to think sometimes gentle parenting is taken too far?

[GPgonewrong]

This week I’ve spent a few days with friends, their baby and son who’s almost 4. I have DS who is a few years older.

They gentle parent (which I also do, to an extent) but it means their toddler never hears raised voices, I didn’t ever hear “no”, everything was dealt with through a compromise or sitting down with him. All sounds fine, until you experience the behaviour. He bounced on every single chair and sofa, constantly pulled out furniture, wouldn’t sit down for a meal, eating little bits and buggering off running round, never ate a full meal but fed on demand. He shoved me out of the way several times, complained every time he was explained to why he shouldn’t be doing that, which he shouted back “NO! You can’t say that”. Completely unable to share, always snatching off the other kids, and didn’t say goodbye when we left. He is almost four but still won’t play nicely, instead his idea of play was destructive, throwing things around and knocking things over.

AIBU to think it’s gentle parenting taken too far and no discipline? Or maybe a separate issue?

This. Nothing else needs to be said.

DC don’t understand “that is mean”. It also means not spending enough money. It’s just enough to say it makes X very sad.

I get fed up listening to explanations. Just say no. Stop doing that. Or even be quiet! You can explain afterwards.

I have the Tizer stare. Just look severely at a misbehaving child. Don’t say anything. Parent will be waffling on or completely ignoring DC. The stare is so foreign to them, Dc stop in their tracks. Works very well in supermarkets I find.

I have a 14 year old, I did what I would have called "gentle parenting" back then - I learned about it and discussed it a lot on MN actually. He is a lovely teenager and we have a really nice relationship - TBH much better than we had in any of the intervening years. I found things very difficult between about 3 and 7 especially. Although I had problems in between, I do credit the stuff I thought of as gentle parenting with giving us this strong foundation of trust and just liking and respecting each other. I am also aware this may all go tits up - I think I suddenly found my rebellious streak at about 15, so I'm not claiming to have all the answers but I do think it's interesting to share experiences. I have a 4 and 1yo also so I haven't forgotten what it's like to have little ones.

I don't use the term gentle parenting any more because I think it's unhelpful when everyone has such a different understanding of the term and it means you can't have a decent discussion about things without it descending into "you just don't understand gentle parenting / that person is doing it wrong / those other people aren't seeing it the same as you" - it's better I find to actually have a discussion about specific practices. Then you can actually get into an interesting and useful discussion.

Something else I learned from MN is that a lot of "I'm a good gentle parent not like those other permissive gentle parents" are doing is actually just 90% normal modern good parenting. No parenting experts recommend shouting or smacking or telling kids just to get over it. Absolutely none of them. And even the ones that advocate for punishment (whether they call it a different name or not) generally say this should be a very rarely used thing and advocate for the use of positive techniques instead, most of which overlap with techniques advocated for in the gentle parenting sphere. This is one major problem I find with gentle parenting now. You may as well just call it good parenting / authoritative parenting / modern parenting / positive parenting. These are better and more descriptive (not to mention inclusive) terms for what most sensible people trying to follow GP are doing. But because a lot of the info about GP is now coming from social media what you tend to find is that the accounts promoting it need a "brand" and this means that they need to set themselves aside from what "mainstream parents" are doing, and now that hardly anybody is advocating for old fashioned practices like hitting, shouting, blind obedience, do as I say not as I do, that is hard to do. So they can either draw on convoluted anecdotes of "my grandma told me she needs a good smack, what should I do?!" which is not particularly compelling because everybody knows someone's grandma is likely to be out of date, or they can convince people that they are buying into some super-special, super-rare, super-enlightened wonderful fantastic thing and IME they do this by making it sound very complicated and making up arbitrary rules.

Interesting about the empathy/impulse control bit - when DS1 was little the gentle parenting lot said 4 for these things. It somehow keeps getting later and later!

And just to counter this - DS2 was flagged up for not having age-appropriate empathy at nursery at age 4.5. (We are abroad). They weren't criticising him but noting a concern. He doesn't react when another child is hurt for example. I had previously thought oh this is normal because they "don't develop empathy until about 4" - but after we were told this, I noticed that his 1.5yo brother, when he sees the 4yo is hurt or even when the 4yo gets told off or something, he will toddle over, crouch down, make concerned/questioning noises and generally seem slightly distressed/worried, sometimes find something to bring him to cheer him up or comfort him, sometimes rub his back etc. And then I could instantly see ah, yeah, DS2 has never done that. Despite the fact we have always comforted both of them when upset. He is now almost 5 and he still doesn't do it, even though we've prompted and explained "Look, DS3 is sad, let's make sure he's OK" and role played with toys etc.

