To think gentle parenting has made some kids unbearable to be around?

I think despite what people say parenting these days is much better than it used to be.

My mum would beat me black and blue with a length of plumbers pipe so you'll forgive me if I really can't get worked up by some of the examples here of gentle /permissive parenting. It's left with me with depression and severe anxiety and I'll be dealing with it for the rest of my life.

For what it's worth i'm not a gentle / permissive parent but I've always treated my daughter like an actual human being with thoughts and feelings of her own from a very young age and it's done her no harm. We don't allow her to be a tablet zombie and if we go to a restaurant we sit and talk and always have.

How do you explain ill-behaved children in previous decades? I mean, throughout human history? Or even just the twentieth-century?

Then they aren’t following the ethos of gentle parenting are they?

also I disagree about having to parent all children the same. It is exactly that which can cause issues, parenting should be adapted around the differences of children as well

There's the square root of naff-all solid research to support "gentle parenting".
The distinction between "gentle parenting" & "permissive parenting" is merely an irregular verb; "I gentle parent, they parent permissively".

I’m a teacher and we were discussing this in the staffroom the other day. Yes. And our jobs have been made so much more difficult as we teach children who have never encountered boundaries.

I think there’ll be plenty of people here to defend actual gentle parenting which isn’t letting your kids run around with zero boundaries, consequences or care or concern for others.

Permissive parenting is an issue but I have some empathy for these parents too: I think lots of parents get very little time with their kids and, when they are with them, don’t want to spend the whole time battling (which can be what’s necessary sometimes to be consistent). Maybe that’s in the afternoon/evening when kids are tired, maybe that’s on a holiday or out at the weekend when they’re in unfamiliar settings (restaurants). I think there’s elements of guilt, pressure to have SM worthy family time, and a whole load of trying to do the right thing. People seem generally burnt out at the moment with work, parenting, finances etc. It’s a lot of stress and there doesn’t seem to be any genuine help for parents day-to-day.

I also think a lot of parenting tips on SM give people too little context for how certain approaches should be used. people watch 30secs of great advice but don’t get the extra info on what else needs to be in place for it to work.

And, of course, there’s a bunch of parents who literally don’t give two hoots about their kids’ actions (as has always been the case) and will let them do what they want, when they want.

I think a lot of parents are really trying their best though, they just don’t have the capacity or time to do the very hard job of parenting. And because parenting through fear (shouting/hitting) isn’t acceptable anymore, there appears to be more challenging behaviour.

I see the most damage when a parent always centres their child. Child gets hurt - child is centred. Child hurts others - child is centred. Child has hurt feelings - child is centred. Child hurts someone’s feelings - child is centred.
makes them un-fucking bearable at school.

I didn't DS was (is) a clever, tenacious and determined child. He needed clear bounderies and firm enforcement of those bounderies (many older women including MIL regularly told me he needed spanking). Gentle persuasion was compltely ineffectual, the only things that ever worked for him were tangible rewards and significant consequences. We also had to be absolutely consistent any deviation and he'd drive a truck through it. Hard work and as PP said not especially fair on his much calmer and amenable sister but thems the breaks. IME the wheels really come off with permissive parenting in the teenage years.

I don't agree with this actually. I have to parent both of mine differently, one ia NT, and the other AuADHD. It would be complete mayhem if I didn't, and what works for one does not work for the other. They both know right from wrong, and have boundaries. I think it is too easy for ignorant people to judge a snapshot of somebody's day, with no clue about their situation.
And yes some parents don't parent and their NT kids are ferel, I agree with that part.

DH and I took DD to the park a few weeks ago. A cute cat wondered in. Most children gave it a nice stroke and went on playing. One 3 year old boy was being very rough with the cat and eventually hit it. The mum just half heartedly called “gentle” from across the playground. He just carried on.

No way I’d just sit there and let my daughter hurt an animal.

Totally agree.

The trouble is, 90% of gentle parenters also don’t know the difference.

Gentle parenting has been taken by many / nearly all to really mean permissive parenting

my guess is it only works for a subset of children at best

I watched a couple asking their child to keep walking for 20 minutes the other day . In the rain
!!
My child would have been carried under my arm and it wouldn’t concern me what way he was facing .

Well within your rights to drop a friendship.

The thing with gentle parenting is holding boundaries like this reduces bad behaviour over time. So at 3 my son would have snatched as detailed and dealt with as detailed while at 7 is be genuinely shocked if he snatched. He's more likely to be the child mortified at being snatched from.

How do you manage similar scenarios?

Yes. My DN refuses to eat anything we have when we get together as a family, so my SIL brings along a pizza to pop in the oven for DN’s meal.

DN is always first in the queue for the family dessert—they will join in there. Funny that.

YABU because gentle parenting doesn't mean not having boundaries.

Nope. Gentle parenting requires holding boundaries. Flexibility is not what you want.

There's no coaxing, he gets one chance to hand back or I take it back. Takes 5seconds

Yes x 1000000%

Yes, it's been around quite a while now and my uni lecturer friends have seen a huge difference in student entitlement.
I recently worked with a young trainee manager who led a meeting and asked the attendees to remember their indoor voices.

‘Gentle parenting’ isn’t a real thing. It’s a buzz phrase to make idle parents feel better about not teaching and enforcing manners and respect. Those idle parents just invent another buzz phrase to excuse away the crappy results of idle parenting: ‘permissive parenting’.

It’s all the same.

She didn't say she'd coax him to return the teddy, she said she'd take it and give it back to the other child. Quick and effective. I can't see how this is ineffective or lengthy?

I also can't see how sweeping up crumbs whilst talking to your child at the same time needs to take any longer than just sweeping crumbs.

And everyone has to occasionally fight to put a child's shoes on. I don't think that's specific to the 'gentle' parenting community either.

Gentle parenting IS the problem. It cannot be implemented correctly because children need, and thrive, on good boundaries. Gentle parenting requires everyone around the child to be flexible with their boundaries whilst the child supposedly learns this is not practical or realistic and the sooner the proponents admit it's just shut parenting whilst trying to be the nice person at all times the better.

People have definitely misunderstood some of the key parts of what a gentle parenting approach is.

But there have always been useless, feckless parents. That's not new. Perhaps in the past the feckless parents were too strict rather than too hands-off, but either way it produced damaged young people.

I think you're looking back on a golden era that didn't exist tbh.