Gentle parenting emotions, I don’t understand.

[CupEmpty]

Please can someone tell me if I’m getting this wrong, or what the hell im ‘supposed’ to be doing. I don’t get gentle parenting but am trying to see if it helps manage my toddler (2.5yrs) emotional outbursts.

I read a Janet Lansbury post about what to do when a child has a meltdown. She used an example of a child needing a physical outlet for their frustrations and so used to rip up bits of paper. The mum kept stacks of paper ready for the child to rip up to prevent her lashing out physically. The mum thought this was successful and made a comment about how she is the same and uses a baseball bat when she’s frustrated. Now this to me is not emotionally healthy.

my question is - with gentle parenting and acknowledging the emotions and allowing them to flood out, not quietening them, are we just teaching our children that they are entitled to scream and shout when they feel upset?

How do I get my toddler to calm down and quieten down, as if I say ‘calm down’ then I’m repressing her emotions. Does that make sense? What am I missing?

You're 100% right.

Toddlers are humans, and all humans like a degree of control over their environment and life. It's not fair for us to expect toddlers to be super chill having zero say over things. That's why giving a couple of choices often works well!

If it's a hard boundary for example no, we're not buying sweets today, no you can't hit the cat, you can't bite me, then you hold the boundary and validate the emotion and they learn to deal with frustration and disappointment. But wanting a certain colour cup isn't a negative behaviour to eradicate. If they're rejecting every cup and messing around saying I want yellow then rejecting it then obviously you'd get to a point where it's this cup or no cup cos you can't win and it's become a battle of wills where the cup isn't really the issue.

Just because something is illogical doesn't mean it's not valid either.
My toddler would be really upset if you gave a treat with a wrapper on because they couldn't get the wrapper off. If you took the wrapper off for them they'd be really upset because they wanted to take the wrapper off.
The answer is to remember they are really really little so I'd discreetly snip the wrapper to make it easy to get off then give it until they could treat it off easily.
Or give it to them with wrapper and say would you like me to show you how to take it off. Then slowly show them exactly how to do the tear. It all puts them in the driving seat a bit more because no one likes to feel done to we all like to feel done with.
Nothing is 100% but respect for their point of view is a good starting point for all interactions because they are real people with genuine feelings (no one is more genuine than a toddler!). Then it's our job to guide them along the way to a better perspective, little by little, while accepting they're not going to react like an adult overnight.

Really good advice @Rinkydinkydoodle 👌 distraction and humour are super useful.

I always think we treat children likes they’re completely different to adults and give them a lot less grace than adults. Obviously children are less developed but their basic needs are similar to us as adults.

if you as an adult are hugely upset and struggling to manage your emotions what would help you? Someone screaming at you? Someone telling you to calm down? Someone giving you a hug? Someone giving you space and then chatting to you later?

I’ve often thought the best way in managing my children’s big outbursts is to think what sort of thing might help me if I was feeling the same way. Then adapt it slightly to be child appropriate.

She's too little yet for all this

Wait a couple of years

I try not to use the term gentle parenting any more because I have found that the whole concept of it is much too wide ranging to be useful. Gentle parenting just means not-authoritarian parenting, so what you are "supposed to do" for emotions is basically anything other than shutting them down, ignoring them or punishing them. This is why you have - I lost count - at least 8 different suggestions so far, from posters who have either confidently stated this is what gentle parenting is or at least didn't say explicitly that they don't follow gentle parenting - encompassing every approach from renaming traditional consequences (traffic light system) into fluffy names, through distraction and redirection, separating feeling from action, naming the feeling, and all the way up to go upstream and figure out what caused the feeling, because the behaviour is only a signal something is wrong. There's nothing wrong with the variety in these responses BTW but they are not all describing a singular parenting style.

