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’m guessing the poster is thinking of conventional parenting from when they were a child.

That's not gentle parenting.
That's plain old crap parenting.

I try to do gentle parenting but she also gets "the look" and middle-named sometimes so maybe my parenting style is a bit of a mixture 🤣

I sympathise OP because I'm sick to death of those soft play parents. I've been told that if my child "can't handle a bit of roughhousing" then I shouldn't take her to soft play. This was after she was full on slapped by a 6-7 ish yr old in the under 4s area.

We'll see how your kid can handle a bit of roughhousing when I throw him out

Yeah smacking and shouting arent conventional parenting. If my 4yo had hit a unknown toddler in the soft play then he probably would have spent a couple of minutes in the buggy tbh. Just a stern word if it was someone we knew. They have to know it is unacceptable and has consequences.

If he did it again we would just go home.

I would call a sharp "do that again and we go straight home" making a threat. I'm not saying I think that's a terrible thing to do, but personally as someone who tries to follow gentle parenting where possible, I wouldn't.

I would remove from the situation (ie take home) but not as a punishment. It would be more along the lines of 'I can see you're having a really hard time controlling your impulse to push/hit/kick but I can't let you hurt other children because what you're doing isn't safe. We're going to need to leave now so that the other children can enjoy their time in the soft play". So the action is the same but the intent is different - it's not framed as a punishment. But there's still a clear boundary of what is and isn't acceptable behaviour.

Then no additional cross attitude towards the child on the way home, no threats for the future ("I guess we won't be able to go to soft play any more because you hurt other children"), no additional punishment when they get home etc.

@FlounderingFruitcake and I'm not in Scotland 🤷🏼‍♀️ I regularly still see kids getting smacked when out and about in England, where it's still perfectly legal

Nothing new. I’ve been saying this for 6 years.

There’s also a LOT of parents that take their children to soft play and think they’ve done their bit by taking them there! Now they can sit and relax, drink coffee and chat with their friends whilst their child entertains him/herself. No!!! Taking them there doesn’t mean your job is done! You are meant to actually supervise them while they are there too! Drives me nuts.

Do that again and we will go straight home isn’t a threat to me. It’s a clear explanation of what will happen. Another bugbear of mine is parents saying that and not following through.

I still see kids being shouted at and threatened all the time. I'm sat in my house currently and just heard a mum SCREAM down the road "get back here NOW!" in a very aggressive tone. I still see kids being smacked every couple of months or so when out and about. Yesterday I was at swimming and I heard a dad say to his daughter "do you want a smacked bottom?" And punishing by isolation (sending to room, naughty step) as well as taking toys and screen time away are pretty standard.

Do people really think these things are confined to the past?!

That isn’t gentle parenting.

That’s just not parenting at all.

Please do some research on the different styles of parenting before ranting rubbish about them.

Gentle parenting is also known as authoritative parenting.

I'm not sure gentle parenting is the issue I would think its more lazy parenting. Some parents just don't put in boundaries in place because they don't want to cause themselves any grief/upset. How do you expect a child with no clear boundaries to know what's right or wrong and how to behave. You can be as gentle as you like in setting those boundaries as long as they are understood and set as clear boundaries, but so many children just don't understand a boundary because they are never set as permanent boundaries but as a movable negotiating space!

I know a few people who are “gentle parents” and their childrens are awful.

I'm not sure where you live that you consider, shouting, screaming and hitting to be conventional parenting!

Children just need to be parented. It doesn't need faddy names.

I do worry that there seems to be a lot of negotiation involved in some parenting approaches now. It's quite hard for a child to then understand at school that they will be sitting in the carpet when requested and not after 10 minutes of debating and promising rewards for doing it.

It perhaps is area specific. Or maybe we notice what our own bugbears are.

Yep this isn’t gentle parenting. This is zero parenting. I practice gentle parenting which basically means no shouting, shaming or threatening. My children do have rules and consequences and certainly don’t go round hurting others.

My DD has friends (2 sisters) whose parents believe in gentle parenting. What this actually equates to is that the kids are never told no, can do what they like and if someone does say no to them, they whinge about it nonstop. Backtracking is literally all the parents do. Nightmare.

My ex used to be an expert in neurolinguistic programming is it ? Anyway they’re just if it is the under fives just do not hear the word no at all, it’s a negative and therefore it is tuned out of their little brains.

@Doremisofarsogood Then they’re not gentle parents.

Gentle parenting is nothing new. I used some of the processes because they're not bad. But when my 6 month old was being hit on the head by a 3 year old with a wooden block and i told him to stop it right now his "gentle parent" mum told me to butt out. So I looked him in the eye and said "if you do that again i will do it to you so you know how it feels". And she had a complete hissy fit.
Lucky for me - other parents there backed me up.

To be fair I don't think gentle parenting officially includes abandoning your child in a ball pit and leaving them to it. Parents who do that drive me mad, mine is now 6 and I still keep an eye on him.

As a side note, don't go to soft play during half term. Four year olds will be back at school next week.

I can see you're having a really hard time controlling your impulse to push/hit/kick

My DC are adults so I'm not experienced in modern parenting techniques! But I don't see how a small child is really going to comprehend this. I also don't see how it's going to stop them behaving badly going forward, because it seems to me it's just being excused/brushed off.

There are certain people I'd like to kick! What stops me isn't someone telling me "that's unkind" it's the fact I would be arrested and get a criminal record! And if someone said they could see I was having a hard time controlling my impulses I'd probably kick them 😁

But what do I know! It may well work for your child.

We are probably what you’d call gentle parents. Or veering towards it… That shit isn’t it! It’s called crap parenting!

It's not necessarily about them fully understanding it and it's certainly not about controlling their behaviour in the moment or going forward. It's about accepting that developmentally a 4 year old has very little control over their behaviour and will act impulsively. It's our job to keep them and other people safe and to enforce respectful boundaries so that slowly, as they develop, they will copy the respect and kindness that has been modelled to them. It's about not shaming or punishing a 4 year old for acting like a 4 year old.

Being respectful will never get the same instant, reflexive obedience that fear-based parenting will. Yes, that parent who just gives their child a look and they stop immediately has more control over their child's actions in the moment. Respectful parenting is about the long game, and research shows the long term outcomes are very good.

@Brefugee Absolutely bullshit. No way you intimidated a toddler by saying that you, as an adult, would use physical violence against him by hitting with a block.

And even if you were that abusive, there’s no way any other parents would “back you up”.

You would’ve had a heart attack at teaching in the 70s, one little boy bit his friend and the teacher got his arm and bit him back.