To be clear I don't think that's GP at fault, I think DS2 is probably on the cusp of ND, because that's not the only sign. But it's interesting/a bit alarming that I wasn't really aware because I was assuming that it was normal, and that the "info" I was getting from GP circles was encouraging that it's normal, when his development of empathy is clearly behind. That is useful information. Not to denigrate him or stick him in a box named "loser" but to understand that he might need more help and support in certain areas. There is a movement in some areas of GP to keep eroding the sense of what children are capable of and telling us if he's not doing it, then he can't - and I think that can be really unhelpful. It's certainly very different to the messages that I was getting from (for example) "Taking Children Seriously" in the 00s. And what is confusing is that some of the more extreme ends of GP like Visible Child for example - the founder Robin is always talking about how children are capable and we need to trust them, but OTOH when it comes to an issue where a child and parent clash, the parent has too high expectations and needs to drop them. It's very confusing, guilt inducing, and I get lost and frustrated in this. I'm probably overthinking and trying to do everything perfectly TBH.

I wonder if maybe the nuance is getting lost - the reality is that skills like impulse control and empathy and time management and organisation and emotional regulation etc all develop slowly over time and no child will have an adult level of these skills. Even some adults struggle with some of these skills! And obviously children will all develop at different rates.

I agree that gentle parenting often seems to have very low expectations of NT children compared to what I see them actually be capable of. There is an instagrammer who frequently turns up in my feed (I don't actually follow her) talking about what she calls 'responsive parenting' (who parents in a way they consider to be non-responsive?!). She insists that a four year old cannot be held responsible because they haven't yet developed any impulse control and that this is scientific fact. Now, clearly four year olds do not have full, adult impulse control and it wouldn't be appropriate to expect them to. But almost all four year olds do have some impulse control and saying that any bad behavior is just developmentally appropriate doesn't seem helpful to me, and it doesn't ultimately seem helpful to the child. My eldest was only a few weeks past four when he started school; it wouldn't have set him up well if I'd decided that he couldn't be expected to follow rules and instructions at all because his brain wasn't yet capable of it.

I also think that, again, this idea of 'oh it's just too hard for them so you have to drop your expectations' is a lot easier with only one child in the mix. I've seen advice that you simply stop taking a toddler to a place where they consistently misbehave (e.g. by pulling all the books off the shelf in the library) because clearly they're not ready for that place yet. That's ok if you're only taking the toddler there, much harder to justify if that means one or more of your other children don't get to go to that place either.

The expectations thing is really interesting. My mum always says to me 'set expectations for your kids so that they can strive to meet them' and yet...

DD is a teenager and just diagnosed with autism. I joined loads of Facebook groups which just seem a bit off to me. Every post asking 'what do I do with my child, I asked him to put a glass away six weeks ago and he won't and calls me a cunt when I remind him' get tons of responses saying he must be Task Avoidant or whatever the terminology is.

And the thing is...he might be. But he also has to learn how the world works. And ignoring tasks and calling people cunts just isn't on, no matter what.

I don't think it helps to say oh he likely has this extra syndrome which means he can never empty a dishwasher, and leave it at that.

I really agree with the bit about setting expectations (realistic and age appropriate expectations obviously).

I have an autistic and demand avoidant 13 year old and have had to mute or even leave some FB groups for this reason. Apparently having even the most basic expectations of an autistic child is going to destroy their mental health and must be avoided at all costs, and the absolute bullshit that some parents are putting up with in the name of "no demand parenting" is staggering. At some point these kids are going to grow up and leave home and actually, no, they can't throw things and scream abuse every time anyone expects the most basic and reasonable things from them. That's just not ok.

I've had to adjust my expectations for my autistic child, but I've still bloody got some!

Exactly that @BoobsOnTheMoon

If I were to expect nothing of my child I'd ruin their bloody life! Autism or any other set of challenges doesn't preclude you from having to progress in life, from childhood to adulthood, and kids need to learn about expectations and norms on the way. It's no good pretending otherwise.

The issue with expectations is that a lot of people use them as it suits their agenda. Either too high, (the "so and so climbed Everest without any legs" type) or too low "children can't possibly develop empathy until 7") . That agenda can be subconsciously harmful like trying to reassure themselves about their choices - on either side or actively harmful , either to put others down, make themselves seem like the better parent or promote some kind of "idea".

age and need related expectations are an absolute must , and if I'm honest I think most parents fall somewhere in the middle, messing up from time to time. A good parent however is flexible and willing to learn and adjust. Same for professionals involved with children. Blanket statements help no one, especially not the children involved.

Yeah I guess but 🤷🏻‍♀️ that's life and nobody is a perfect parent. Expectations in general are a good thing, a must, if we are to send decent people out into the world.

Exactly this.

So true