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?

I know someone who simply shouted ‘with love’ when her toddler punched kids full on in the face, nicked their toys, ran around like a lunatic at quiet times. Like you can ever punch someone in the face with love?

I've been following this thread with interest, it's amazing to see the different perceptions and realities from different viewpoints.

One thing that strikes me is that the different parent styles, the real crux of the difference isn't in the outward daily appearance of dropping by the park or someone's house or the play date, it's when the child is in full meltdown, the parents are triggered, everyone is starving, the child has snatched a toy and been punched in return, we're out in public feeling judged.
What would you do in the moment and afterwards in each parenting style? That's where the difference is!
Gentle/authoritive parenting has a very different answer from the permissive parenting mentioned on here. Which differs from the authoritarian parenting advocated by others (scares me just thinking about it)

Yeah, if that was me I would (in an ideal world obviously, I don't always do the perfect thing!) my priority would be to move the child to a safe place to have their meltdown. That might be the car, a quiet corner, the best close place. Sit with the child and then as fast as possible support the child to enough emotional regulation to allow us to get home. That might mean a snack or a cuddle or a distraction.

Then get home and again focus on bringing the child back to being well-regulated and doing whatever works for the. I wouldn't bring up the behaviour to talk through it until the child was completely calm, but I absolutely would bring it up, and discuss what happened, why it happened and how we can avoid it in future. Reiterate that it's okay to feel angry but that it's not okay to hit/snatch/whatever. Decide whether we need to make amends (e.g. apologise to a child who was hit). Then move on with the day not holding a grudge or making the child feel like they are in the dog house.

I know several children who were raised by this (non) parenting method. And actually, they mostly turned into pretty fine adults - the world knocked most of their corners off as they grew up. They were deeply unpleasant to be around as kids/teens though (and especially for their dear doormat parents) so its not an approach I'd recommend.

Oh my sister is like this with her PFB 2 yr old. My own DC are much older now, teens/young adults, but I'm sure I wasn't that fucking feeble when they were toddlers!

It's all, as someone else said, lengthy and totally pointless monologues.

"Come on my little love, that's not very kind is it, look you're making a big mess, we don't do that do we, ah I know you're having fun but look everyone wants you to stop throwing food now, I know, come on, put the plate down, don't hit mummy, look SerfNTerf won't like food on her walls will she so come on let's put it down so she doesn't have a big mess to clean up, owwwwww don't bite me, come on little love you aren't being very kind to mummy, I don't want your pasta in my hair do I darling"

Whereas I'd just take the food away and remove the child from the table after one warning because a) they are 2, all these words are going straight over their heads and b) my life is too fucking short for reasoning with a 2 yr old.

But yunno, wevs. Not my kid. I'm sure she thought I was doing it all wrong too, back when I had toddlers and she was childfree!!

My friend has never disaplined her child. Child is vile. Violent, rude, greedy no manners.
Even when shes explained to her that 'mummy was upset with bad behaviour' she still gets all the treats/days out without recourse. No punisent ever. The school have called her in continuously about her daughters attitude and disrespect and she says she has anxiety cos its a Tuesday, the sky is blue that kind of thing.
I honestly cant see this child ever holding down a job, friendship or relationship in the future. She truly believes shes the centre of the world and its her way or nothing.
You have to parent. You have to guide you have to educate about manners and consequences. Whining in a baby voice about feelings won't help the poor kid.

I agree. You dont need to scare them or shout but you do need to parent and guide them.

What do you think this has to do with gentle parenting?

Read the thread,we are discussing lack of patenting as a off shoot to main topic. People who dont want to parent can use the excuse of gentle parent when its no parenting.

Oh and before anyone comes and tells me "well that's not gentle parenting" - ok fine, I bow to your superior knowledge of parenting labels.

But my sister thinks it's gentle parenting. It's her implementation of all the gubbins she reads in books and online about gentle parenting.

So maybe it isn't gentle parenting as it should be practiced, but it is absolutely being done that ineffective bollocksy way in families up and down in the country in the name of gentle parenting!

I’ve made this point on one of these threads before, but the problem with this approach to parenting is that we don’t exist in a vacuum with our kids. So even if other people’s thoughts and feelings don’t matter to you per se, they ultimately can and do have an impact on your child. Your child has a massive tantrum and hits another child. The natural consequence would be that the other child would hit yours back, which wouldn’t be allowed to happen. So you give an “it’s okay to have big feelings, but it’s not kind to hit” speech and think that’s okay. But the other child and his parent probably don’t think that’s okay. But, because we’re all terribly British, they won’t tell you that. They’ll grit their teeth and smile and say it’s all fine and it’s been a lovely play date and that “these things happen with kids”. But the consequence will be that your child won’t be invited back. And that parent will probably tell others about it - and then those people will have formed a negative opinion of your child and that sort of thing gets around. And so there will be a natural consequence of that behaviour, but not one that your child will actually ever see, or understand, or learn from. You’ll just be one of the parents mentioned upthread who can’t understand why their child doesn’t have friends and isn’t invited to parties.

