To think gentle parenting is actually permissive

I think that's why public perception of gentle parenting is so low - the ones quietly getting on with it with well behaved kids no one notices but the self proclaimed ones with out of control kids who judge others who everyone knows about.

I got told off by self declared gentle parents for insisting my kids walked with me on school run - mad with cars and people - but also there was one of me and three of them and we don't drive so to go anywhere often needed public transport so good practise to stay close- gentle reminders no shouting. Their kid went off ahead and as I was explain yet again why no my kids weren't going to be allowed to run off - their child was hit by a car luckily going slow - loads of shouting etc - week later kid was back to being way ahead dodging cars and they're back to lecturing me about my parenting.

Gentle parenting is supposed to be a type of authoritative parenting.

"Authoritative parenting is a parenting style that involves a close, nurturing relationship between parents and children, while also setting clear expectations and guidelines. Authoritative parents are supportive and responsive, but also firm and fair. They use disciplinary methods as a tool to support their children, rather than as punishment."

Authoritative parenting does not include violent punishment.

You may be thinking of authoritarian parenting.

I hate judgey parents like that. It’s no wonder many mothers have poor mental health (and it usually is the mothers who get judged).

Yes I honestly think 'gentle' is a pretty bad name for it at this point as it's just got too much baggage. I prefer respectful or authoritative as I think that reflects more the kind of ethos about it. I don't really think of myself as being 'gentle', I'm just trying to treat my DC respectfully and find non-punitive ways of dealing with stuff.

@doodleschnoodle I hear you. She prefers to broach things like tiny steps, anything short of being the baddy who says no, because on the rare occasion they do that with him he blows a fuse. He's a nice kid, genuinely sweet, it's just that firm resistance to what he wants is so rare it freaks him out. Maybe she has has just interpreted it wrongly, but it has a lot to answer for is so many people are buggering up in this way thinking that's how it's done. Like when he started flinging my husband's valuable books from the shelf and her way of trying to stop him without causing him upset was, "Now darling, I don't think there are any fun pictures in those for you."
I couldn't have cared less what enjoyment he might derive from those books, they weren't for him, call him off them! 😂

And gentle parenting absolutely advocates physically removing items or your own child from situations. I wouldn't let DC bang about glass things either, especially at someone else's house. You don't need to be an authoritarian or 'traditional' parent to physically intervene when your child is at risk of causing or suffering harm. That's just being a responsible human being.

But that's also not what gentle parenting can be or is 'meant' to be if you're following it as a 'movement' and not just saying you like to be a gentle person (which is totally different)

Gentle parenting would be saying 'I can't let you play with these as they could break and someone could get hurt' and then removing them 🤷‍♀️ So the real issue is not that your friend is a GP, but that she has interpreted whatever she thinks being gentle means to her parenting and is applying it to poor effect.

What's clear from this thread is that gentle parenting is used to cover a whole range of parenting behaviours, but if we are talking about gentle/authoratitive parenting at the core of what it's intended to be, a lot of these examples of poor parenting are not examples of gentle parenting. They are parents who are ineffectual, who don't want discord or confrontation, who don't actually know how to communicate properly with their children. Not the exclusive domain of gentle parenting as we know! The whole point of GP is about effective communication.

I agree, and no, I'm not confusing gentle with lazy.
A friend's toddler grabbed two glass ornaments in my house and started bashing them together. Initially, yes, his mother did nothing so you could think, "Hmm, lazy." However, I then called out "They're made of glass!" because you know, if he keeps this up, any second they're going to smash and shred his fingers (and also cost me two ornaments).
On hearing me call out and seeing my face, some kind of penny drops with my friend. Not with enough urgency to make her do the right thing and take them from him or say "No, that's dangerous, stop please!", but she makes an attempt.
She says "Darling, I don't think curtaintwitcher appreciates you playing with her ornaments." So not a lazy response, because she engaged, she tried in her 'gentle' way to get him to stop. She wasn't being 'lazy', she didn't ignore, it's just that by the time she's finished saying her lovely passive words, he could have really hurt himself. As it happened he carried on bashing them and I had to tell her explicitly to take them from him.
When your child and other people's property are at risk you really need to get over your fear of upsetting that child.

Yes, I have been told “xxx type of parenting actively harms children which is why I do yyy”

IME particularly in circles where gentle parenting leans into permissive 🫣. But I have heard it from others as well.

Well sure yes you can also judge parenting that involves other children/ people getting harmed but I’d say in that case it should be judging of that specific parent and their reaction rather than anyone else who describes their overall parenting in roughly the same way, but you’ve not actually witnessed how they’d deal with that.

Some authoritative parents may smack, I judge smacking (illegal here anyway) but not authoritative parenting. I don’t actually have a parenting “style” , if I had to pick I probably try mostly to be gentle with a bit of authoritative but I don’t really think of it in those terms. I really do hate judgemental parenting though.

Unless they are telling you they think it is harmful you are projecting. There are plenty of parenting things I do because I think they suit me/ my child/ my family without judging others for doing something different.

I’m mainly sceptical of gentle parenting advocates because they also tend to identify as practicing “attachment parenting” which is not A Thing in the way that it has been made into A Thing. It is not rooted in attachment theory at all, despite the hyperbolic claims about how beneficial babywearing/breastfeeding/co-sleeping etc is for the emotional development of your child, and was actually developed by an Evangelical Christian man whose primary motivation was to keep women firmly in the home and out of the workplace.

