I will never forget joining the official Sarah Ockwell-Smith FB groups when my eldest was a baby (10 years ago now) and I had all the intentions of being a 'gentle parent'. It sounds so lovely, doesn't it?!
She was the admin at the time, it wasn't an off-shoot parent group I don't know if she is any more.
Let's just say I left the group fairly quickly. I was horrified by some of the stories I read. Horrified. I remember one where a parent posted asking for advice on how to deal 'gently' with a reception aged child who had spent time killing an injured bird he'd found in the garden with a rock and objected to being taken away from it once it was dead by his mother.
"Awwww, no judgment here! Talk to the child about how the bird might have felt about being hit with a rock and how frightened it must have been. Remind him about gentle hands and he will learn, they don't have impulse control at this age and he was probably just curious as to what would happen. Praise his curiosity!"
I mean what the actual HELL.
I am all for a more modern approach to parenting where we encourage our children to understand and express their feelings, have bodily autonomy, have confidence, and learn make 'good choices' by guidance and learning rather than out of fear or punishment. It's common sense to me. But there is a world of difference between that and this nonsense notion of Gentle Parenting.
People say 'oh they're just doing GP wrong and being permissive, that's not GP' blah blah. Rubbish.
Behaviour in schools is worse than it's ever been. It is alarming, Before anyone starts on about special needs, I live that. It is absolutely true that some children cannot cope in mainstream school environments and their behaviours are reflective of that. They truly can't help that, but some the GP rubbish that I see with children who have these needs honestly is worse than in the non-send population. Even children with PDA profiles (which is extremely difficult to manage) need to learn and can be taught to behave appropriately as long as they're kept regulated and their the approach is adapted to take these needs into account. That does not mean allowing them to run riot, hurt people or other things like that with zero accountability or consequence.
I don't know how these so called GPs expect their children to grow into adults who can cope in society. I really don't.
A world where we parent appropriately and have expectations of behaviour that is in line with children's developmental capabilities is sensible. Toilet training is a classic example. No, it is not sensible to go back to the old days of insisting babies were fully toilet trained by 2. However, nor is it sensible or constructive to be 'gently' waiting so long for a child to be 'ready' that they're still happily in nappies in Reception class and beyond (SENDs that would legitimately cause this aside). That sort of thing is the reality of this abject nonsense.