To think you need to jus lift your child?

[PugasaurusRex]

We had a visiting toddler today. When it was time to go he threw a mega tantrum and refused to leave or to return the toy he had hold of at the time.

His mother just stood there. And stood. And stood. Occasionally calling weakly "George... George.... Time to go now..." George would then bolt back into the playroom.

This went on for the best part of twenty minutes. Eventually he started throwing things at my elderly cat in a rage, so I had to go and physically remove George from the playroom, remove the toy from his grasp, and essentially post him out the front door with his mother trailing behind.

I've seen this in toddler groups too. Child won't put on shoes/leave/come away from the door, and instead of lifting them and removing them the parent just sort of stands and bleats at them.

Am I missing something? Is it now seen as wrong/too strict to tuck your child under your arm and match them off kicking and screaming? Mine are a little past that stage, but I remember it being a fun feature of their toddler years.

I feel that George's mother was quite happy for me to be the bad guy in this scenario... She's a perfectly fit woman so I'm not sure why else lifting the child was beyond her

escapade1234

Yes! You are completely right - people just don’t fucking parent effectively. Are they so worried about being liked?!?

The same friend’s child kept snatching toys off DS and all the mother did was say “ok we will put this one away then” - what does that teach?!? It means my DS who is playing nicely is getting toys taken away ffs and her child can just snatch whatever she likes and she gets her way as DS can’t have it.

What do people do if it’s their friend?! Do they say anything? My friend thought it had gone really well and her daughter had behaved 😑

Quite funny had 2 dads collecting 10 year old dds friends recently who didn’t want to go. They were so wet! It got to the point that I had run out of chat took me 3 mins to get the kids out they obeyed me without question but not their own fathers...

The problem with all this ‘gentle’ parenting is that the world is not gentle. Poor kids are in for a shock when the real world catches up with them.

On paper, I agree with a lot of the "gentle" parenting - no smacking, giving a child limited choices, listening to them,talking over good/bad choices. But none of the books I read (some time ago now) were against physically removing a child where necessary, or telling them "no".

It seems to me that a lot of the wishy washy parents feel that they are damaging their child by taking control, and this comes from a belief that their child is a delicate, easily upset flower. Surely the whole point of parenting gently (as I understand it) is to maintain good self esteem in the child, not assume there is none to begin with? It's precisely because I have a good, strong relationship with my children that I know they'll all get over the trauma of being told "no".

Again.... How old is said toddler? A 3 year old you xanreason with, a one Yr old you cant

@Graphista oh I've tried the scary voice from the gut, projected through the theatre like I'm in the middle of a tragedy by Lorca (or, hmm, the playgroup toilets where DS is trying to shove the bog roll down the loo, then deliberately standing on his dirty nappy, while hitting me and laughing in my face).

Saying "Look at me, no [DS name], do you understand" in the lowest voice he can muster, scowling, then laughing, is now his favourite way of being cheeky... yes, at least he is testing boundaries i guess.

I think gentle parenting has been taken to extremes, like a lot of things Pug. I agree with a lot of the day to day ideas but a lot of the parents proudly state that they don’t agree with discipline. They go out of their minds trying to find a natural consequence to something and sometimes there just isn’t one.
I’ve seen the antibiotic thing a lot in FB groups and the “just bundle him up and force it in” is not a popular response.

If you panic at the prospect of a tantrum and forget all reasonable parenting techniques this might be useful. I'm definitely planning to buy it when DS2 gets to this age because I know I struggled with DS1. It's a paid app but just a one off payment. I've read all her articles and it's good stuff IMO.

www.andrealoewen.ca/taming-tantrums-theres-an-app-for-that/

Oh my fuck the number of times I've had to march from daycare with my headstrong two year old under my arm screaming her face off. The shame! At least I seem to attract only sympathetic looks from the other parents when it happens. Sigh.

Yes. Agree Siameasy. I do agree with what I'd broadly term gentle parenting but as DS1 has got older and I've had the benefit of hindsight, I can see that what I was doing and perhaps what some of the FB etc groups do is divide parenting up into two camps: Super-special rare shiny halo "gentle parenting" and that evil mean child-hating "traditional discipline". It's unhelpful. It means you get stuck in a dichotomy and end up rejecting ideas because they might "belong" to traditional discipline (as though traditional discipline = ritual beatings and humiliation) when in reality there is a huge overlap and the principles of gentle parenting aren't anything that special or rare, there are just some aspects that might be unusual.

I know I was attracted to the gentle parenting books, groups, articles etc because I struggle with conflict and assertiveness. The problem is when these resources come from a position of "Why time out and the word no is bad" it is all feel good, agree, feel smug/superior for "knowing" this but there is little to no guidance from the position of "how to enforce boundaries when boundaries scare you a bit". This is getting better IME but there is still a deluge of the fluffy feelgood stuff with no substance. The result if you are not naturally authoritative is ineffectual parenting which eventually leaves the parent feeling so powerless that they snap in an unhelpful manner and end up feeling awful. And because you feel guilty about that this is the secret shame of the "gentle parent" and there is a mysterious silence about it on the facebook groups. And this, IMO, is much more damaging than being told off would have been in the first place. That was probably the biggest penny drop moment for me.

