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

I think ignoring is one of many strategies you can use for lots of behaviour, as it is not rewarding with negative attention. It is not the same as letting a child do whatever they want, as there are times to step in. So, if a small child is constantly interrupting you might ignore to start with, then remind to "wait", if it persists you might reinforce with "wait your turn" and then make a point of "now you can tell me". You want to be modelling the waiting and "rewarding" with giving them a turn after.

For a tantrum, you might start by ignoring, but you might need to intervene by removing the child, if it escalates. Once they are calm and receptive after, then you can talk to them about how they feel. You would also be watching out for a repetition, so you could head it off, de-escalate, discuss beforehand etc.

@mathanxiety 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.

Agree completely - and I think it's something that a lot of modern parenting approaches overlook.

I've heard people ask "would you do/say that to an adult?" No, because young children have completely different needs to adults - one of which is needing to know the grown ups are in charge (even when that really pisses them off)!

@Notjusta and @mathanxiety absolutely! The example I gave upthread of pulling dd1 out of a very busy road and speaking very sternly about the danger of traffic is one she remembers fondly because she feels it showed I cared and she needed to be frightened of what she had done, as it was so dangerous. Dd1 thinks very little of the other mum who spoke 'gently' to her child who as an older teen still has little road awareness. (I know others keep correcting the definition of 'gentle parenting', but this parent claims to practice it and that is what others are criticising). In a life threatening situation I would rather my child was frightened of me than dead, and in fact she understands perfectly why I was very stern with her and did not think I didn't love her, in fact the opposite.

@CoveredInCobwebs

That is authoritative parenting.

Any approach that involves a situational response - remove offender and soothe the victim - is authoritative.

The gentle parenting approach centers the emotions of the offender, even at the expense of ignoring a crying victim. This is because the emotions of the offender are the only important element in any given conflict that has gone tits up. The emotions of the offender have become disregulated because of the loss of a sense of connection, which must be reestablished if peace is to return to the living room.

I live in the US as I have mentioned, and the only parents I consistently see using this approach are white and socio economically privileged. Not all white MC and UMC parents, but no ethnic minorities, no African American parents.

And it tends to be boys who are invited to get in touch with their emotions by means of this sort of parenting. For some reason parents aren't as inclined to put up with the BS from daughters.

The gentle parenting approach centers the emotions of the offender, even at the expense of ignoring a crying victim.

So you keep saying, and so a couple of us have asked where you get this idea from, and you won’t reply… Not from any gentle parenting books I’ve read.

What you are calling 'gentle parenting' is authoritative parenting. Authoritative isn't really that wide an umbrella. Gentle parenting is part of what is termed Positive Parenting. There are differences between authoritative parenting and 'gentle parenting'/ Positive Parenting that are important. The centering of the child's emotions is key in gentle/positive parenting.

I posted a New Yorker magazine article upthread which is a very well thought out critique of gentle parenting. There are huge tensions inherent in the approach, huge risks, and consequences for children (and pets) who share space and resources with positively/gently parented children that are not always pretty.

People here who are dismissing parenting styles that they call 'permissive' are saying that there is some pure form of gentle/ positive parenting that the true disciples have taken on board and understand and practice flawlessly, and the rest are bogus. But the truth is that there are as many 'gentle parenting' methods as there are parents. Nevertheless, there are clear strands to it, and they are problematic.

The key tenets of Gentle / Positive parenting are -
Respect, understanding, empathy, and boundaries, meeting the child where he is. All nice and woolly and aspirational so far....

It emphasises natural consequences - an easy get out of jail card for parents who for whatever reason do not want to confront a child who is misbehaving, and absolutely absurd when a child is being aggressive, because there is no natural consequence for aggression or adversarial conduct that will make an impression on a child who tends to be antagonistic.

All of the literature and articles I have read on 'gentle parenting' conflate gentle parenting with authoritative, then veer away to provide woolly instructions that are actually appeals to the parent's feelings about himself or herself, and provide convenient straw men to demolish. Examples of straw men - children's behaviour that might elicit punishment in some other parenting style include - child crying because he doesn't want to go to school, child fussing about getting dressed, child spilling a drink.

