sick of ‘gentle parents’

[strawberrysugar23]

i’m so fed up of gentle parenting - just been to soft play and a boy probably about 4 years old was whacking my 18 month old, pushing her down, kicked her in the face. obviously i kept intervening and actually told him off myself but his parent was nowhere to be seen. once i’d told him off he moved onto a different toddler whose mum approached me and asked if i knew who his parent was. said parent eventually came over and said ‘aw is he being rough?’ i said yes he’s being very aggressive to multiple toddlers, has hit/kicked/pushed and keeps following them around even after other parents are intervening. and her response was ‘ohh (child’s name) you need to be more gentle!’ in a soft voice then walked off and he continued.

sorry but wtf. if your child is as feral as that surely you say right we’re leaving and actually tell them off instead of that response? seems to be a common occurrence too, always seems to be the most aggressive kids who are being gentle parented

The positive attention isn't a reward for hitting, it's an attempt to repair the insecurity which they think might be causing the hitting.

It may be obvious to the parent, but I strongly suspect that the child sees it as a big bonus that he gets the positive attention on top of letting off steam and the satisfaction of punching someone.

I have a neighbour who is now nine and has been brought up like this. His parents have begun very belatedly to try to stop his physical aggression toward younger siblings and the constant barrage of name calling he directs at them. Up to now, any gentle remonstrances directed at him have been accompanied by hugs. He is a bully who taunts and inflicts physical hurt on his youngest sibling until she cries, then calls her a baby.

He's a deeply unhappy child, incredibly insecure.

The reason for this is that all his life his parents have tiptoed around his emotions and have never given him the security of knowing that they are in charge, not him, and that they are not afraid of his emotions.

The thought that they are in charge is terrifying for children.

And again, for the people at the back, gentle parenting centers the emotions of the child - not the child with the bloody nose or the bite mark on her arm, but the one who did all of that.

Authoritative parenting centers the situation and expects the child to learn to manage his or her emotions and adapt to the wider scene. Authoritative parenting involves consistency of message and consequences, and a good deal of communication of expectations, along with hugs, encouragement, praise when the child is meeting expectations. It is not shouty parenting. It is not parenting from the couch. It is not tiger parenting, or harsh.

That's not gentle parenting. That's a parent who would rather have a new than keep an eye on their kid.

Just because she used the word gentle does not make it gentle parenting.

Can see why you're so frustrated in that situation though, I had a similar thing today at soft play!

Sorry I will leave this link again incase you didn’t see, what you’ve described once again is permissive parenting, gentle parenting done the right way is very effective.

sarahockwell-smith.com/2019/06/03/how-to-be-a-gentle-not-permissive-parent/

Same budget. Ours innately don’t want to piss us off or upset other people so it hasn’t been a barrel.

I guess I was a gentle parent unless they did something naughty then I told them off or if they were violent (rare but happened) I put them in the porch. Worked for us have two hard working fun friendly popular teens who are never rude to us.

Judgey / battle !

In the above example of saying sorry, my dd2 has SEN and I would most certainly either get (not make) her say sorry or I would say it on her behalf - she's not very verbal, if she hurt another child. No, she doesn't understand, but it is for the other child's benefit, it acknowledges they have been hurt. So, I am putting the situation first, not my dd's emotions above another child.

👏👏👏

Sorry I will leave this link again incase you didn’t see, what you’ve described once again is permissive parenting, gentle parenting done the right way is very effective.

@Rhino94
From your link:
Gentle Parenting falls into the official definition of Authoritative Parenting

No it does not.

I am going to keep on repeating this - gentle parenting centers the emotions of the aggressor child.

What this means in practice is that the kid who is throwing sand in the faces of the other children in the sand box is asked how he is feeling, not to stop throwing sand.
The kid who has lamped his little sister 'must still be feeling upset about last night's thunderstorm'. He gets the hug because his emotional distress is deeper than that of the bruised sister who is merely crying about a hurt arm. It is more worthy of attention because it is born of anxiety, not soreness that will pass.
The kid who runs riot through the house kicking his shoes ahead of him, throwing books off the coffee table, and singing so loudly that nobody can be heard above the din instead of sitting and eating breakfast has 'a lot of energy'.

It is not Permissive parenting.
The child is getting a certain type of engaged and empathic attention from the parent due to his behaviour. The attention of the parents is focused entirely on the emotional state of the aggressor in any given fight or scene involving inappropriate adaptation to an environment.

