Supernanny calls out modern parents: ‘We are slowly disabling our children’

“Supernanny” Jo Frost has been looked to as a guiding light for all things child-rearing since her hit television show, which featured her helping parents with their unruly children — and now she’s sounding the alarm.

“We are slowly disabling our children,” she said in a post on social media. “And I don’t say that lightly. I say that because I work with families continuously, every day, and I’m seeing a pattern that’s growing.”

That pattern is “children who are capable but not being taught.”

“Every time we step in and do it for them or avoid teaching because it’s slower, messier, or inconvenient, we take away an opportunity for them to become capable, and children want to feel capable,” she said, explaining that parents need to “go back to basics.”

“We teach the bike riding with support, then without. We remove the dummy when it’s no longer needed. We show them how to brush their teeth properly, not rely on this electric tool. We sit at the table, and we teach them how to eat properly,” she continued.

“We guide, we repeat, we expect — not perfectly, consistently, because independence isn’t something that just happens. It’s taught, parents, and if we don’t teach it, we can’t be surprised when it’s missing,” she added.

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey agrees.

“I think she makes some really good points,” Stuckey says, calling those that Frost is describing “permissive” parents.

These parents “really just believe that your only job is to be your kid’s pal and to be their friend and to help them do what they want and to just comply with whatever their desires are.”

“I think there are some parents like that who might have some good intentions, and they just think that that’s what you’re supposed to do as a parent. And then I also think it has a lot to do with parents being overly busy, overly controlled, and consumed by their phones, and just tired,” she explains.

“And so, they’re lazy, and so they outsource their parenting to tablets, to social media, to different devices that kind of work as a long-term pacifier for their kids so they don’t have to do the hard and energy-taking work of actually disciplining their child, instructing their child, training their child, and all of that,” she continues.

And a recent study by EdWeek Research Center only amplifies Frost’s point.

“Kids today in pre-K are doing a lot worse when it comes to these developmental milestones than kids have in the past,” Stuckey explains.

According to the study, 52% of preschool educators “reported that their current students had more difficulty tying their shoes than children the same age two years ago.”

Fifty-four percent said that potty training had become increasingly difficult for pre-K students, 56% said they were more likely to need assistance putting on a coat, 59% reported that behavioral issues were up over the past two years, and 72% said students were worse at following directions.

“I think screens,” Stuckey says. “I think the overstimulation of parents. I think just this phenomenon of parents thinking that any form of discipline or boundary-setting or punishment is wrong or mean.”

“So, anyway,” she continues, “I just thought that that was really good and probably the people who didn’t like to hear it need to hear it the most. And I just love people who are willing to say hard truths, especially when it comes to things that are for the sake of our kids and future generations.”

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