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 would take both home and make it up to the other child You have to deal with this properly it is also a good example to set to the other child that if they misbehave they go home. Kids need form boundaries Don't let them walk all over you

I'm expecting someone to question my above post. So will give a real life example.

Today my DD aged 8 was in a foul mood.

She'd been allowed to sit and watch 45 minutes of YouTube this morning before I asked her to get washed and dressed as it was the first Monday of Half Term after all.

During that time I made a list of things we needed to achieve today.

I colour coded the list based on each person's jobs and also some we would do together.

As soon as the YouTube time was up and she was washed and dressed she read the list and did the first two things on it. (Maths homework which only takes her 5 minutes and then English which took longer.)

Then all she had remaining as a solo job was tidying her room. So she started doing that but as I walked past her room I saw she was stomping around with a face like thunder not really tidying anything productively.

Now - what my dad - very UNgentle - parent would've done in that situation would have been to shout at me that I was a spoilt brat, treated to throw stuff away if it wasn't tidied up etc etc.

I went in. Asked why she was in a bad mood "because I have a MILLION jobs to do and I won't get any free time ALL DAY" and then calmly explained she'd already had 45 minutes to sit and watch YouTube, was already on her final lone job, that I wasn't done with my jobs on the list either but that in the real world we can't all do what we want all of the time.

We had a hug. She got on with tidying. I occasionally popped my head in to say it was looking good.

The tidying got done and she was able to play what she wanted afterwards.

She also then went on to actually be really positive and helpful all day. Which I know for a fact she wouldn't have been if I'd reacted differently to her moan in the morning.

As some days I do bite, I'm not perfect in my gentle approach as grew up with such different parenting.

But just because I don't want to make my DC feel like shit also doesn't mean I don't want them to become respectful, kind, useful members of society!

The misbehaving child sits out next to me while the other continues to play.

Happens a lot in varying situations.

If one doesn't finish their vegetables it doesn't mean neither get dessert.

Same rules and consequences for everyone. Then it's very easy to understand what is fair.

I mean that’s great but my eight year old simply wouldn’t respond like that.

mine have always been well behaved. The truth is that I have never had to remove them from soft play etc because it’s never been in their nature to hit etc when we’re out and about. More by luck than design etc.

But as they are getting older I am finding them more challenging in the house. In the above example my eight year old would have had to have been hounded off the damn iPad, hounded into getting dressed (or she would have ignored me completely) and would have thrown herself to the ground in a temper if asked to clean her room.

We are working on it but this gentle approach wouldn’t work. You give an inch, she will take an utter mile.

Funnily enough she gains a lot of praise for her pleasant and helpful attitude in school…

you really haven’t looked into it have you, I’ve posted a link above which describes exactly what it is if you want to read up on what gentle parenting is done properly

I have a two year old who for the last 4 months more often than not has started to hit or push other children. If we go to a soft play or the playground, I am by his side constantly because I do not want him to hurt another child. Unfortunately he sometimes is too quick for me to intervene. I tend to grab his hands when he's about to strike or pick him up saying no thank you In a firm voice and we play nicely. If its too late and he pushes or hits a child I make sure I apologise to the child and parent. I then pick him up and take him to the side and get down to his level and having eye contact say that we do not hit/push other babies/children/ people it hurts and makes x sad. no hitting /pushing in a slow concise firm voice. If I see it continuing then I tell him we need to go because he is hurting other people and is not playing nicely. And that this place is for children who don't hit or push....
I can't elaborate as I know he switches off. We then leave with him crying.

I think the parents actions were lazy. It's exhausting work having to keep up and make sure your child is not being a thug. There's no way I would be relaxing having a coffee ever as it would be very irresponsible of me.
Sometimes I know my child pushes because he wants to play and sees it as a game, which other children won't see or understand other times I can see it in his face that he's trying to be alpha male and being territorial.

