Gentle Parenting has failed, lets accept this.

Agree.

Agree. Apparently primary school children are becoming more violent and more and more kids are being exluded from high school because of violent behaviour towards otjer kids and even staff.

Take your own advice love.

Its becoming increasingly hard to believe that this “friend” really exists.

I have some sympathy with this I must say. I have a 4 year old relative who is vicious and will literally hit you with a large heavy object if you dont capitulate to every demand or whatever the hell it is she is screaming about (which isnt obvious because she wont tell you). We're talking red mist and physical assault here by a 4 yr old. I am very firm and dont take any sh** however, she will not quit. Her parents are very nice, gentle parents but she runs rings round them and has lashed out at them to the point of drawing blood.
Personally, I think a tap on the back of the nappy wouldn't go a miss - more symbolic than anything - not an attempt to physically hurt but a warning to deter such behaviour which is out of control. Ive never seen anything like it and I avoid having much to do with her because of this volitility which often appears out of the blue.

Gentle parenting is different to permissive parenting. Is your friend too permissive are you saying?

Maybe there’s a bigger picture in this boy’s situation/life you’re not seeing? You said his behavioral problems started when he went to school. Maybe he’s having a horrible time at school (do you know much about the school system and the national curriculum in 2025?)? Is he being bullied? Is he ND? Is he in school long hours ie wraparound care? So many variables to be able to comment properly.

I think child centric weak parenting is harming children and setting them up for failure.

It's our jobs as parents to prepare our children for the world and for them to accept that it doesn't revolve around them and for them to be successful in life (whatever form that takes). We all have to conform and respect others and live independently (*disability allowing). Small children need strong boundaries to allow them to thrive in our difficult world.

Tell that to the fuck load of shit parents who just squeak 'Please don't do that darling' in a tiny mousey voice after feckin' Sebastian has just slammed little Tabatha face first into concrete!

These people are out there, spawning unruly kids by the van load, avoiding effective parenting for dear life and their kids will be sitting next to your kids in classrooms.

If smacking is so great why didn't you just hit your GD?

Well, yes, I'm vehemently opposed to smacking so I agree. However, it seems to me that many of the 'it never did me any harm' brigade (I don't mean on this thread so much as on other ones I've read on MN) are parents themselves, so I wouldn't necessarily assume parents are by default more clued up on how to discipline children than the childless are.

"Smacking" is a cutesy euphemism for hitting. There's nothing reasonable about hitting a child to get that child to conform whether you regard it as somehow "moderate" or within ill-defined "sensible limits".

@Zod666 it sounds as if your friends son had pda particularly if the school are raising it as an issue so she should certainly look into that.

if so no amount of corporal punishment will help but she does need help

Why do you think that, OP?
I know I'm not only speaking for myself when I say I didn't suddenly start to lose control or think my children deserving of physical punishment when they reached the ages of 5-8

Always grateful that my children don’t fear me.

I have a (estranged) family member who would physically discipline her children. They have been removed from her and they have absolutely no desire to see her.

@Zod666 OP there's a big difference between gentle parenting and permissive parenting. In the later, I think it's parents who don't know how to parent 'opting' for their interpretation of 'gentle' parenting, and they aren't arsed to put any work in at all.
Taking a non-punitive approach to parenting is much harder work than punitive or permissive care. Permissive, to me, seems very much about giving in for a quiet life and letting the child rule the roost, and punitive relies on fear and quick punishments, which won't necessarily guarantee long term compliance or cooperation from your children.

Physical punishment is abuse, and that's that. You wouldn't get away with assaulting another adult the same size & strength as you.
Resorting to physical discipline smacks (pun intended) of a lack of control on the part of the parent, who can't make the child comply by other means.
I refuse to accept the 'it never did me any harm' stance.

I firmly believe parenting needs to include boundaries and discipline, but that could mean something as simple as a set bedtime.
Discipline does not = punishments.

Haven't RTFT but obviously it did affect you, as you're now a person that thinks it's ok to hit a child in the name of parenting.

These threads about justifying physical abuse as a way to parent are getting tiresome and dire.

Are you sure, because this is MN and we like to demonise the middle class as being the very worst kind of people 😆

Nothing about this is right. Of course people bully when they are the product of abusive behaviour. It is all they know.

YABU. I'm a teacher. The vast majority of badly-behaved kids I've taught have not been the children of middle-class gentle-parenting types.

I would say your friend probably isn’t doing it right.

This is a weird way to say you want to smack your friend’s kid.

It's clearly a fundamental flaw of gentle parenting though that SO many people misunderstand it and get it wrong.

Like it's a poorly defined concept if so many people think the poor parenting they are doing, aligns with 'Gentle Parenting'.
Most of us will agree the majority of these poor parents honestly think they are gentle parenting.

Furthermore, most of the people I know who then argue that that's not gentle parenting blah blah blah and claim they are doing the REAL gentle parenting? Also have poorly behaved, entitled children with poor boundaries.

I have read all of your posts. You have said that she sometimes confiscates his electronics (which is unlikely to meet the strict definition of gentle parenting unless the electronics are directly related to the behaviour) and that she follows "gentle parenting" exactly and has read some books.

You have shown no evidence that you actually know what gentle parenting is so I'll pass on believing that you are qualified to assess whether she's doing it or not. You haven't even specified which books. Anyone could write a book and stick "Gentle Parenting" on the front, including you, and we have all seen how much nonsense you talk.

It seems like I am reading just fine, you just don't like it that your extremely lazy solution, "Oh well, just hit him then!" has been shown up to be ludicrous. It sounds like your friend and her son need help, and definitely not from you.

The whole point of smacking is that it's for reasonable chastisement and that's it's moderate and within sensible limits.