The Rise of the Accidentally Permissive Parent

My friend Hannah, a single mother of two boys, ages 6 and 9, remembers the first time a teacher brought up her older son’s behavior at school. She had left New York City in the midst of his public-school kindergarten year to temporarily hunker down near family during the pandemic. A few months later, she enrolled him in an in-person private school near where they’d relocated. At an introductory playdate there, a teacher, who had been at the school for 40 years, “very nicely said to me, ‘This is a young gentleman who needs to learn some boundaries.’” Now settled back in Manhattan, Hannah recently received a similar note about her younger son, who is in kindergarten. “I met with the school psychologist because I had noticed a lot of disrespect at home,” she said. The psychologist said the same thing as the small-town kindergarten teacher: The kid needed boundaries.