It is not Authoritative parenting.
This is because the parent addresses the emotion of the child, not the situation or the effect on others of the kid's actions.

There are neither realistic expectations nor unreaslistic expectations of behaviour in gentle parenting. This is because it is emotion centered. It is an approach that places the emotional state of the child front and center, not the effect of his actions on others, and not whether actions or speech or vocal volume are appropriate to any given situation.

Nope! You’ve just quoted what a well known author who has researched for years on gentle parenting and actually uses the correct terminology has said and flat out denied it’s correct! the child would be removed from the situation and certainly is stopped from throwing sand. There’s such a lot to gentle parenting, more than people seem to want to believe. There’s many more articles on her website to give you a better idea.

I have never seen resources suggest to prioritise the aggressor child. Everything I've seen/read says to stop the immediate harm, remove the aggressor child whilst telling them you'll come back to speak to them after, then you look after the injured party. Once the injured party is ok, then you parent the aggressor and talk through the unwanted behaviour.

@mathanxiety What exactly are you basing this on?
Ive read quite a few gentle parenting books - some I like, some I don’t - but the message is very clearly remove aggressor child; focus on victim. Yes you validate the child’s emotions but the message is very much that all emotions are ok but all behaviours are not.

Actually I have seen both messages - although when it's deal with aggressor child/ignore victim, that's generally when the situation is that the aggressor child is the one that's your responsibility, and it's assumed that the victim has their own parent/another adult to console and comfort them. I think anyone would recognise that if you're responsible for both you need to console the hurt child first!

And certainly, a lot of gentle parenting resources advocate for not punishing aggression - which is often misunderstood as "just have a gentle chat" when that is actually not the end of the matter. You have a chat, or help co-regulate in a different way, but you would also do one or all of the following:

Step up supervision to protect the victim/other potential victims
Learn/observe signs that aggressor child is working up to violence and step in to de-escalate before they have actually done anything
Assess which situations are likely to cause the aggressor to lash out and avoid/mitigate/adjust those (e.g. more supervision, more coaching, different environmental setup)
Explain later when child is calmer about expected behaviour
Provide victim/potential victims some protection e.g. separate space, supervision
Work on impulse control/anger management/frustration tolerance/communication/problem solving/(etc) with aggressor child so that they do not need to resort to violence
Give aggressor child short cuts that they can use to communicate "I feel angry, I might hit soon" so that you can step in and help de-escalate
Work on underlying issues which may be causing aggression in aggressor e.g. anxiety, insecurity, sensory issues
Teach aggressor child alternative routes to express/divert anger rather than onto people

I think the emotion-centred parenting does ring true and I have come across this (I think in actual fact it's over-generalisation of a single tool - emotion validation is helpful, but doesn't work for everything) but I don't think you can use that as the definition of gentle parenting, because gentle parenting is too woolly and is used by too many different people.

Yes I agree. I am quite baffled by the idea you would not set boundaries and also remove the child from a situation where they might be harming another. That is not gentle parenting is it? I am learning still, but it can't be gentle to allow a child to hurt another (for the child who is hurt or the child who will grow up thinking they can hurt another). For me you can set boundaries whilst still respecting your child and showing empathy towards their feelings.

I am very new to this though. M

YABU - that’s not gentle parenting, that’s just not doing any parenting. You were right to tell him off.

I was brought up by a mother who wasn’t gentle. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Although actually coming back to this sorry - sometimes if you're responsible for two children and one is hurting the other, the priority does need to be de-escalation and harm reduction, which might mean chucking the aggressor child in another room while you comfort, but that may often not help or be possible, e.g. when out with no buggy, or an older child who can open doors/who would find this escalating and proceed to attack both child and adult. In those cases, you might need to focus on calming down the aggressor before offering comfort, and that may well look like giving aggressive child affection, sympathy, rewards etc.

Traditional parenting theory/behaviourism would say this is a problem, because the reaction in the moment is the important factor in future behaviour, but I don't think that's really true, I think that actually, while the reaction in the moment probably has some effect, the real change comes from teaching skills and alternatives outside of that moment, from the child growing and maturing and improving skills as a process of development, and in the meantime harm can be reduced by good management by adults who have more of a top-down view on the whole situation. That's true whatever parenting style you follow. People assume that it's punishment teaching messages, but surely it's just as likely to be the other things that we do afterwards and in general - most (all?) parenting experts would say you can't/shouldn't just punish in isolation, because it's important also to talk to children about behaviour, encourage positive behaviour, teach skills/alternatives etc.