That's not gentle parenting, it's a lack of discipline.

I really enjoyed Philippa Perrys book but this was my first thought too. There was a bit about her kid wanting to stop and examine things on a walk (if I remember rightly) and that was something she encouraged her to do rather than rush her along. Which I’m totally down with if you have the time. But what if this is DC2 and DC1 needs to be in school in 3 minutes and DC3 is in the sling crying for milk!? In that situation I don’t even have the time for an explanation about why we can’t stop and our feelings about the situation. It’s more of a ‘sorry we don’t have time, in the pram please’ situation.

Not wishing to stir things up even more, but what do people think about the parent's feelings in all this?
There's a lot of emphasis on doing this, reflecting this, taking the child away, but not a lot of focus on when you as a parent are stressed and ready to have your own meltdown!
How do you deal with that situation?

Interestingly (as context) I was videoing my child and feeling stressed by what happened during the video, but only didn't react because I was videoing at the time.
Then I watched the video back that evening and time must have slowed down because the actual event was a total non event and dealt with in about 0.5 seconds by my child. So parents emotions clearly are just as important as the child's to influence the situation when parenting.

If my child hit someone I would immediately remove him from the space/room/situation to somewhere he couldn’t hurt anyone else-

This sounds marvellous. But if you’re in my house for a play date, you’ve effectively left the room you’ve been invited to sit in and unilaterally decided to take your child elsewhere in my house while my child and I sit and wait for you. (If we’re in your house, then you’ve left your guests unattended and twiddling their thumbs.) And it’s boring as hell sitting around listening to someone cajoling and earnestly making speeches to a child who clearly doesn’t give a shit. I’m being slightly facetious here, but it underlines the point that this is a style of parenting that consistently prioritises you and yours at the expense of those around you. Which in many scenarios just ends up as plain bad manners. (My neighbour had this approach with her son. I remember watching, quite aghast, as he decided he didn’t want to go for his swimming lesson. The instructor stood on the side, as she spent 20 minutes quietly reasoning and cajoling and getting nowhere. The swimming instructor was not, it was clear for all to see, very impressed with this - and I can’t say I blamed her. They may not have meant to be, but they were rude and disrespectful of her time. Neighbour also regularly removed her son from parties, presumably for some similarly earnest discussion, but on one occasion caused quite some distress as the party parent didn’t know where they’d gone and was genuinely concerned that she’d lost someone. They were very nice people - and he was a sweet little boy (if rather out of control) - but it became a commonly held opinion that they weren’t people with whom one would choose to make arrangements.)

Sooner later children need to be introduced to the rules on which boundaries are based. It appears that many posters feel this is an anathema and the opposite to gentle parenting.
Society is based on its members recognising boundaries, especially those enforced by law. Why do we observe traffic regulations — because we’ll suffer the consequences if we get caught and or have an accident. Why do we show respect to our employers, state officials etc? Because there will be consequences for not doing so. Johnny May feel he can disrespect his teacher because mum will support him, but try doing that to the judge

Genuine question, everyone that never says no, when does that stop? At what age is it acceptable to tell them no? 13, 16? Never? Is it ok to tell other adults no?

So what do YOU do if your kid hits another?

No

Yes a good clip round the ear is much quicker all round. Spare the rod, spoil the child!

In seriousness though, you're allowed to feel bored and embarrassed waiting twiddling your thumbs. Of course parents will prioritise themselves and their children and if they shoot themselves in their foot and no one wants to hang out with them, then they have done a bad job at prioritising themselves. Not everyone gets on with everyone.
Maybe they will learn from those consequences.

So what do YOU do if your kid hits another?

Mercifully, this only ever happened to me between my own kids, so I didn’t have another parent to whom I needed to make apologies. But I spoke in firm tones (I was cross and she knew I was cross) to the hitter - and told her that we never hit. That I do not hit her and she does not hit her sister. And that if she hit her sister again, then she would not be going to a party tomorrow and that she needed to apologise for hitting her. And her sister needed to hear that there’d been some appropriate reaction to being lumped round the head and needed to receive the apology. If I’d taken the hitter into another room, all soft tones and cuddles - “I know you’re angry…..” - it sets entirely the wrong tone and feels like some sort of justification. (They’re now much older and happily get on very well. Any altercation is usually pretty effectively dealt with with “Enough!” in a raised voice!)

I’m afraid the problem with the “I know you’re angry but you can play if you don’t hit” approach is that it sends mixed messages. That it’s okay because you’re angry. That your feelings matter more than someone else’s. And that’s a dangerous precedent to set. Self importance isn’t attractive on a toddler, but people make allowances for it. On a 9/10 year old, it’s really not attractive at all. And at secondary school, the world is brutal.