Janet Lansbury teaches RIE, or her own slant on it - her thing for emotions is basically about fully accepting them, because she explains that a lot of parents have absorbed the message that they should not shut down/punish emotions (stop crying, you're not a baby etc) but we still tend to feel uncomfortable with them and make them want to go away. So we'll do things like find a creative way around a boundary so that we still feel like we've held the boundary but the child feels like they have got what they want too, or we endlessly reassure or we offer some kind of distraction because we can't bear our children being upset or sometimes people even back down on boundaries because they can't cope with children being upset. These things, she argues, are unhelpful because they leave children feeling like they have too much power, perhaps that they don't know where the boundary actually is, and they can unsettle the adult with their emotions. So one of her main things that she teaches is to be a calm kind of base for children's emotions to wash over (this is part of the name of her blog "unruffled"). BTW, I find her content is so much better/easier to understand in audio, because she does a lot with tone, and I do usually find her advice on the subject of children's emotions to be very helpful - I think I probably do fall into her camp of feeling unsettled/alarmed by my children's emotions, and wanting to fix it, almost over-empathetic because I can FEEL how real that distress is to them and it feels overwhelming to me. She says: Yes, do acknowledge how real that distress is, but let them come through it and process it.

I don't know the article you're referring to - do you have a link to it? The adult using a baseball bat to relieve their own difficult feelings does sound a bit unhealthy to me, but also surprises me for JL but maybe it came across differently in the article.

My son had huge frustration tantrums when he was younger.

My main approach was to name the emotion and talk about ways to express the emotion.

We'd say, it's ok to be frustrated. It's not ok to throw things. We can breath and sigh like this to deal with the emotion. You can tell me 'I'm frustrated' and we can calm down together.

My DD has always felt things very, very deeply and has always had really bad emotional meltdowns from time to time where she won't even talk to me, she'll carry on for ages working herself up more and more into a frenzy until I help her recover. She'll scream "go away!!" and then cry even harder if I do! The one technique I've found that works well when she's that far gone is to sit near her and not talk to her, but get one of her teddies or toys and talk to it about what's happened instead. I tell the toy why she's upset and how what she's doing about it isn't very helpful, and that maybe she needs a cuddle, or something else we could do to make things better (without giving in to whatever it was that set her off in the first place!). She's gradually getting better at regulating her emotions herself as she gets older.

@CupEmpty

Sorry if you've answered this but what are you wanting/hoping she will do? At 2.5 I don't particularly try and stop tantrums about things that aren't risky or harmful. Eg if she wants a biscuit and I say no and she gets upset, demands its, stampa feet etc I just tell her I understand she is upset about it but she can't have it or try and move on/distract a bit. I wouldn't tell her to shut up or stop crying or particularly except her to do those things. Usually she moves on after 5/10 mins. I would get down on her level, give her a hug if she seems to want one and empathise a bit. I don't know if this is "gentle parenting" or not.

Hi OP

I think 'gentle parenting' is often misconstrued - I find it more helpful to think of this approach as 'respectful parenting' and the starting point is personhood: it may sound obvious, but your baby/toddler/child is a person and should be treated as such. As somebody says above, we would be unlikely to say "don't be silly" to a frustrated adult colleague, and I don't know Ny adult who would calm down after being instructed to "calm down"

A child's response to a broken banana/ a dropped biscuit/ the wrong cup being given to them is of course completely disproportionate to an adult onlooker but I would argue that the feeling is always valid. Very young children are not able to regulate their emotions themselves - they need adult support to help them with this. (Look up "The Whole Brain Child" by Dan Siegel - he offers helpful explanations for what is happening in the infant/child brain when overwhelmed by strong emotions).

With this in mind I would accept that a very young child will scream and shout and cry when they get upset - this is completely "normal" for their age and stage of brain development. My understanding of what Janet Lansbury suggests is that parents 'lean in' to the big emotion but set limits e.g. "I know you are disappointed but I won't allow you to hit me". Of course there is a social learning aspect to this - so where possible I would remove my tantruming child from a room full of people, and allow them to scream/shout in a safe space. I want my children to grow up knowing that any feeling is permitted, but to recognise their are boundaries: the world cannot stop because a child has a feeling (Janet Lansbury's idea of 'confident momentum' is brilliant here!).

