27/05/2025
Masters’ Journal: Schools around the world are quietly absorbing the fallout of a crisis. Teachers are seeing more students who shut down after a single redirection, unravel during peer conflict, or expect every discomfort to be removed by an adult. The classroom, once a space for socialisation and learning, has now become, for many, primarily an emotional regulation zone. We often say, “They’re just … they’re still young.” But what happens when children are never expected or supported to regulate themselves from early childhood through to primary school?
This shift reflects broader changes in parenting culture. Diana Baumrind’s foundational work (1966, 1991) reminds us that authoritative parenting (high warmth and high expectations) is linked to the most positive developmental outcomes(Mattanah, 2005; Chou et al., 2019; and Hayek et al., 2022). Yet in recent years, permissive parenting (high warmth, low expectations) has quietly risen, often under the well intentioned banner of gentle parenting (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Parenting with empathy but without boundaries leaves children with few tools to manage stress, tolerate boredom, or accept limits (Aunola et al., 2000). These gaps show up in classrooms, where students increasingly struggle with frustration, accountability, and delayed gratification. Many schools rely on behaviour charts, grounded in Skinner’s behaviourist theory (1953), which assumes reinforcement is consistent across environments. But when home and school operate on different behavioural currencies, the message isn’t just blurred, it’s erased! As Bronfenbrenner (1979) reminds us, development unfolds across overlapping systems. When those systems misalign, children don’t build resilience , they build confusion.
The COVID 19 pandemic only widened this disconnect. The World Health Organization (2022) reported increased emotional fragility in children, attributing it to parental burnout and a collapse in daily structure. Prime, Wade, and Browne (2020) further affirmed that “children’s wellbeing is closely tied to the psychological functioning and parenting quality of caregivers.”
Parents are exhausted and they need support. While schools can walk alongside families, they cannot assume the sacred role of parenting. And yet, educators continue to do the heavy lifting: modelling co regulation, embedding restorative practices, and holding space for big emotions every single day. Schools can only reinforce values; they cannot instill what must begin at home.
What we need now isn’t just a better behaviour tracker , we need alignment: where parenting, , policy, and culture work together to give children what they truly need — limits with love, empathy with expectations, and freedom with structure. As Darling and Steinberg (1993) wrote, parenting isn’t just private, it’s a societal responsibility. And when home and school speak different languages, children grow fluent in confusion, not resilience.
(D Farrashed. Master’s candidate)
Hearts
and school