I am a gentle parent, but I completely agree that what is described here is not gentle parenting at all. Gentle parenting involves a lot if effort, but it is my worth it to me. Slack parenting is actually the opposite!

so those with well behaved children aren’t allowed to take them for a fun day out, because the violent kids there can’t be controlled? not sure that’s the answer

totally agree! People don’t seem to realise how much effort it actually takes to do it properly but it’s so worth it!

see but this is in the privacy of your own home and her stomping around etc hasn’t affected anyone but you and her. if people want to gentle parent at home that’s up to them but involving other kids/parents is where i’d draw the line

see but this is in the privacy of your own home and her stomping around etc hasn’t affected anyone but you and her. if people want to gentle parent at home that’s up to them but involving other kids/parents is where i’d draw the line
Who's getting other kids and parents involved in gentle parenting? There's 9 pages of people explaining that permissive parenting with no boundaries isn't gentle parenting.😂

Has it crossed your mind that you're probably in environments on a regular basis with people who use gentle parenting techniques and you don't notice because they're getting on raising their well-behaved children?

Exactly this!!! 👏

okay but i’m on a group called gently raising smalls on facebook because i actually wanted to do gentle parenting to start with - i see loads of posts on there that justify this kind of parenting as gentle parenting etc so in that case are thousands of people doing gentle parenting wrong? there was literally a post tonight saying their kid is hitting biting etc and their attempts at resolving this so far has been to say ‘we don’t hit/bite/etc’ and to give them books about it? that’s exactly the same as what me and others are talking about on here - so is this facebook group with 15,000 members all saying much the same about gentle parenting completely wrong?

and also^ it is getting other kids/parents involved if your gently parented child is hitting mine and you’re doing shite all about it

There are definitely a lot of people that do get it wrong, that Fb group sounds like they are more permissive parenting, if you want to do it properly then the gentle discipline book by Sarah ockwell smith is something to look into. She has even said how a lot of people who think they are doing gentle parenting are actually not..

e.g. just one response to the question someone posted about their child being aggressive - so the gentle parenting solution is to shower the child with affection? how is that helpful

The problem with this gentle parenting is this or isn't that is that it isn't well defined so everyone has their own understanding of what it means, and that's why we all end up talking at cross purposes when trying to discuss it. It doesn't have a universal definition. Try and figure out who first came up with it as a term, I can't find anyone. I think about the furthest back I found a mention of the word gentle specifically was 1995.

It really does have that massive overlap as in the diagram because there are gentle parenting resources where the "natural consequences" (a constantly misused term) are basically just time out and removal of privileges which is straight up old fashioned punishment, albeit of the non-violent kind. They just rename everything so it's "gentle" because that's a buzzword now and gets you followers on social media.

And there are gentle parenting type resources which emphasise the need for no punishment and some of these have excellent frameworks for how to manage behaviour and expectations without these while some just wax lyrical constantly about how much of a vibe kill being negative is (these ones aren't very useful IMO).

But the majority of it is pretty straightforward normal standard parenting advice. Encourage what you do want. Pick your battles. Be clear about your expectations. Explain things in an age appropriate way. Take children's thoughts and preferences into account (within reason). Try to see things from their point of view, bear in mind they are still learning and growing. Prefer positive instruction and interaction over negative, and try not to over rely on threat and punishment, if you do have to, try to make it something related (logical consequences, often misnamed as natural). If you can't, then at least make it non violent. Be calm instead of shouty, be kind, have patience, spend time developing a relationship with your children.

I agree gentle parenting works if it's backed up by relevant, and not vengeful, consequences. Also, that turning a blind eye is just non parenting. Children should not be left to hit others, even from a selfish perspective, because those children have a hard time when they get to school, and are unpopular with other children and with teachers. It just isn't fair on them to not start to learn some basic, age appropriate, boundaries.

Not as a direct reaction to the child being aggressive, no, but I would look at why the child was being aggressive, is it a reaction to something in their life that has changed, something that they feel insecure about, and if that's the case, "lovebombing" might be the right approach to help stop further aggression.

okay but i’m on a group called gently raising smalls on facebook because i actually wanted to do gentle parenting to start with - i see loads of posts on there that justify this kind of parenting as gentle parenting etc so in that case are thousands of people doing gentle parenting wrong?
Yes, there are people doing it wrong and they're probably people who rely on other parents' advice to smother little Timmy with affirmations as he lobs a truck across the village hall instead of opening a book or two to find out what the approach actually involves. That way they can justify avoid having conflict with their child and not have the battle of holding boundaries. But that isn't gentle parenting. It's huns giving each other validation for allowing their child to rule the roost.

You'd probably find more information about gentle parenting and authoritative parenting that respects the child by looking at people such as Sarah Ockwrll Smith or Robin Einzig's The Visible Child.

