If you’ve been to a playground recently, I’ll hazard a guess that you have witnessed parents going to extraordinary lengths to avoid bad language. But it’s not those delicious four-letter words they’re so worried about. It’s a simple two-letter word that parents have come to fear: no.
You know the sort of thing: “I understand that you’re feeling cross right now, darling, but when you throw sand at me, it hurts.” “Please don’t throw that handful of pebbles at Mummy. It doesn’t make me feel nice.” “You’re feeling frustrated but we don’t eat two ice-creams before lunch.”
Whether, when and how to use the word no is an argument that divides generations. Does saying no to a child squash their self-esteem, or make them feel cared for? Does it inhibit their natural curiosity, or invest them with a sense of secure boundaries within which to explore? Is it an example of unfair adult authority, or simply another care-giving duty alongside heat, food and hygiene? Or is it just a basic part of keeping children safe?
In the age of permissive, gentle, child-led parenting, the word has fallen sharply out of favour. Is this progress – or is there a no backlash on the horizon?
I don’t actually remember being told no as a child all that often; except, perhaps, the time I begged for a pet pig for six solid months. Then again, memory is a fickle narrator, so I rang my mum to check. “With you, I only said no if there was danger,” she replied. “Which there probably was – you grew up with Bill, after all.” Bill, my father, once memorably helped me climb barefoot on to the roof of our two-storey Victorian terrace to wave at my mum as she came home from work, so she may have a point here. “Nobody even had to raise their voice with you; in fact, you’d burst into tears if anyone did. But I think saying no is absolutely essential,” she continued. “And I think parents are losing sight of the fact that children need boundaries.” As a teacher for children with special needs, my mum was hot on boundaries. This is the woman who would go around the house at 9pm turning off all the lights to make it clear it was officially bedtime: “Because boundaries actually make children feel safe.”
In her book It’s Not Fair, the author and parent educator Eloise Rickman argues that while children have a right to be kept safe and in the best possible health (there is even a 54-article UN Convention on the Rights of the Child), that does not give us, as parents and carers, licence to impose what she calls “adultism”. “Just like racism, sexism, ableism or homophobia, adultism is a big structural problem that’s not just about individuals,” she tells me over the phone. “I tend to define it as the structural discrimination and marginalisation of children in society by adults. An adultist society is one that tends to prioritise adult needs over children’s needs.”
So, for instance, we might tell a child that, no, they can’t get their paints out after dinner because we, as adults, want clear access to the table. Or that, no, they can’t eat rice for breakfast because we, as adults, want them to eat toast. It’s not a case of safeguarding that child’s health or wellbeing, but simply a belief that our desire could and should trump theirs. “A lot of the time, we see children as incompetent and incapable of making decisions for themselves,” Rickman says. “We might even attribute malicious intent to children, for instance, ‘They’re trying to get you around their little finger.’ Or, ‘She’s just seeking attention.’” In this context, saying no is often an unthinking assertion of superiority, a product of impatience, a dislike of being challenged. It is a tool used by adults to retain their power and authority, unquestioningly; what Rickman calls “a kneejerk reaction, perhaps triggered by something that happened when you were a child”.
And yet, within a less hierarchical family, in which the status of adults is not by default higher, Rickman argues, a child may take on a greater role of self-regulation, become more adept at making decisions and take on more of the mental load. “If my daughter asks me to play a game with her but my period’s started and I’m really tired, I’m confident to say, ‘Sorry, no. Maybe in a bit. I need to sit down with a cup of tea for half an hour.’ I think it’s OK to bring children into the messiness of some of those decisions. For instance, telling them, ‘I wish I could say you didn’t have to go to school tomorrow but actually I have a meeting so I won’t be here.’”
The idea of divesting some of the emotional labour of bedtime, what shoes to wear and what to eat for dinner on to my own six-year-old son is certainly tempting. Although I suspect that it could easily result in watching his barefoot, pantless arse twirl around the room with him holding a piece of toast in one hand and a balloon in the other at 10pm. But there I go again, assuming the worst in order to hold up my authority.