Yes it probably is possible to think up a perfect textbook gentle response to every situation but in real life parents do not have endless resources of patience and it is not especially helpful for children to think they do. Sometimes a little non-ideal parenting is essential in order to give you the breathing space to gather up thoughts and regroup. You can always undo the damage later. Or as OP rightly put it - they are not so delicate they won't get over the trauma of being told no :)

But I do think people are different levels of authoritative naturally. For example all the posters who report being able to count to 3 but never actually getting to 3/somehow having the confidence that they would be able to think up something appropriate if they got there. I definitely do not and I think this is completely obvious to DC as I know I have got to 3 on several occasions and had to do something and it has not made the counting the faintest bit more effective in the future.

Wasn’t there a scene in a Bridget Jones book where mark darcy marches two badly behaved boys out of a wedding as their parents being so wet? It was one of the indicators that he was a Good Man

Also, DH is v good at scary voice - I don't like it, it scares me. :o But it doesn't work on DS1 or at least it didn't until he finally made the connection that the scary-in-trouble-voice means he's likely about to lose screen privileges (aka life support) for several weeks if he doesn't at least pretend to look contrite. It never worked in the context of "Bed" or "Sit" or "Stop it now".

OTOH DH's scaryvoice "Ah-ah!" can already make DS2 (8 months) stop what he is doing and look guilty. Only for a second, but long enough to swoop in and remove whatever suicide bid he is going for now.

After 10 minutes of ineffectual bleating did you not get frustrated and say "for fucks sake he's 2 pick him up!"

I left some of the groups Bertie as they were insane. I wonder if you were in the same ones😂
The groups were littered with broken women who I feel chose gentle parenting because they themselves needed parenting; there was a lot of angst and self doubt over really minor things. They were not very kind to themselves and seemed to be striving for this gentle parenting perfection or what they thought it was. Eg BFing-guilt over wanting to quit when the child is 3.
I was attracted to it because my Dad was a bit of an arsehole. But that was about me not my DD.
You’re right there’s no happy medium online-there’s a tendency to take it to extremes but that is social media. “If you use time out you’re abusive” -type thoughts. In real life most of us are probably in the middle - common sense approach.

Oh yes I count to three... But it's taken a lot of me getting to three and imposing a consequence for the message to get through that it's most definitely NOT the magic number in this house!

Perhaps worth pointing out that some of those people stuck in the "gentle parenting" mode may possibly have kids who are so intense and hard to deal with that the parent is beaten down and genuinely has no idea how to change. I know I come across as a wet lettuce unkind-to-self "gentle" parent, constantly manoeuvering to avoid the next meltdown. As mentioned above DS is 2.5, probably has ASD and e.g. of me being wet, I am stuck bloody breastfeeding him 4x/day because I can't stand the entire mornings or afternoons spent on meltdowns. I also co-sleep with him and get very little sleep. We have been stuck on all this for nearly 18 months and nothing has changed. People tell me to be kind to myself and stop breastfeeding, just leave him to cry etc but honestly that would make life even harder.

I'm sooo looking forward to the next couple of generations of kids being the ones looking after us in our dottage. We'll have legal euthanasia in a heartbeat.

I give DD two chances. Then I grab and go/put in pram/remove from the situation etc.

She's only 2 and a bit so I think two opportunities to do what is asked of her is plenty (stuff she knows how to do like putting on shoes, putting the toy down, come with mummy, hold mummy's hand etc). Any more than that and it becomes a game and its more fun to not do it.

I'm trying to get through that if mummy says to do something, it gets done. Trying being the operative word.

The result if you are not naturally authoritative is ineffectual parenting which eventually leaves the parent feeling so powerless that they snap in an unhelpful manner and end up feeling awful. And because you feel guilty about that this is the secret shame of the "gentle parent" and there is a mysterious silence about it on the facebook groups. And this, IMO, is much more damaging than being told off would have been in the first place. That was probably the biggest penny drop moment for me.

I can totally relate to this. I got myself to a triple P parenting course. I needed to get out of my head (ditch the books!) and get some simple techniques and lose the guilt. I will never be comfortable physically forcing my children to do things. I don't think shouting is ok. But I needed to get the guilt out of my parenting.

I'd take mine out or lift them etc. I've similarly seen a woman imploring 'Poppy please get in the car" about a million times when small three year old would not step up into the car in question and I did think "just bloody lift her in, it's not a choice" plus it was at nursery pick up and there was always a queue of cars waiting for spaces of which she was oblivious...

Some parents want to be their child(ren)'s friend, possibly because their own parents were overly authoritarian. A child, be it 2 or 14, doesn't need a 30 year old friend.

"Perhaps worth pointing out that some of those people stuck in the "gentle parenting" mode may possibly have kids who are so intense and hard to deal with that the parent is beaten down and genuinely has no idea how to change."

I'm sure you are right, @letsgooutstiiiiiiide - I remember thinking, while watching Supernanny, that the biggest factor in her success wasn't necessarily the specific techniques, but the fact that the beleaguered parents had her there - another adult who could support and encourage them to persist with the techniques until they worked. One who wasn't exhausted by the years of struggling with the children's behaviour.

Plus the fact that the children didn't know her, so didn't know which buttons to push.

I couldn’t agree more “You leave walking on your own feet or I can carry you” are the only two choices. X

I'm someone who has left many establishments with my dd struggling under my arm!

YANBU.

I always find it interesting on threads like this that parents who DO allow their children to get in other people's way never come and defend their awful parenting choices.