Now, here’s a parenting tip moms and dads oughta “No!.”
Emily Perkins, 28, a kindergarten teacher from Kentucky, is schooling parents on the art of saying “uh-uh” before their little rascal’s first day of school.
“Tell your child ‘No,’” said the kiddo pro in a buzzy bulletin with over 326,000 TikTok views.
“Tell them ‘No’ as a complete sentence,” she urged, insisting that a homespun lesson in denial is the best way to prepare a tot for the classroom. “Do not teach them that telling them ‘No’ invites them to argue with you.”
Perkins assures that issuing a veto isn’t about being repressive. Instead, it’s about teaching tikes respect.
“If I can’t tell your child ‘No’ as an adult, and they don’t respect the ‘No,’” she said, “they’re basically unteachable.”
It’s a piercing word-to-the-wise aimed directly at mothers and fathers of the “gentle parenting” persuasion. The folks who’d rather let their kids run amok than reprimand them with tough love.
Gentle parenting is bringing-up-baby style that prioritizes empathy, understanding, independence and boundaries. It’s an ultramodern form of child-rearing that comes in stark contrast to the more traditional punishment-and-reward, “spare the rod, spoil the child” ideologies of yore.
The little hellions of gentle parents are often permitted to do as they please — scream, holler, hit, terrorize and vandalize — sans repercussion.
Kelly Medina Enos, 34, doesn’t even instruct her five-year-old son, George, to say “sorry,” when he misbehaves. To the millennial mom of two, from the UK, making him apologize — even after he “smacks” her — is “disingenuous.”
To Perkins, the gentle parenting trend is nothing but a nightmare.
“Congratulations, you’re a pushover,” the teacher and mother of two scoffed in her viral rebuke. “You can validate your child’s feelings without being a pushover.”
“I had a parent tell me that they don’t tell their child ‘No’ because it triggers them,” she said with a deep sigh.
“If you want to have a kid who you can’t tell ‘No,’ and you don’t want to use the word ‘No’ in your vocabulary [and] you want to be able to tell them ‘No’ and then they argue with you immediately — teach your own kids,” Perkins ranted.
“Teach your own kids,” she reiterated.
“If your child’s teacher can’t tell them ‘No,’” said Perkins, “it’s really hard to help them learn.”
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