“There was a significant shift in parenting styles around 10 to 15 years ago, when attachment parenting, gentle parenting and unconditional parenting all grew in popularity,” says the clinical psychologist and author Emma Svanberg, known as “the mumologist” to her online followers. “Largely because our generation of parents wanted an alternative to the more ‘I’m the boss’ authoritarian and sometimes neglectful parenting of the 1980s and 90s.” This shift also coincided, Svanberg argues, with new parents and carers increasingly turning towards social media figures for advice, rather than the extended network of family, friends and in-person professionals that we relied on in earlier decades. However, as Svanberg points out, the internet has a tendency to filter advice, opinion and insight into “black and white ‘dos and don’ts’”. Which means that no is now often seen as “overly admonishing, punitive, even”, without much nuance.
“I read once that before you say no to your child, quickly ask yourself whether you can say yes,” one old school friend told me recently. “I try to do that, and it’s made me realise how often I say no on autopilot when actually what they want to do is fine, perhaps even better than my plan.” I asked for an example relating to her son. “Last week, I was trying to get him to leave the house and he wanted to go back in to cuddle his little sister who was indoors crying, with Dad. I said, ‘No, we have to go!’ and marched him out of the door.” I thought for a moment of all the times I have marched my son out of the door, carried along by the momentum of my own plans, and nodded. “Instantly, I felt so terrible that I’d denied a five-year-old the chance to show care and love for his two-year-old sister,” she continued. “Especially when he mainly shows her snatching and scrapping.”
Perhaps it was the mention of scrapping, but I was reminded of a story I’d heard from a woman about an incident at a stay and play: she had watched for perhaps five minutes as another parent on the floor next to their screaming, mid-tantrum toddler, hair caught in their tiny fist, kicks landing continuously on their groin, said, repeatedly and in a soothing voice, “I’m going to try to move now because you’re hurting me.” I’m still not sure if I find this admirable or unfathomable.
My generation of parents seem to be extremely taken with the notion that there exists, somewhere, a “correct” script for every difficult parenting situation and that, if we can just find it, we will enter the utopia of a frictionless life. If only. “I think for many of this generation of parents, we can mix up what is respectful and what is conflict-avoidant,” Svanberg says. “So, for example, we might negotiate not because we think our no is wrong, but because we don’t want to upset our child. This can sometimes, inadvertently, create a sort of power imbalance in our relationship with our child where they hold more control than they can handle, and we are left feeling a bit insecure or anxious about our parenting role.”
This feelings-first approach is proffered perhaps most lucratively by online experts including Dr Becky and the women behind Big Little Feelings (heralded in one article as the headline acts of the “Era of Very Earnest Parenting”). But profitable childcare experts have existed for decades, from Dr Spock in the 40s to Penelope Leach in the 70s, Gina Ford at the turn of the millennium and the televised Supernanny, Jo Frost, in the 00s. Those last two, especially, represent a very different approach from feelings-first, advocating strict, structured routines with the aim of allowing parents to maintain a rigid order that works for them. But the biggest difference is that the advice is now available on the devices we all carry around with us all day and most of the night.
Witnessing distress in our children – particularly distress we, as carers, have created by telling them that they cannot either have or do something they want – is always hard. And yet that might not always mean that it is harmful, wrong or bad. The consultant clinical psychologist Dr Beth Mosley, who works in children’s mental health and is the author of the excellent book Happy Families: How to Protect and Support Your Child’s Mental Health, tells me that children need both warmth and boundaries; enforcing one without the other tips the whole family, and our emotional world, out of balance. “Ultimately, you are in the care-giving role and you want your child to be in the care-seeking role,” Mosley says. “So you do need to be more powerful in order for your children to trust you; to feel safe and contained rather than threatened and forced. I think we can get those two things mixed up.”
