To wonder if this is what people mean by gentle parenting

[pleasemothermay1]

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3699191/Outrage-parents-allow-child-toilet-Morning-floor.html

Not sure why a one year old wouldn't have a nappy on as she clearly is not Notts trained at that age my one year old would be become destressed to be constantly wet

And what's the no medication about surely social service would become involved if they got very ill and parents did noting

Very odd

There needs to be a distinction between 'natural medicines'.

in the photos on that article there was aromatherapy oils and homeopathic remedies.

Herbal medicine is useful - we're talking peppermint tea for indigestion, ginger for nausea, st johns wort for mild depression etc. Aspirin was originally a herbal medicine as are many of our manufactured drugs tbh.

Homeopathic medicine is just bullshit. Homeopathic vaccination is dangerous.

daft people.

Why do you assume home ed kids don't make friends or meet other adults? My friend's HE 5 year old has a wider social circle than my schooled 5 year old. Children of all ages and adults from all sorts of walks of life.

Self-sustaining...via a Go Fund me page? Yeah, right.

It's an assumption based on HE families who cross the path of us social workers. As in not every family who HE

Waving to you Clara

I thought it was interesting on her video that she had a 'learning' box labelled 'Science'.

Sounds a bit like Richard Dawkins homeschooling with a box labelled 'Religious Tolerance'.

I knew a girl at uni raised by parents like this. They took her out of school for a few years to go backpacking in obscure places, didn't have phones or computers etc because they were toxic bla bla

Their daughter works in finance in the City. She owns about six different mulberries

But if she fell of a mountain I presume they would of took her to A&E

There is a massive difference between natural remedies and homeopathy...the latter is a dangerous scam. The former is ok if taken for what it is. My kids are vaccinated to the eyeballs so that isn't my brand of woo tbh.

Schooling though is something else. We home school our 'normal' NT daughter because despite our local school being lovely, she wasn't happy there and we can do better.

Proper unschooling doesn't require formal teaching, just the provision of opportunities for self directed learning, assisted where necessary. It isn't for everyone, and isn't necessarily for us...but done well is a perfectly good method of education. Our current model of education is based purely on the needs of a system set up to cater for the masses, and isn't based on any sensible pedagogy or research into how young people learn. An engaged parent can cut through all the crap time wasting and crowd control that a school and mass curriculum has to contain in order to function.

Surely that just demonstrates that her upbringing did her no harm, and that she knows her own mind Maybe?

Meanwhile I fail to see what extended bf had to do with any of the the other bollocks they preach. The DM article mentioned it about a dozen times as if it's evidence of batshit and woo

Hope they've read about the case recently in Canada where a child got meningitis and the parents 'treated' him with horseradish, onion and chilli.

He died, and they've just been prosecuted for failing to provide the necessities of life

Wow didn't realise they made the fail! I read it in metro.....what was the sad face like?
And yep I'm being deliberately light heart as they are clearly nuts and getting away with it because they are educated middle class people rather than factory workers from some godforsaken backwater

He is 5! It's not the end of the world if he doesn't know letters and numbers yet. He may well show an interest at a later date. These are parents who have their own way of doing things. I would imagine they have a plan for various scenarios.

That said I suspect the teenage rebellion will be fab.

Delors - like Eddie and saffy in an fab maybe

My three yr old can count, he also goes to bed at 6.30 and spent today smothered in sun cream at a public paddling pool. This is because he is a child and as his parent it is up to me to keep him safe, happy and try to grow him into a productive, well rounded member of society.
I guess I don't get my cruchy hippy badge

There isn't any evidence that bf until 5 is particularly beneficial though is there? Otherwise WHO would recommend it surely. I know breastfeeding is often represented poorly as entitled women wanting attention but the people who act like its a cure all annoy me just as much. I've heard 'bf babies don't get colds' while dd was wiping snot all down my shirt. I've been told that bf babies don't need winding. I've been told that any skin problem can be sorted by squirting a little breast milk on it - I was covered in the stuff for weeks and noticed no improvement in my skin.

Nothing wrong with natural remedies for minor ailments - massive neglect not to provide medical care or to not vaccinate.
Nothing wrong with home schooling if done well - lots wrong with letting them do what they want and leaving them unable to function on a level with their peers.

DM as usual concentrates on the things that are neither here nor there, like extended breastfeeding. Because tits!

If you're reading this, please, please vaccinate your kids - you will never forgive yourself if they get seriously ill/die/end up damaged from something hideous like measles. You don't hAve the right to gamble with their health, and the health of others around them like that.

cosmic if they were living on a farm and trying to go self-sustainable, they wouldn't have the time to run a blog or home-school.

My family come from a very "off-grid" traditional farming community in another country that was fairly self-sustainable (in that they produced enough to trade to buy things they couldn't make). The nature of the work load, however, meant that women just didn't have the time to home-educate (they had to milk cows, make butter and cheese, make soap, brew vinegar, wash, cook, clean, look after infants, preserve veg and meat, make jam, tend to veg and herbs plots, make bread etc). So all the children in the community went to the local school building (a wooden cabin) and the mothers took it in turns to teach either a morning or afternoon a week.

And the thing is ... when you live like this, basic education, such simple arithmetic, becomes very important to acquire early on because the children have chores from a very early age -- fetching water, feeding chickens, measuring flour etc so they need to understand what quantities mean.

With couples like the Allens, I'm afraid all I see is a profound misunderstanding of the reality of things.

And if there parenting style is so good how come were not all clicking on there web site and there begging for money on go fund me

My ex was allowed to do what he wanted when younger he's been in jail twice

The mum kind of reminds me of the mum Muriel's wedding lady from the About A Boy film. Talks all about freedom but really enforces and dictates her own crazy ways.

Lazy parenting if you ask me and I flexi-school, used washable nappies and am considered a hippy/eco-warrior/earth mum by everyone who knows me lol

There isn't any evidence that bf until 5 is particularly beneficial though is there? Otherwise WHO would recommend it surely

At 5 it's probably extremely infrequent. A friend fed until her DC was about 4 - usually to soothe if she was upset or ill. Since stopping her DC has epic episodes of rage. She goes really wild and needs restraining. My friend thinks that always offering the boob when she was hurt or upset stopped her learning how to regulate/manage her big emotions.

Wow so much judgement on this thread. I also consider myself GP, I can't see any issue with the BF/unschooling/home birthing. I had 2 homebirths with mws but they were not in the room for the births. The toilet accident is totally understandable we are nappy free too, kids have occasional accidents especially in strange environments.
The antivax thing I find harder to understand
Maybe I'm crunchy-lite

I know my nan is from the Caribbean and lived off the grid

When you live off grid it's far more important that children have boundires and can't do what they feel like

My uncles had to do some really dangerous farm work and my mum had to look after the younger children was often lest strict instructions on how to make the baby milk how to give the baby and when