Also the idea that a child who is in an agitated state can't very well learn or take on board new messages anyway - Dan Siegel/Tina Payne Bryson cover this in The Whole Brain Child, which is very well regarded. Even the concept of time out covers this because one of the purposes of time out is to give a child space to de-escalate before you try to address behaviour with them verbally.

I'm from the old generation when the most common response to a child kicking off was the tell them assertively that their behaviour was not appropriate and if they didn't stop they would face some level of punishment.

Now all I seem to see in public is kids screaming, shouting, crying at the top of their lungs, kicking off and their parents doing...nothing! Not talking to the child, just letting them going on with the behaviour, oblivious to the affect it has in others around them. The kids continue to scream and have their tantrum.

I really don't get it. What is this teaching the child? That their parents can't cope or deal with the behaviour.? How is that helping the child? Children need boundaries, they test to learn their limits.

I accept that this is the new generation of raising kids but it really leaves me baffled. Thankfully both my young adults do not agree at all with this approach.

Ignoring is supposed to teach the child that the screaming, tantruming etc doesn't give the child the result they want. They don't normally do it for no reason, they do it because they want something that the parent has said no to.

The idea is if you ignore it, it loses its power and the child will not try it as a strategy to get what they want in the future.

I don't really get what the advantage is of threatening to punish the tantrum itself, but I'm afraid I also don't actually subscribe to the notion that tantrum behaviour is something deliberate that children are doing as a strategy, I just think they are little and they don't yet have the ability to cope with disappointment, frustration etc without it overspilling into something noisy and physical. They grow out of this, but it's perfectly normal and appropriate for little ones between about 1-4 years.

To me punishing a tantrum would be as inappropriate as punishing a baby for crying. They are not doing it to be a pain, they are just upset about something, which they do unfortunately need to go through to learn that they can't always have what they want and they will be OK.

@BertieBotts Sure, but removing the child whilst they’re having this tantrum is the considerate thing to do. You don’t have to punish them, but deciding that everyone else needs to endure piercing shrieks and howls because your child learning is the most important thing is very much a modern parenting trend. It drives me mad.

I would always remove if possible but sometimes it isn't practical or possible to do that, and sometimes it would simply annoy another group of people in another location, so of limited benefit. If it's something like a shop, then yes, it makes sense to take them outside, but you don't always have access to somewhere where there is nobody to annoy, you don't always have another adult to watch the other child(ren), gather up all your stuff, keep your table, etc. Sometimes you just have to get on with it wherever you are.

If it's somewhere like a toddler group then TBH I wouldn't try to leave because I would assume that most people would think similarly to me and not mind.

Ignoring is supposed to teach the child that the screaming, tantruming etc doesn't give the child the result they want.
It's also teaching them they are the centre of the world and that their need to express their frustration is much more important than how it impacts on others.

I dare to think what neighbourhood disputes will be in 20 years with all those kids growing up not giving a care of the impact of their behaviours on others. It's all it's doing is raising very self centred and focussed kids.

They grow out of this
Sadly that's exactly what they don't do because they've never been taught to control their emotions, so they scream and rant as adults and more and more depressed as it gets them nowhere.

Don't be dense. Nobody punishes tantrums any more and young adults aren't all going around screaming and ranting. Some do, as they always have, but it's not likely to be because they weren't smacked when they had a tantrum aged two.

Ignoring tantrums has been standard parenting advice since at least the 90s.

Sigh, this thread is full of people who don't understand gentle parenting.

Nobody rewards a tantrum. The goal is to teach how to process your own emotions without lashing out etc at others. If my 2 year old raises his hand I'll say "you can be frustrated (enter applicable emotion) without" and he'll say "no hit" and 9/10 times lowers his hand.

Now all I seem to see in public is kids screaming, shouting, crying at the top of their lungs, kicking off and their parents doing...nothing! Not talking to the child, just letting them going on with the behaviour, oblivious to the affect it has in others around them. The kids continue to scream and have their tantrum.

To be honest these parents are unlikely to be ‘gentle’ parents (I hate that term but anyway!) Gentle parenting teaches trying to diffuse tantrums with empathy, which actually works really well.
I wasn’t parented gently and I do struggle with emotional regulation as an adult. When I’m having a 38 year old version of a tantrum my DH soothes me with words and touch. He doesn’t ignore me. (I don’t go round screaming and ranting by the way. I just mean when I’m obviously overwhelmed with worry/anger/sadness.)