In our increasingly individualised society, Mosley fears that we can accidentally signal to our children and young people that their choices, even rights, can trump what is best for the collective. If we don’t say no, then they have no opportunity to compromise, cooperate or adjust. “Refusing to be cooperative will, in time, become a real challenge for a young person as they go into society, because cooperation is an essential skill for managing relationships and being in the workplace,” Mosley explains. This simple reframing of obedience as cooperation may make asserting our no more palatable. After all, as Mosley points out, an inability to cooperate or collaborate moves people away from community, “and that’s one of the massive drivers in problems with mental health; we know that supportive relationships and community are the foundations for good wellbeing”.
When I asked on Instagram if there were any parents who ever felt bad or guilty about saying no to their children, the replies seemed, once again, to divide along generational lines. “The rule at our forest school is to think of all the ways you can say yes before a no, but it is a struggle sometimes,” said one young woman, whose profile was full of berries, mushrooms and fires. “Is this a joke? I say no every day. I’m a parent, a grandmother and a nanny,” replied another, older, woman. Then came another person, my age, taking what I’m starting to think of as the Elder Millennial’s Third Way: “I say no all the time and have no idea why I would regret it! But I’m aware lots of parents have a problem with it.” She then continued, “Based on my toddler daughter’s interactions at the playground, we are raising a generation of little boys who don’t get told the word no, which isn’t a great way forward.”
Just as there has been a shift away from authoritarian parenting over the last 15 years, so, too, there has been a move away from punitive, irrational authority within schools. At the grand old age of 39, I am currently retraining as a secondary school teacher and have been struck by the onus put on kindness, relationship-building and positive framing within the classroom. Nobody, I suspect, told this to my old maths teacher, a cheerless and petty man who was universally loathed by my contemporaries for decades.
In his book When the Adults Change, Everything Changes and his latest, When the Parents Change, Everything Changes, the behaviour specialist, author and education reformer Paul Dix argues that there is no “magic behaviour solution” within schools or families. Instead, “emotional consistency for children comes with the ability of adults to control their emotions in response to poor behaviour, and instead put empathy and logic at the heart of each interaction”. Unregulated children – the ones we might feel most tempted to criticise, punish or shout no at – are the very students who most need regulated adults. So how does Dix feel about the word no? I give him a call.
“I think it’s extremely important to set really strong boundaries for your child and I think no is essential,” he says, as I sit at my kitchen table, surrounded by book bags, Pokémon cards and Playmobil horses. “If you’ve got a child with a neurodiversity such as oppositional defiance disorder” – a condition in which young people display emotional and behavioural symptoms, lasting at least six months, that include an angry and irritable mood, defiant behaviour and vindictiveness – “then of course you’ll work around no because it will cause crisis points. But for the vast majority of children, knowing the boundaries makes them feel safe and secure. It also allows them to regulate their own behaviour once they know where the lines are.”
The key, Dix argues, is to follow up that no with an explanation. This needn’t be lengthy or original. In my experience, a lecture on the link between wearing a coat and getting ill is more likely to disengage and even infuriate than persuade.
Instead, Dix recommends that you choose three simple rules that you return to over and over. “They could be: ready, respectful, safe. They could be: kindness, cooperation, responsibility. Whatever works for you. As long as they’re the consistent pegs you keep going back to.” When a child tries to run into the road, you say, “No. Remember our rule about staying safe.” When a child hits you in the face for daring to put socks on their tiny feet, you say, “No. Remember our rule about kindness.” If this sort of self-control sounds not just admirable but impossible, Dix is keen to point out that such reactions take practice. “Being unprovokable isn’t a mythical thing; it can be learned. Think about teachers who work in pupil referral units or alternative provision; or parents and carers of children who are severely autistic and who get into really extreme situations.”
The aim is to subdue, manage and then look at that behaviour with detachment. It is about being curious and nonjudgmental, rather than emotional and reactive. For instance, saying, “I noticed you were rude to me. That goes against our rules about respect and isn’t OK.”
“Eventually, the performance becomes you,” Dix says. “The more you go through that neural pathway, the easier that becomes.” And, he adds, getting it right 80% of the time is great.