But crying IS okay going forwards. Do you never cry when upset?

Just because she's crying about something that doesn't or wouldn't bother you doesn't mean she isn't distressed.

How would you calm your child if she was hurt or upset by something you deemed worthy of being upset over? That's how you calm her.

And then once she's calm, give her the language you'd like her to use next time. "You got really sad there. You wanted the red cup. Next time, you can say "please can I have the red cup instead?"

Also based on attachment research, the 'Circle of Security' offers a really succinct explanation of why 'being with' our children's emotions (whatever they are feeling) is important:

vimeo.com/145329119

There's a book called 'The Colour Monster' by Anna Llenas that is really good to share with children.
It explores emotions using different colours and helps children identify how they feel by colour.
It's used a lot in schools.

This. A child is entitled to feel the way it feels, but self regulation is ultimately what all children (and adults) need to learn. We can’t go through life shouting, screaming and ripping up papers. So teach your child how to meaningfully express their feelings without getting overwrought or destructive.

Honestly sometimes you just have to accept it's their age. They will be fine and all delighted with life again in ten minutes. Stick the kettle on and take a few deep breaths. No point in getting overly stressed about it. My almost 11 year old is now in the stroppy sulky phase now as well so just when you are finished one phase another one begins. I always validate their feelings and try to be empathetic to them. I also have one child with asd and I agree with you OP I wouldn't like the paper thing either unless there were additional needs and it was the child's way of regulating but otherwise it just encourages destructive behaviour.

Part of gentle parenting is recognizing that children of different developmental ages are capable of different things. So toddlers do not have a well developed frontal lobe of their brain and there is bi point e.g. telling them to pull themselves together. They just cannot!

Not sure about ripping paper. Gentle parenting might be more like naming an emotion, maintaining clear boundaries. It is not the same as permissive parenting.

The way I understand it is helping children to do things due to their own internal motivation, rather than out of fear of being shouted at or shamed. This tends to create more fulfilled balanced adults

A better explanation here sarahockwell-smith.com/2015/08/20/what-is-gentle-parenting-and-why-should-you-try-it/

I think the emotions need to come out somehow and they usually will. You are just showing them a healthier outlet for them. When they can quickly let our their negative feelings hopefully it will help them calm down sooner. In theory I think that is great.

In reality, I have tried this for years and not once has my child gone for the "healthier" option". I think in particular when they are angry or frustrated often that anger is directed at you so they actually do want to do something that impacts you (hurts you or shows you their defiance). Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

As they get older though it might be something that they will find helpful.
Having said that, yesterday, I'd promised my DD an ice cream from the ice cream van but asked her to wait till her friend had left so the friend didn't feel bad (her mum had said no an ice cream). By the time the friend left the ice cream van had left too. DD was super disappointed, cried and said it's my fault (which it was). I told her yes, that was totally my fault and I was really sorry and few minutes later she calmed down and we were able discuss alternatives. I have also realised that with age she is calming down quicker and quicker. I was actually really proud of her yesterday. So maybe those years of (mostly) being understanding about her strong emotions have made a difference somehow.

Maybe kids also struggle to calm down quickly because they believe that if they do calm down too quickly then we don't get fully how upset they really are and they want to feel understood.

OK I finally found the post OP was talking about, it's not actually a Janet Lansbury post, and it doesn't refer to a baseball bat but a tennis racquet (which the author later confirms she uses to beat the shit out of a bed - OK.)

It's this (Janet Lansbury had shared it on her page which is why it might have sounded like it came from there) by Anna Banas (never heard of her before)

www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=530870989035077&id=100063365402212

So I clicked through to Anna's page and it is quite typical of some of the newer "gentle parenting influencers" - very wordy, lots of carefully-placed full stops to invoke a slow, breathy, wise kind of tone, and very little actual substance or "what to do" (or even "why I did this"), just lots of "Wow, we need to reflect. Such reflection. Many insight." It makes you FEEL like you're reading something incredibly nuanced and intelligent, but it's actually just crafted bullshit much like the perfect instamum lives, just in word form.