You're not really willing to listen to the 90% of people on this thread who are explaining that you're not describing gentle parenting when you talk about this parent at soft play.

And love bombing isn't about showing your child wild affection in the moments after they've just hurt someone. It's talking about providing a child with lots of positive attention generally, during a phase when they're struggling with some aspect of their behaviour. So, 'I'm going to try and make sure I give Timmy lots of extra hugs and I love yous throughout the day so that he knows how loved he is', not 'I'm going to wait until he hits someone and then give him a big squeeze and tell him how great he is'.

To be fair... i'm on a few fb groups for gentle parenting and some of the posters on there are batshit. I've seen some hilarious posts from people who have instilled zero boundaries at home and are then utterly gobsmacked when the nursery/school they send their child to doesn't allow them to draw on walls/climb furniture etc.

This is not gentle parenting. Gentle parenting actually involves consequences without the need of shouting or barking orders. Done correctly it's actually very effective and usually doesn't produce children who behave this way. She was just lazy

The idea behind showering a child with affection when they are acting up and it's out of character is that that kind of behaviour is actually more of a symptom that they are struggling with something - recent separation from mum/scared by mum being ill by the sounds of it in that case.

I actually think this is simplistic but I do understand the theory of where they are coming from, looking at behaviour from the root rather than the surface. It's basic child psychology. If the boy is feeling insecure then punishing him for hitting isn't going to solve that specific problem and might even make it worse. 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.

I couldn't be in a group that large with no tightly defined parameters for what you're supposed to be advising about, it's just asking for trouble and confusion. Every one of those thousands of members will have a different idea in their head of what good parenting is and they'll magically apply the label gentle parenting to their own usually, when that isn't really how a parenting theory works... Because gentle parenting isn't a concrete theory. So you'll get conflicting advice, crap advice, well meaning advice that works for a different situation than the OP has, advice that is incomplete etc. The "he's feeling insecure and that's causing the misbehaviour so make him feel secure again and it will stop" is so overly simplified that is highly unlikely to be the full story and therefore won't work in isolation anyway. Also those groups tend to manifest a weird behaviour where people get caught up in trying to be the "bestest mostest" (in this case the most gentle parent ever, more gentle than you) and rather than actually dispense experience or thoughtful advice, they repeat catchphrases and try to prove how extremely gentle and compassionate they are by making shit up basically. In the worst cases the made up most gentle parent ever stuff becomes a new catchphrase and other people on the group start repeating it until everybody just assumes it's the gospel truth.

It's too hard to solve on a Facebook group anyway. You could give the mother ideas but she'll have to make a decision about what makes sense herself, try that for a while and see whether it helps. For hitting it's generally important to interrupt the behaviour, reiterate expectations and also protect whoever or whatever is being hit. Time out achieves all of those things or you could do them all individually without a punishment, like the Janet Lansbury approach, it doesn't ultimately matter.

@strawberrysugar23 "see but this is in the privacy of your own home and her stomping around etc hasn’t affected anyone but you and her. if people want to gentle parent at home that’s up to them but involving other kids/parents is where i’d draw the line"

Maybe I'm lucky then. My DC save their worst moments for at home.

When younger of course we had a few public meltdowns but standard over tired/over stimulated stuff that passed with us sitting and waiting.

Maybe it's not the gentle parenting that's done it. But having seen how friends raised their children with empty threats and the kids knowing the things they were threatened with wouldn't happen my husband and I agreed as soon as I was first pregnant that we wouldn't make empty threats, wouldn't use Santa/Sleep police etc as reasons to behave.

Our DC have always known what is right and wrong in a situation and what's expected of them. That sounds really severe writing it down but I'm talking about stuff like "we sit nicely in a restaurant and don't run around or else we're not going to the play park afterwards" or "if you'd like to play minecraft with your friends then you need to make sure your homework is done first"

We've (almost) always followed through. For us it's worked. We don't need to shout or punish beyond what's laid out.

Of course there have been times we've heard from them/friends/school they've misbehaved. And we've talked about it and explained why we're disappointed and what would have been the better action.

But they've been so upset at upsetting their friends or being in trouble with a teacher that we haven't needed to punish them further.

Again though. Maybe we're lucky with DC who like to please/follow rules. DH and I are the same.