There's no reference to a child willfully lamping his sister, calling his siblings rude names despite being asked by them to stop, coming up with multiple justifications for biting a sibling, or being deliberately destructive in the home.

The guru being trotted out here is not a neuroscientist or a psychologist. One of my DDs has an honours degree in psychology from a university with a far better reputation that Ockwell-Smith's alma mater (which is the former Woolwich Polytechnic). She's a mother of four who used to work as a homeopath. This should give you an idea of the shallowness of her commitment to science.

Any claims she makes about producing healthy, well balanced adults are spurious. Nobody knows how the centering of the child's emotions, which is what her views boil down to, will turn out.

She appeals to parents who want to think well of themselves, parents who are sure they are going to do a better job than their own parents did, parents who like to think of themselves as cutting edge.

Here's some food for thought (though Gentle/ Positive parenting is shaping up as something of a cult so maybe I'm being over optimistic)
www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200703-the-challenges-of-positive-parenting

One possible risk of this parenting approach is that children won’t learn how to interpret and react to negative emotions if parents don’t let them see any. “Because sometimes we’re upset, it’s important for kids to see their parents express their own concerns,” says Coifman. “Openly talking about that fear and their anxiety – that validates the kids’ experience.”

This is, of course, more difficult when children are small, but “as children get older there is a place for them to understand that if they don’t listen, they are in fact inducing irritation in you. And that’s a normative experience. You need to know that if someone is asking you to do something and if you don’t do it consistently, there are potentially negative consequences.”

I see a lot of parents who have done gentle parenting from the earliest years - the empathy, the respect, the understanding, patience, and attempts to meet the child where he is, attending to emotions, biting their tongues, counting to ten, and screaming into pillows - and find themselves dealing with petty tyrants at age 7/8 or so, resulting in a change of approach where distinctly undemocratic consequences are dished out in a top down way because the 'gentle' approach has created a child whose only motivation is the satisfaction he gets from behaving in a way that he is happy with.

Well, it sounds like it’s being done very differently in the US then. Because I know a lot of kids who have been parented gently and they are as far from tyrants as can be.

All of the literature and articles I have read on 'gentle parenting' conflate gentle parenting with authoritative Authoritative parenting is an extremely broad strokes description. It includes within in it many subtypes of parenting. Gentle is one such subtype when done right. When done wrong, which according to MN happens a lot outside of the place where I live, it falls into the permissive subtype.

By the way, I never said I was keen on Sarah OS. I think she’s incredibly smug and a bit of a mother shamer.

Isn't this the problem though, Math, that you're agreeing with what I've said that there are hundreds of strands of gentle parenting, but then you also say all gentle parenting centres the child's emotions. That to me is contradictory. And plenty of gentle parents don't agree that they centre emotion.

I don't like the term gentle parenting any more TBH, because it's too confusing. It's used for this emotion-centred parenting, and also for "natural consequences" (usually meaning logical consequences) which, I agree, don't work for aggression, which is somewhere I got completely stuck with when DS1 was about 4 or 5 - I mean, actually, logically, the logical consequence for violence is return violence, in the form of bite them back or similar, which isn't very gentle nor considered good parenting by most people. It's also used for sensible authoritative parenting, it's used for positive parenting (focus on good, ignore bad) and it's used for root-cause behaviour-as-a-symptom type parenting, and actual natural consequences parenting (which is a bit confusing) and no-boundaries permissive parenting and I don't even know, probably dozens more that I've never come across before.

I used to think that there was a concrete singular definition of it but I don't any more. I think it was MN, actually, that made me understand that what I do isn't special or unusual, it's just normal parenting that happens to have some things that I disagree with some other parents about. The only common strand I can come across in ALL gentle parenting resources is that it is opposed to authoritarianism, and that's a really unhelpful vague common strand. If I said "I will dispense parenting advice: Don't be abusive. Abuse is bad. It causes XYZ." That's undoubtedly true and correct and good advice, but it's not in the slightest bit helpful because it doesn't tell you anything about what to do instead, and that's why gentle parenting is such a soup of contradictory advice and people vary enormously in how they interpret and approach it.

