Is gentle parenting effective

Yeah I agree, I'm trying really hard at the moment to find a balance with co regulation and helping my kids feel safe when they are disregulated by being there quietly with them, and holding the boundary about how they can express it, then moving on swiftly once the moment passes and reflecting briefly later about how to deal with difficult feelings. It is absolutely exhausting (I will mention my kids could be ND as autism and ADHD run in my family), I feel like an untrained support worker at times, and it would probably be easier to either shout and punish and ignore or just give them what they want all the time.

Then why, as this thread proves, are so few people doing it?

If they're negotiating for ages about washing hands, they haven't interpreted it correctly. Things like hygiene and safety are firm boundaries - the conversation would go "we are going to wash our hands so that we don't spread germs" or similar - no long winded negotiation, it's the middle ground between "just do as I say and wash your hands" and an hour-long negotiation and bribery to wash hands.

I've heard these described as natural consequences but happy for them to be called logical / linked consequences too. I just mean I wouldn't punish unwanted behaviour by removing a totally unrelated treat or privilege. I would only remove what is necessary to prevent the recurrence of the behaviour in the moment.

This.

It's easy to be permissive and it's easy to be strict. Finding that middle ground (gentle parenting, or "just parenting" as some posters prefer to call it) is hard work.

I also think it's interesting that whenever there is a thread on gentle parenting, posters claim to be overrun every time they step outside by 'gently parented' children whose mummies are narrating a two thousand word bill of rights every time they push over another kid in the playground. This is very much not my experience. The kids I see running wild in the playground are the ones whose mothers are sitting with their noses buried in their phones, looking up every five minutes to ineffectually yell at their kids, somehow managing to both be permissive and inflict punishment at the same time.

Okay so if gentle parenting is basically authoritative parenting without being a dickhead (when I don't think authoritative parenting probably involves being a dickhead anyway), it is possible my friends who say they use gentle parenting are just reading all the books but then applying what they've read in a totally different way. Stuff like negotiating for ages with the child about whether they'd like to wash their hands to gain their free consent rather than being directive about it, which it seemed to me would have meant less distress for the child as small things like that got turned into a big deal. I think the kids seemed to miss out on having to kind of get on with stuff that was less than ideal but not actually terrible, and I wasn't sure that was helping them.

That said, there are some good benefits so long as the parent proactively TEACHES the child routines, manners and social rules and then says ‘well done’, rather than relying on reactive moments and asking the child what what they ‘think’ they should’ve done instead of, say, snatching a toy.

I have observed gentle parenting that has become like white noise. Not sure if parents are aware of this. A mother saying in a kind, sweet, praise-like voice ‘oh come on now Oliver. We use kind hands’ while her child repeatedly hits a cat. The child doesn’t hear an instruction, he hears praise because his language and communication skills are behind - he interprets the sing-songy nature of the mother’s instructions rather than the words.

You arent practising natural consequences. Those are logical/linked consequences. Removing the toy or leaving a day out involve you actively doing something to intervene. So the consequence isn’t natural.

I think most decent humans would class what you wrote as just normal parenting.

I think it's child-dependent, and depends on their own personality.

Gentle parenting, very possible and effective with my eldest. Not even close, with my youngest.

I grew up under a strict regime of 80s parenting with an additional cultural layer of it being unthinkable to question elders even if they said black is white. My parents grew up in even stricter conditions.

We were "will behaved" children - did as we were told, but purely due to fear of the consequences, not due to being well adjusted.

People love to think that this harsher upbringing resulted in them becoming more resilient adults, able to take things in their stride as they weren't pampered and spoiled etc.

It is complete bullshit. You see people in their 40s, 50s, 80s losing their shit over minor things shouting at shop staff and call centre staff, moaning constantly about everything in the world instead of just getting on with it etc, absolutely no more sign of resilience than the average 25 year old despite what they claim.

My 5 year old is not scared of me, and is hard work sometimes especially when she doesn't get her away and will answer back far more than I did, but only because I had to suppress those reactions due to fear of a slap. But she's much more stable internally, understands much better when she is emotional and how she should behave, and she's harder work for us now then we were but I am confident she'll be a much better adjusted adult emotionally than me.

My goal is to raise a good adult, not a perfectly behaved child.

Well what does that mean, 'just parenting'? Because a hell of a lot of people aren't following these methods, as this thread illustrates. It's not like everyone in the world is just doing this automatically and without conscious effort.