While we may think of the word no as a tool to reprimand or shame, it also plays a vital role in consent. After all, we cannot meaningfully say yes until we can also say no; and young people – particularly, still, young women and girls – need to practise saying no in order to be able to do so when it matters most. “We as a generation of parents – especially women – are working at being OK with saying no ourselves,” Svanberg says. “We’re working on learning that we even have needs, hopes and preferences, and that they are important and valid and deserve our attention.”
I would argue that until you are comfortable holding the shape of the word no in your mouth, you are putting yourself at a social, emotional and sexual disadvantage to those who can. And this is something we need to model for our children: we have to introduce no into our own vocabulary so they can learn how to say it.
However, the problem with no is that, like all language, it is a currency that loses value with overuse. Eventually, it exhausts the user and goes unheard by the receiver. Which is why, after years of working with parents, Rickman recommends laying down your boundary first, rather than trying to establish one after the fact. “For instance, you may say to your child, ‘I’m not going to make any extra meals if you don’t like this one.’ Or, ‘I’m going to go to bed at 8pm.’” But then, Rickman says, you need to interrogate that boundary. Is it something you can compromise on and still both get your needs met? Has the boundary changed now they are older? “If children are hearing no a lot, that will be difficult. Just as you would find it difficult in a romantic relationship. So if you find yourself saying no a lot, it’s worth being curious about why that might be.”
One thing all the parents, psychologists, teachers and authors I spoke to agreed about was that the use of the word no is entirely dependent on the relationship you, as a parent or carer, have with your individual child. The shape of that relationship will affect everything from body language to pitch, timing to tone. “I’m amazed by the number of people I see in my work who want to be told the exact words to say to their own child,” Mosley says. “They’re so scared of taking a risk and getting it wrong. But what will tell you is the response you get from your child.” You may find that you say no to one of your children more than their sibling; you may say no to one student but avoid it with their classmate; you may say, “I’m sorry, but no” to one child in your care and, “How about we do this instead?” to their friend. That adaptability in how you deliver a boundary is perhaps less important than there being a visible, consistent, commonly understood boundary in the first place.
While camping recently with some friends, I asked one couple sitting among the sheep shit and tent pegs if they said no to their children. One said no, they preferred to reframe and refocus; the other said that they do say no but usually three times and in a gentle singsong voice, to take the sting out of it. Children will understand that different adults have different approaches to the word no. The important thing is that they learn they are not allowed to chase someone with a hammer or pour orange juice in their ears. The delivery method is less important than the message.
Ultimately, we live in a society in which children have less power, and less responsibility, than adults. As Rickman points out, we may pride ourselves on letting our own children take the reins at breakfast, or choosing how to get to school, or deciding what to wear on a rainy Tuesday, but children are still victim to systemic injustices created by adults. As she puts it, “The message is: we’re not sorting out the climate crisis that is risking your future, we’re not giving you the right to vote, we’re not going to give you proper mental health support, and we’re not going to give your family enough money so you’re not living in poverty.”
Our children may well inherit a world in which certain choices – ie to breathe clean air, go to a well-funded state school, access a non-privatised health service or live with international freedom of movement – have been taken away from them. In that context, saying no to the odd hot chocolate or as a baby sinks their teeth into your nipple feels like fairly small beer. And yet there is a part of me that still worries that my own flabby indecision on the word no is the sort of thing that’s going to get thrown back in my face in 20 years’ time just as the handfuls of yoghurt were thrown in my face four years ago.
Finally, I realised that a key expert in this whole debate that I hadn’t called on was sitting right next to me, on the sofa, reading Bunny Vs Monkey. So, I asked my son: does he think I say no too much? Does he dislike the word? Does he think it’s bad? “No. Not really,” was his considered and by-no-means-a-way-to-get-me-to-be-quiet reply. I pushed a little harder. Was he sure? Did he have anything else he’d like to add? Eventually he turned his blue eyes towards me. “I’m OK with you saying no,” he said, fixing me with a serious look. “Because sometimes you say yes.”
Nell Frizzell is the author of Holding The Baby, out now in paperback.