For us, its that there are no punishments but natural consequences to behaviour. Didn't do your homework and get a detention? Well, that's the consequence.

Are you being deliberately sarcastic or are you very confused about what punishment means...? A detention is the most classic example of a punishment. Nothing "natural" about it

Yes, I think it's possible we are better than previous generations in a lot of ways. We have access to more information and are better educated, and we see children in a different way and more worthy of respect. Parents are no longer discouraged from showing their children affection.

But I think the fact remains that parenting is really hard and many people are just not equipped for it. Not necessarily their fault. And not as if I'm perfect either.

I rarely punish. In your first example I would tell them to give it back and if they didn't then I would give it back for them with a stern 'no snatching'. If they don't put their shoes on then I would do it for them and probably tell them off for wasting my time and not listening. The third example I would probably just keep returning them to their room super nanny style, I don't think this is something I have ever had to deal with though.
I only really use punishments for aggressive behaviour.

@MrsSunshine2b I think that's unfair. A lot of parents are time poor. MH issues are also increased ten fold since the pandemic. I would say the generation before were not better parents but perhaps less stressed. My in laws often comment that I 'do' more with mine than they or their parents ever did, not just activities but actually sitting and playing with them, cooking with them, taking an interest in their interests. That was not common before.

Oh and another thing...

A large proportion of parents (most? or a significant and very visible minority?) just aren't very good. The style of parenting they are choosing to pin their colours to is irrelevant, they would be quite rubbish regardless. This generation is the one where everyone calls themselves a "gentle parent", some of them are good parents, some of them are not good parents.

If you do ACTUAL gentle parenting, it's really, really hard work. You have to be willing to follow through on logical consequences and allow natural consequences to play out, even when they make life miserable for you as well as your kid. You have to be ready to receive and validate every emotion and pretend that you're not irritated that they are acting like the world ended because they got the wrong colour straw. You have to give loads and loads of yourself and your time to your child to teach them emotional intelligence and regulation.

The vast majority of people who want to be gentle parents can't. They don't have the time, the energy or the completely even temperament required. I definitely don't. So they take the soft bit of gentle parenting- i.e. no punishments and giving the child freedom of expression- and leave out the hard part. That's permissive parenting.

Never punished??? What happens if they grab a toy off another child, don’t put their shoes on when you have two minutes left before needing to leave the house, refuse to stay in bed etc?

Also there are loads of things with no natural consequences, what happens then??

I think the problem is that people decide they are doing a particular type of parenting before they have children, and stick doggedly to it. There are children who would be angels no matter what way you parent them. And there are kids who will not respond to the more subtle, reason based way of gentle parenting. I'm thinking about the children I know with very poor impulse control. They seem to react to 'no' much better than 'well the reason we do this is because...' parent droning on when all they can hear in their head is THROW THE APPLE JUICE.
I have one child with ADHD who likes absolutes, she likes firm yes and no answers. Gentle parenting would not work for her. If I explain things too deeply she gets caught up on the grey areas and nuances. It's too unclear.

Echoing what others are saying.

You're confusing it with permissive parenting.

We are as gentle as we can be. So maybe other gentle parents would think we're not gentle.

We've never really punished, never shouted etc.

Half of that is down to having quite gentle kids.

BUT if they misbehave they are in no doubt what they've done wrong, what they could have done instead and will apologise/fix their mistake.

Doesn't mean we don't have difficult conversations etc.

Works for us.

I do think posters on parenting forums often use the two interchangably. I'm a bit unsure in which way the researchers were using it - they seemed to conflate parent-directed actions with boundary enforcement.

@doodleschnoodle But saying 'I won't let you hit' and holding their arms is doing exactly that? Just with perhaps different words than some other people might be used to, but it's the same sentiment. I've said that I can't let the behaviour continue and have physically prevented it.

Yes, agreed. This is what I understand gentle/respectful parenting to be, contrasted with the wild swing between authoritarian and permissive parenting described above (the guy not intervening to stop his kid hitting, but imposing a massive sanction for a small accident). You haven’t stomped in yelling and shaken your kid or smacked them, you haven’t imposed a sanction out of the blue, you’ve essentially behaved as if the child is a person with feelings and capabilities to understand natural consequences and that behaviour impacts on other people.

I practice gentle parenting and no way is it permissive. We have excellent boundiaries, and while my children are very normal children who can be arseholes occasionally at home, they are always complimented on their behaviour by teachers, sports coaches and rsndom strangers. If they have no boundaries and are permissive parenting, they're doing gente parentjng wrong.

For us, its that there are no punishments but natural consequences to behaviour. Didn't do your homework and get a detention? Well, that's the consequence. Didn't tidy your bedroom? Well its too messy for your friends to see so they can't come round. Didn't pick up your shin pads and the dog chewed them? You can't go to football until they've been replaced with your pocket money etc.

I also look at WHY they're acting out if they do. Are they tired? Hungry? Worried? Angry? Let's get the root issue sorted. Let's talk about it and come up with a solution together.

This means i have four kids who are generally well behaved at home, little angels when out, can self regulate, are in touch with their emotions and feelings, respectful, polite and have good boundaries (for themselves and for other people)