OP look at Dr. Becky instead. She has an annoyingly peppy tone but her advice for "Do this IN the moment, do that OUT of the moment" is gold.

Read How To Talk So Kids Will Listen (or little kids) - it's much better with simple explanations of what to do and not so much waffle about self reflection.

Try No Drama Discipline - again a lot of "what to do" and some theory behind it, but not waffling on forever, just the info that is relevant.

Listen to some of Janet's actual own podcasts - there are some wordy no-substance ones, but there are some really brilliant and helpful ones.

If you DO want some self-reflection, there is an amazing book "When Your Kds Push Your Buttons" which is actually useful and has exercises etc to fill in.

Ripping paper is ok though if it's paper you don't need, right? Or if you think that paper isn't ok then find something else that is ok. I so think it's important to teach kids to find healthy outlets for their negative emotions. As someone who has spent a lifetime of using unhealthy outlets (self harm, disordered eating, substance abuse, etc) I would like to teach my kids that it's ok to feel the way they are, that emotions don't come down immediately (it takes a finite amount of time for your body to reverse the physical changes it goes through when undergoing a strong emotion) and that's ok too but that we need to learn healthy outlets for them and how to self soothe so that the emotion does not cause hurt, injury or damage to them or anyone else. A part of that journey I hope is that at some point they will learn how to suppress showing their feelings when the situations asks for it.

At this young age though I think suppression isn't the way to go. I think that will come later (earliest by school going age) and is.kaybe easier when they know that when the time and situation is right they can safely show their emotions.

I second the recommendation for "how to talk so little kids will listen" and also "why it's ok not to share". Great for practical tips that make a lot of sense (and sometimes work...)

She’s 2.5. She has absolutely no clue how to regulate her emotions and won’t until it naturally develops, together with your support.

Imagine being really sad and upset about something and someone comes along and tells you to stop crying. Or if you’re super angry and someone tells yous to calm down.

it’s the same principle. Suppressing is not helpful.

It’s not gentle parenting it’s just basic empathy really.

Yes. At a certain point, children are simply too young to learn to regulate. Best thing, I think, is to stay calm yourself so they have the right environment for calming down themselves, and can try to learn from you.

Sometimes you just have to let a tantrum burn itself out. I know how awful it is, I remember my youngest dragging herself across the kitchen floor screaming and wanting to throw myself out of the highest window. But it's a phase. She now can talk about starting to get big feelings and has things she can do to stop them getting so big they overwhelm her (though I'm working on getting her brother to stop winding her up!).

No, adults have emotions too, it's just children don't understand emotions and become overwhelmed. Thibk about it, when you're emotional, crying for example somone saying stop it is the worst thing they can do. In an emotional state you want compassion amd understanding not judgement and to be told to just basically shut up. Emotions are complex and it's our job as parents to help children manage their emotions appropriately in an understanding and nurturing way.

Yes of course ripping paper is ok to a point. But if at 2 and 3 you’re validated to think that dramatic and destructive outlets for your overwhelm are ok then, I’m not a psychologist, but that can’t be the best thing.

When my DC were upset and emotional at that age I waited for the storm to be over - I didn’t suppress, but equally I didn’t give it a lot of attention either. I would feign indifference and then when they’d stopped or calmed down I say ‘ok come on now darling, shall we have a cuddle and watch tv? (Or whatever distraction was on hand)’ - I didn’t even acknowledge it or refer to it.

Being a safe adult and understanding that they need to be stroppy or tantrummy is one thing, but you must guide them to move swiftly and safely through it and beyond. Calmness and self regulation is the desired outcome and you have to model that behaviour and mindset yourself.

Calmness and self regulation is the desired outcome and you have to model that behaviour and mindset yourself.

And that's the crux of it.