Go find it in the trash under the lasagna that you didn't eat.

Parenting that is light on discipline has dominated the culture in recent decades.

That is, putting it mildly.

A critics blame the approach for some of Gen Z's problems in adulthood.

They cite surveys that show that young adults are struggling with workplace relationships.

Was it because their parents never told them no?

And suffering from depression and anxiety.

Was it because their parents were, uh, was it because their parents refereed?

Was it because their parents refereed all of their problems?

And to all of that, I would say a resounding yes.

I think I've told this story a million times, but I did a business program at UC Berkeley while I was still in college.

Again, I feel like I'm like beating a dead horse right now, but this class was so instrumental in how I thought about my generation, the way that we were raised.

But I was taking an interpersonal relationships class, and in this class, my professor specifically pointed out the ways that huge HR departments and big companies around the country were preparing for Gen Z, for my generation.

And they were preparing for the fact that we had not been disciplined, that we were soft, that we needed to be spoken to gently, that we needed extra care and more time off and more concessions because we were totally different and had been raised in a very soft way.

And I remember receiving that information and being so embarrassed and horrified because that is not at all the way I was raised.

And it seemed so crazy to me that our society was just going to bend over backwards and accept this rather than look at parenting and go, obviously, we need to change course.

Because sometimes parents, kids simply just need to learn lessons the hard way so that they don't make the same mistakes again.

Like this is a great way to teach children that their decisions and their actions have consequences that they will face in the real world as adults.

Yes, they will be loved by their parents no matter what, but they do have to take ownership of those choices and of those consequences.

And this was basically what my mother lived by.

Like natural consequences was my mother's parenting philosophy.

And I think that this is so summed up by one of the most iconic stories in my family.

And my brother is probably going to be going, oh no, I know where you're going with this.

He's watching this episode being so concerned.

But all of this can be summed up by the incredible story of my brother with his Winnie the Pooh footy pajamas.

Now, my brother, I think he was probably like four or five years old.

This is my brother Chase.

He was in preschool and my mom had a little carpool group where she would go pick up a few of the kids and she would drive them all to preschool.

And this one morning, my brother Chase, he's my oldest brother, he did not want to get dressed.

Now, he was fully capable of getting dressed.

His clothes were laid out.

He knew how to put on his pants.

He knew how to tie his shoes.

He was fully capable of getting himself ready, getting his backpack, and going to the car.

And the reason why that was important is because my mom had my twin brothers who were younger than Chase.

And so she needed to be focused on getting these two twin infants into their car seats, wrestling them into the car.

And Chase, again, fully capable of getting himself ready.

But this morning, Chase had no desire to get ready.

He was dancing around the house.

He was singing.

He was like, you're never going to catch me, mom.

I'm not going to get dressed.

I'm going to go to school in my pajamas.

And she was like, okay, okay, yeah, you are if you don't get dressed.

And he was like, you're going to have to catch me, all of this stuff.

And he completely thought that by doing all of this, my mom was going to turn her attention completely to him and baby him and help him get ready so that he wouldn't actually go to school in his Winnie the Pooh footy pajamas.

But my mom that day was completely over it.

And so by the time that Reed and David, the twins, were in the car, she looked at Chase, who was still in his Winnie the Pooh footy pajamas and said, okay, we'll get in the car.

And he looked down and he was like, well, I'm in my pajamas.

And she said, yeah, the hell you are.

You're getting in the car.

It's time to go to school.

And so my brother, horrified, had to get in the car.

She forced him in in his footy pajamas.

And my mom proceeded to drive to his first friend's house and pick up the carpool, drive to the other girl's house, pick her up.

And my brother had to sit in the back seat and defend himself to his friends about why on earth he was wearing his footy pajamas.

He then went into preschool where everybody else was in their clothes and he had to be in his footy pajamas.

And I believe as the story goes, the preschool teacher was like, really?

You're going to...

You're going to make him go to school with your pajamas.

My mom was like, yeah, he didn't want to get dressed.

So this is what he has to deal with.

And when she picked him up from school, chase was so horrified he was so embarrassed he went immediately to his room he put on his clothes and he never wasted a single second ever again the embarrassment the horror that having to explain why he was in his footy pajamas all day in preschool made him so proactive and so on top of getting dressed and ready in the morning and helping my mom with the babies he never tried that again and i feel like i just ranted for so long about my brother but i also just have to say alex did a similar thing my mother-in-law was a very similar mother and alex was a very stubborn child and there was one day when he he also didn't want to get dressed.

Apparently, this is just something that kids struggle with.

He did not want to get dressed.

He did not want to wear the sweater that my mother-in-law had laid out for him.

And the way that he was going to get around this was by peeing on the sweater.

And so my husband, at like four years old, peed on the sweater that he did not want to wear and went, okay, well, now you can't make me wear it.

I'm not going to get dressed.

I don't want to wear the itchy sweater.

But my mother-in-law, because she's incredible, just like my mom, made Alex put on.

the pea stained sweater, the soaking wet sweater, and go wherever they were going.

I think maybe they were going to the pediatrician, something like that, but he had to sit there in the pee-soaked sweater because he had made the decision to pee all over it.

And that was unfortunately the natural consequence.

So this kind of parenting, it's not just being super strict and spanking your kids for no reasons.

It is sometimes just hilariously letting them live out the consequences of the ridiculous things that they do.

Now, another interesting aspect of this newfangled trend that really is just common sense that I'm a huge fan of is teaching your kids to actually have to follow through on their commitments, not to bail out your kids because again, they're the center of the universe, but to say, hey, you sign up for something, you committed to something, you have to follow through.

Crazy concept.

They write about another parent, this father, Wellington, 46, a stand-up comedian from South Carolina, recalled that when he and his brother misbehaved, they had to stare into each other's eyes while their parents simultaneously spanked them.

He hardly thinks it's excessive that he made his high school daughter go to color guard practice even after she realized that she hated it.

Like, sorry, that's just a fact of life.

This is what he had to say.

He said, in the real world, when you commit to a loan or a car payment or a house payment or even a marriage, you have to finish that thing until it is over with.

So this father paid for his daughter to join this group, to join the color guard.

And even when she hated it, he said, sorry, we paid.

You wanted to do this.

You have to follow through.

You are going to learn to follow through on your commitments.

And all of this is incredible because it is preparing children for the real world where they will face consequences, where they will have to follow through on their commitments.

Like no matter how soft our culture gets, no matter how HR departments will bend and fold for Gen Z, These simply will just be facts of life.

And it is objectively better to teach your children that young.

And the sooner the kids learn that, the more confident and resilient they will become.

And that does not mean that you are policing your children 24-7 helicoptering around everything they do to try to toughen them up.

It just means, in my opinion, that you are being realistic and you're not treating them like a fine piece of china.

Because the truth is, parenting is never going to be easy.

No parent, no matter how much they love their children and being a parent, will ever say that this is an easy job.

Raising and molding human beings is going to be complex.

It is going to be difficult.

But we have made it harder by turning it into some kind of curated performance for our social media followers.

And more importantly, in my opinion, by trying to reinvent the wheel of parenting.

Like in this process, it's no wonder that parents have burned out.

It's no wonder that teachers are quitting because objectively, it has not worked.

We need to let children fail.

We need to let children face consequences and let them figure it out.

That will only make them stronger and smarter and better.

And I know that gentle parenting talks a lot about, you know, affirming your kids and not being too harsh and being kind to them, but the kindest thing that you can do for a child is to mold them and raise them up well and prepare them for a good life.

And that is exactly what natural consequence parenting is doing.

And thank God it is back in vogue.

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