Gentle Parenting has failed, lets accept this.

No no I meant I agree with the gentle parenting part, I specifically meant that parents don't even raise their voice to kids these days. That's why I said the teachers who have discipline are the ones who are 'loud' and will shout when necessary

Too many people think gentle parenting means no boundaries or consequences. True gentle parenting is just parenting without violence or shame. Quite a few “gentle” parents label themselves as such but actually misguidedly think that means no discipline at all.
I prefer the term “authoritative” parenting for this reason.

That said, I do think a lot of kids’ behaviour is worse these days. I don’t think it’s down to not smacking kids anymore. I think it’s a combination of screen time addiction in parents and in children and a societal problem where parents are often working 3 or more jobs between them to afford to live and they’re too darn tired to take the harder route of holding boundaries.

But you haven't really told us anything about your friends parenting, just that she's "read all the books" and her son is terrible. The only practical example is punishing by removing electronics, which is not gentle parenting.

Either her parenting is ineffectual (not "gentle") or her son is an particular terror - but in either case I can't see hitting him improving it?

You’re right, it was always for talking and I still talk.

Can you genuinely not think of a single form of discipline that doesn’t involve physical violence? Are you thick?

please only comment if your IQ is over 40.

Please take your own advice OP...

I am Gen X and got smacked and I would never smack my daughter. The day I lay a finger on her I have lost her respect. I would also be a rubbish parent.

Who, exactly, told you that saying "no" or "that's not a good idea" to a child is a mean thing?

There is never any excuse to hit a child but I am dismayed at some of the posts on parent/child relationships. I don't think it's right or healthy that parents should always mask or hide their own emotions from their children. For example, there was a post from a woman whose teenage son had kicked a football into a valuable ornament. She was unwell, her own mother (I believe) had just died and a number of other life events had occurred. As a consequence she shouted at her son when the ornament was broken and was advised on MN to go hug him and tell him she'd never shout again and that she loved him unconditionally. I think this is wrong. She is a human being with frailties, frustrations and a full set of emotions! Should her son go through life thinking that his mother is superhuman or even an automaton existing only to acknowledge his needs and sensibilities? Will he go into adulthood thinking that all adults (especially women) should accommodate him?

There are so many different facets as to why your friend's son might be misbehaving and unless you live with them, you don't know what they are.

Emotional difficulties, excessive screentime, attachment issues, inconsistent boundaries, being too permissive, being too authoritarian, insufficient sleep, poor diet, exposure to inappropriate people or material. We cannot analyse your friend's parenting because the only information we've got is that he's out of control and she doesn't hit him.

I can say with certainty that hitting him isn't going to improve any of the root causes of his behaviour. It sounds like she's relying on a book to tell her how to parent him instead of looking at the child she has in front of her and actually doing the work of figuring out what he needs.

You've come on here to rant about an 8 year old you've met who you think should be hit. Of course no-one is on your side. What did you expect? "Oh yeh, based on absolutely no information about the child or the friend, definitely she should start doing something which has been proven ineffective and damaging by all scientific research."

And then telling the many of us who have not had to resort to violence to manage our children's behaviour that we either all have miraculously well-behaved children through none of our own doing, or they just haven't reached the age where we'll suddenly want to start hitting them.

You think you got hit and turned out fine, I think you're anything but fine.

Wow, I've seen it all now.

Of course yabu to think hitting children is ok.

How, can you give examples please?

What now? Maybe she should start caning her little brat with a slipper I’m sure that will solve all her problems.

delusional. Absolutely out of this world detached from reality.

So are you suggesting the incorrect way? If smacking was illegal right now, what would be her way forward?

And for toddlers and those unable to understand the value of money or its relationship to the damaged item, @Snugglemonkey? Wouldn’t the child see that as “strict parenting” is rules and punishment unrelated to the transgression (eg trip to park is cancelled if toy gets broken)?

Swedish schools must be nightmare, considering smacking has been illegal there since 1979. I bet their prisons are overflowing too, with all these undisciplined children now being adults.

What? The opposite is true?

Ah, OP isn’t a parent, hence the lack of basis in reality. Those that don’t have kids always seem to know how to parent best.

What someone else said: the damage the old style discipline is apparent in that you consider violence towards another person, a child indeed, as a viable option. This has been researched extensively and the evidence is clear, it doesn’t work, it does great, long term harm.

This.

Are you sure? 😊

Yes.

People mix up gentle parenting with permissive parenting.

Gentle parenting done correctly is very good. However permissive parenting fails children, leads to behaviour challenges and is called gentle parenting by these inadequate parents

Do we have the same mother? 😁 I am the same as you down to the era. My mum did slap me and it really upset me a lot, my dad did only once but it was awful as his slap was a lot harder and I can look back at these and find them totally unacceptable (but I don’t hold it against them, it was the times).

It was the parenting of the time but frankly it was a bad aspect of parenting. My parents were good parents but I can look back and see how wrong the smacking was. I can remember some of them as if it happened yesterday, they were just bog standard smacks (but they stayed deep inside me emotionally).