Interestingly, I'm seeing a really exciting change now in some of the discourse that is less about moving away from authoritarianism, because I think a lot of people are pretty saturated in that idea now, and more about how to move away from permissiveness or the kind of codependence to children's emotions that is often present when people want to do gentle parenting. For example, I was listening to a podcast the other day which had an aside about "confident no and enthusiastic yes" - where the guest gave the example of a parent who doesn't want to play with their child but feels guilty, like they should, so they say "Oh no, honey, I'm sorry, I really can't right now" in a really wheedling and conciliatory voice because they feel like they are doing something awful. Children can hear that hesitation and it makes them feel insecure. And when the parent says yes reluctantly, it creates resentment on the parent's side and can then lead to them being snappy and irritable, which isn't really that positive an interaction for the child anyway. So she points out that if you say no with confidence, "No honey, not today." Then you can reserve your yes for when you actually have the energy to spare in enjoying play (or whatever shared activity).

Probably that sounds obvious to a lot of people. But this kind of thing was not obvious to me and I had to figure it out in the face of all the gentle parenting stuff (which I generally admire and think sounds great and want to emulate) that is telling you - connection is key, make memories, be with your kids, don't say no to them unless you have to.

Maybe from bitter experience? The bit where you comfort your battered child whilst gentle parent gives little brute a good cuddle and a lots of empathy to help him deal with his anger issues "he can't apologise because he doesn't feel sorry"(like we care). And then 20 minutes later it happens again.

What's weird is that gentle parents get really upset when their kid thumps the wrong kid and gets thumped back. Now that's a natural consequence.

But that’s just ineffectual parenting. Ineffectual parenting can also be authoritarian - in fact statistically it is more likely to be authoritarian, or neglectful, or permissive - the three other categories of which authoritative is the fourth; these are the four types defined and studied in developmental psychology. Authoritarian is the one which centres punishment.

I’m not sure I give much credence to any of these labels, given that one is “neglectful parenting” - oh, sorry, “uninvolved parenting”. I had that one as a child and I think it’s properly known as abuse, not a valid parenting style!

Those four labels are the ones which are used in research and psychology. They aren't parenting styles that you would recommend - they are ways to categorise the different ways that parents respond to children, and yes, that includes abuse and neglect, because abuse and neglect are ways that parents respond to children.

IIRC it's like a box chart like this:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Fewer rules / More rules
Less empathy / uninvolved / authoritarian
More empathy / permissive / authoritative

The one that produces good results is authoritative, which encompasses many actual parenting styles within it.

Uninvolved is basically neglect and authoritarian can encompass both very strict high expectations parenting and also abuse. Permissive isn't neglectful as such because the parents do care about the children but it doesn't produce very good results in terms of behaviour and achievement.

Well, quite. I studied language acquisition at post-grad level. It's utterly pointless parents going into gentle, detailed explanations of 'why you shouldn't repeatedly kick Toby in the head' with their 3 year old. The child literally understands maybe one word in ten and and their logical reasoning ability is barely functioning.

You get far better results with a very stern tone of voice and a sharp look.

Urm… that’s not gentle parenting. That’s called negligence.

That’s I can’t be arsed parenting, not gentle parenting.

But you don’t launch into a detailed explanation. You say ‘we don’t hit. Hitting hurts’ or similar. Also, very young children do have empathy; it’s a misconception that this doesn’t develop until much later. I always found ‘how would you feel if x did that to you?’ was very effective, even when mine were toddlers. Obviously if they’re dysregulated and not capable of any sort of conversation then you remove from the situation.

To echo others - that's not gentle parenting. That's permissive and ineffective parenting.

I practice gentle parenting and in that situation, I'd have removed my 4 year old, sat in the cafe area with him and had a conversation about hurting others, the feelings of the child being hurt and the reasons why DS felt the need to do what he was doing. Recognizing and identifying my son's reasons for his behaviour and helping him find other ways to manage those emotions. If he did it again, either to your child or another, we'd leave immediately.