These children can be really difficult in school. They Think they are justified in behaving badly and expect long and protected negotiation for the simplest of requests. A teacher doesn’t have time to talk about feelings with individual children every time she says ‘right let’s open our books and put the date and title in.’

DS came home from a history lesson and said to me Marxism as a theory isn’t that bad is it, it actually kind of makes sense
and I agreed because he is right it is just (a) it doesn’t necessarily work in practice and most importantly (b) the people who utilised it used it for them own purposes and changed the theory of it

and gentle parenting is exactly the same. It is a really good parenting technique but
(a) requires the right child and the right understanding of that child
(b) the parent to understand and follow through
(c) like everything the occasional adaption as needed

i have done so with mine - for me the core values of my parenting is not NO corporal punishment ever at all and to avoid arbitrary and unnecessary punishment.
I would also like to say no shouting but I am human and have a 16 and 12 year old that doesn’t happen but when it does and everyone has calmed down I also apologise for my behaviour

Again, that's just parenting.

I think the original gentle parenting movement needs a rebrand as it’s obviously been overtaken by permissive sorts who put it all over social media. A bit like HSP and empath. The people who talk about it a lot are not the people actually coping with it.

I turned my eldest around when we abandoned authoritarian parenting in favour of gentle parenting. He turned out to be ASD and authoritarianism was escalating every conflict. Disastrous.

Where does this idea come from, that gentle parenting = long winded verbal explanations? I've read about six different books on gentle parenting and none of them have recommended this!

For example, say a two year old threw a toy. A gentle parenting approach would be to say 'no throwing' the first time it happened. Second time it happened you would say 'no throwing' and remove the toy. You might then find a safe alternative ('you can throw this ball in the garden') if possible, or distract them with something else entirely if not.

That's gentle parenting - authoritative but respectful. A permissive approach would be to allow the behaviour to continue, an authoritarian approach would be to punish the 'disobedience' of the second throw.

This may not be what you think of when you think of gentle parenting and there are probably lots of people claiming to gentle parent who aren't doing this but if you read the experts (Philippa Perry, Dr Beckie, Alfie Kohn etc) this is what they're saying.

Oh and i don't think its a problem if a parent gets a little angry or upset once in a while. Children need to see that their parents are people with feelings too, and that their actions have the potential to make others unhappy with them. Parental anger is a natural consequence. There are children in both my DC class who can't cope with a raised voice because they've never heard one, they are afraid of the range of human emotion but also as a result lack the skills to respond to other DCs emotions effectively.

My DC have learned that certain things will make mummy angry (deliberate unkindness, unsafe behavior etc) and important this a) deters that behavior but b) they've learned about interacting with someone who's upset and how to apologise properly/make someone feel better after you've upset them. This is important.

I generally tend to role my eyes that anyone who describes themselves as having a parenting ‘style’ as opposed to just parenting their child. Our parenting choices are shaped by a number of different things (our personalities, our children’s personalities, the situation, our childhoods etc) and so to reduce it to following a ‘method’ has always seemed somewhat reductionist.

I've gentle parented, although I didn't know that's what it was called until recently.

It's worked very well for me.

One of my friends follows gentle parenting as per the popular social media accounts and some of it is permissive. I do agree that gentle parenting could be authoritative, but it's not how most of the social media accounts seem to show it. My friends kids run wild and I don't invite them over anymore as they just run through the house tipping stuff out, doing whatever they want and won't listen. They are also home educated (unschooled) so don't have any external authoritative figures like teachers. Our childminder I would say uses authoritative methods but my friend wouldn't send her kids there because of the way CM talks to the kids, e.g. she will say a firm no to things, she will sit one child out of the activity if they are e.g. hitting.

I think it's hard to quantify gentle parenting as in theory it is authoritative but a lot of the social media accounts seem to offer at least some permissive methods.

Does gentle parenting work ?
Not if my experience in shops , parks and any public spaces is anything to go by.
Parent to screaming , running around, rolling on the floor, bashing into other people child :’ oh darling, we use our quiet voice in here, don’t we?’

Child: ‘NO, NO, NO’….
Gentle parent: ‘If you push the trolley into that lady,,it might hurt her, so we have to be gentle, don’t we? Child : ‘ha ha ha’…….

I would say gentle parenting is far off authoritative parenting. Too much talking, not enough clarity for kids

Agree with this - gentle parenting relies on lengthy verbal communication over everything, kids often either tune it out or just miss the point. They often simply are not emotionally mature enough to understand.