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?

So much of gentle parenting is just having realistic ideas about child development and what children are emotionally capable of as they grow. Babies cry when they need anything because its all they are able to do. A 2.5 year old is still developing speech and figuring out how to express their needs in ways other than just crying, its normal for them to have emotional outbursts.

If a situation accelerates into a tantrum, my gut feeling is that my child is experiencing distress and in that moment needs my help to calm down. When he is calm we can talk about what happened and I will sometimes ask him to say sorry (not for the tantrum itself but for whatever led up to it) Not sure if that's gentle parenting, I'm just winging it mostly without following a specific parenting style.

I agree with a lot of gentle parenting but I don't agree with validating all feelings. I am not going to validate my child having a complete meltdown because he can't have ice cream for breakfast or because he wants a blue cup and we don't own one. I wouldn't be having them ripping up paper or using a baseball bat either. To me that all suggests serious emotional dysregulation - but there might be something behind that ADHD, ASD, etc

I'd handle it by saying 'we don't have a blue cup but you can have it in the red cup when you're ready.' Then carry on with jobs until they've calmed down and are ready for the red cup. Having a tantrum gets boring very quickly when it doesn't get you anywhere or any attention I always found with mine.

If we were out I'd just leave and take them home, no fuss, they're probably tired/hungry/just having a bad day, but I don't need to hug them over it once they calm down. Explaining why something can't or won't be happening helps though sometimes I've found, ie 'you can't have a blue cup because we don't have any'. Also there are lots of things that can work better than a straight no if they struggle with that - 'we can't have icecream for breakfast be we can have some after dinner tomorrow' for example.

DC (3) has been going through a rough time lately with a lot of intense emotions, tantrums, big feelings etc. we've had some of those days where it just feels impossible because everything is wrong, he's so upset, and it's so challenging.

One thing I found helps is almost letting go of the content of his words when he's in a 'can't win' mood (for example he's crying because I cut his toast and he didn't want me to but then I give him a fresh piece so I can eat the cut toast and he wants the cut toast back but wants it back in one piece which obviously can't be done etc.) and kinda visualise him as a tiny baby crying instead. Which is really what's happening, they're still so young even though they look so old! He's essentially crying to let his emotions out and convey a need so I try let go of the impossible requests and just focus on being a calming presence for him and soothing him while he moves through it. It actually really does help.

I have mixed feelings about the How to talk so little kids will listen book - I rolled my eyes a lot listening to it on audible and admit to muttering ‘yep sure that happened’ at all the ‘real life examples’ they shared.

But I have to say quite a few of the strategies they talk about have really worked here.

One is ‘giving in fantasy what you can’t give in reality’ - so when my 2.5 year old wanted the peppa pig fancy dress outfit in Sainsbury’s I found myself saying ‘I know, we’ll make
a list of all the things you would like, mummy will write it down’ then going around the shop talked about what else was going on ‘the list’ - sparkly hair clips, chocolate, a bottle of fabric softener (?). Weirdly it worked really well, and now I just say ‘yeah wow that looks really good shall we put it on the list’ and she’s perfectly happy
with that (there is no actual physical list at this point but maybe that will have to happen at some stage).

Also ‘I know you want the purple cup, It’s so annoying! I wish all the cups were purple, I wish the whole kitchen was purple, I wish YOU were pink and I was purple and ….’ - totally headed off a tantrum and she spent the next however long happily coming up with things that should be purple.

The other one that’s working here is framing it as ‘the problem is …’
I know you really want an ice lolly, the problem is we don’t have any.
I know you want the blue cup, the problem is it’s in the dishwasher.
I know you want to keep playing, the problem is it’s bath time.

Dont know why - she just seems to respond better when it’s put that way. It’s not foolproof but has helped.

They’re no use for the big, full on melt downs which do also happen sometimes, but they seem to divert them at least most of the time.

It's because you're validating her feelings an making her feel heard.

Validating feelings doesn't mean always giving in to them, or not learning to control them. It means acknowledging them and accepting that they are real. What better starting point for learning to manage them?

Yeah my first child was like that, he could have brought the roof down at times in his temper. His frustration stemmed from a speech and language delay and the how to talk so kids will listen thing just didn't work with him because he didn't have the receptive language to understand. So I read Jo Frosts confident toddler care and used the very unfashionable techniques in that. There was much less shouting from both of us after that - we needed it to establish proper boundaries.

@ReneBumsWombats

Yes agree.

There's a sense from some posts of 'well I won't be validating such silly feelings', and maybe I sometimes felt that myself, but really it's about acknowledging the feeling/ emotion - it's there and they're feeling it whether you want to name it or not. I don't think ignoring it, or teaching them they have to ignore it is particularly helpful either.