Wtf is gentle parenting?! What a load of rubbish, kids aren't gentle, neither are adults!

It is usually sensible to learn about something before dismissing it out of hand.

Gentle parenting is an evidence-based approach to raising happy, confident children. This parenting style is composed of four main elements—empathy, respect, understanding, and boundaries—and focuses on fostering the qualities you want in your child by being compassionate and enforcing consistent boundaries. Unlike some more lenient parenting methods, gentle parenting encourages age-appropriate discipline that teaches valuable life lessons.

www.verywellfamily.com/what-is-gentle-parenting-5189566

@CoveredInCobwebs I certainly have come across lots of parents who launch into a long-winded explanation of their child's emotions when the child is too small and has just behaved dangerously/aggressively. "Don't hit" would be perfect, I agree. I have certainly heard a lot of discussions of feelings/choices that are not appropriate to a small child or toddler, especially in that moment. These are parents that call themselves 'gentle parents'.

BertieBotts
That podcasts sounds like one of the groups I've been in.

It's about parents confidently embracing their authority as parents, choosing boundaries, and holding them in a calm and respectful way. The group also covers how it's entirely reasonable to acknowledge a child's feelings, whilst still holding boundaries.

Eg. I understand you'd like to play longer. It's home time. We can come back another day. The child is allowed to feel disappointed or upset. It's fine for the adult to acknowledge the feelings. It's not bad for the child to experience those feelings and the adult can confidently make the decision that it's time to go.

I've always taken the view that if a child isn't capable of of understanding reason, they won't understand being smacked, and if a child isn't capable of understanding reason then they're not going to understand why their caregiver is shouting at them/isolating them/implementing an entirely unrelated punishment.

Like most people on this thread, I also can't stand permissive parenting, but I also won't get drawn into adapting how I correct my DC behaviour to appease strangers who seem to think that being rude, belittling, authoritarian and unpleasant to children is acceptable.

This is exactly my take on it too. It's ok to be disappointed about x y or z but we're still going. Also feel those feelings, be upset but don't lash out (e.g. hit) because of those feelings

Mylittlesandwich
Completely agree with you.

It's fine to feel angry. It's not ok to hit.
It's fine to feel frustrated when you'd like a turn. It's not ok to push/shove/snatch the toy.

The thing I've taken from some of the gentle/respectfully authoritative groups and reading is how important it is for adults to examine why childhood behaviours can be a trigger for them. It seems like an awful lot of adults are very uncomfortable with children expressing a range of feelings so feel the need to either shut it down by being authoritarian/sanctioning any expression of certain feelings or shut it down by being permissive/pandering to whatever the child demands in order to make the feelings go away.

A lot of people seem to hold children to a much higher standard than adults. Adults expect other adults to be respectful to them and not to shout or be an arsehole when something is upsetting them, whilst plenty of them think nothing of shouting at a young child who is upset or frustrated because if you don't be firm with them they'll end up ruling the roost.

So basically you give your ds 1 free hit per play session?

@BertieBotts

Excellent post at 9:33.

Parents who are doggedly insisting they are doing 'gentle parenting' are essentially identifying very strongly with what they're 'not'..

They're not neglectful or abusive. The term gentle parenting appeals to something inside them.

There are strands of emotion rather than the one pure, scientific dogma to it that some are claiming here. The parents who are seen comforting a child who has destroyed everyone else's sand castles and is upset that he has been rebuked by the other children are apparently doing it all wrong, and there really exists some pure form of gentle parenting where the result is perfectly adjusted children who somehow manage to feel empathy, restrain their impulses, and behave like considerate little ladies and gentlemen, despite never being told that they are annoying the pants off everyone, or experiencing a top down reprimand or consequence. It's a fairy tale really.

It comes straight out of Positive Psychology, where you smile your way through adversity (in fact, as critic Barbara Ehrenreich points out, the logic of positive psychology means if you dont stay positive you risk doom) and just firm belief in your children's innate goodness will succeed in bringing that out and shutting away the rest of their nature. It has nothing to do with Authoritative parenting, which tends not to leave moral development to chance.