I don’t particularly like the term gentle parenting, mostly because it does tend to encompass some ridiculously impractical and often silly sort of ideas. It conjures images of outraged mummies because someone said No to their child, or (a popular one on a Facebook group I was a member of) gran or grandad said ‘naughty boy’ or similar, and it does all often get really silly and it can produce children who are difficult to be around.
But as I have said, there are extremes, and the other extreme which is being lauded on here is damaging too.
When I was little, from the outside everyone would probably have said that the ‘strict’ approach had worked well, for my brother and myself. We were always extremely well behaved, mostly because on the rare occasion we weren’t, we were shouted at, sometimes smacked and our crime (such as it was) would be mentioned forevermore. (I was once a bit giddy and silly at a relatives house when I was maybe about six, my mother was still bringing it up a good seven years later.)
We were scared of our parents, in short. We did love them, and we knew they loved us - it wasn’t all oppressive and tyrannical, but yes, we were scared. They were both teachers, too.
It made us both pretty sneaky in some ways, because we couldn’t just confide and admit if we’d messed up. My brother was moved down a set in Maths at secondary school and was petrified of them finding out - it seems crazy now but he genuinely was so worried about it. When I was a bit older I had a boyfriend and I had quite a few problems with being coerced into stuff I wasn’t comfortable with but I couldn’t tell my mum as she’d have been furious I had a boyfriend at all.
I want my children to know that I have their back, I suppose. Sometimes yes, I am their mum and will insist on brushed teeth and the like. And I wouldn’t deal with Alyssa as this mum is, but I wouldn’t approach parenting like the OP either. I don’t think either are parenting styles to emulate.