To think "gentle parents" are setting their kids up for a lifetime of friendlessness and struggling to hold down a job?

[ForestGoblin]

You get one chance to build the neural pathways that guide you for the rest of your life and if you don't learn that you're not the centre of anyone else's universe as a young kid you never will.

ChristmasCrumpet
I know they're mislabeling themselves.

Take parenting out of it.

The logic of some posters seems to be like this:
"SuperDietPlan is rubbish. You gain weight on it because you do A, B, C"

Actually, if someone is doing ABC then they're not actually following SuperDietPlan. That's probably why they gain weight instead of losing weight

"but I know 6 people who do ABC and THEY say that's SuperDietPlan"

We know, but it isn't. Actually if you look on SuperDietPlan materials written by people who know what they're talking about, it's quite clear that SuperDietPlan means XYZ, not ABC

"SuperDietPlan doesn't work. I saw Tracey and she's gained half a stone in a week doing ABC, and Dave's gained a stone. People say SuperDietPlan is meant to offer healthy lifestyle change but ABC clearly causes weight gain"

ABC isn't SuperDietPlan. Some people might say it is, but SuperDietPlan means doing XYZ. ABC doesn't work. ABC isn't SuperDietPlan

"This is so confusing! Surely SuperDietPlan is just healthy eating? Everyone eats healthy."

"I know! I know a lot of people who do ABC and say it's SuperDietPlan, so despite lots of information at my fingertips, I'm just going to continue to conclude that SuperDietPlan does mean ABC because it so confusing"

In my experience there are a lot of people who think of themselves as gentle parents who are very poor at holding clear boundaries, and who have a poor sense of the child's level of intellectual capacity - very typical examples I've seen where it went wrong parents are trying to negotiating with a child who can't really understand the negotiation and is just pushing boundaries. Or a mum afraid to tell a breastfeeding toddler that there are limits on when it's ok to feed.

The other thing I find when I talk to parents doing this is they often believe that causing stress or upset is damaging to the child's brain. So the kids learn very quickly that if they ramp up the emotion, the parents will cave. The parents have often been told that children will not be manipulative, so if they express a need, it is really a want.

These particular parents really don't need advice on how to be gentle, they need advise on boundaries and good habits.

Yes. It's absolutely this. Whenever I've encountered people who define as gentle parents (and they ALWAYS tell you!) they are not parenting in accordance with that definition or the explanations on this thread. The focus is entirely on the empathy and understanding parts with little sign of the boundaries or consequences.
Its unfortunate as this seems to have given GP a poor reputation. No doubt the people doing it 'properly' go under the radar as there would be little of note to see. Which means the only examples many of us do see are those who according to the thread are doing it 'wrong'.
Given so many people seem to be doing it wrong it does suggest the concept is a little confusing.

Dunno. I have tried to gentle parent - my two older kids are pretty awesome - glowing reports in school, help around the house, help out with their younger siblings. They have great friendships and although too young for proper jobs the eldest has a volunteer job for a local charity - Maybe I gentle parented wrong!

Yes, I get all that.

It's the seemingly 90% mislabelling themselves.

Because, if they are choosing to label themselves such, they are likely to have researched said technique in order to know what it is, so it's not through ignorance.

So, either, all those people don't have a clue about themselves and what they are doing. Or, the perceived outcome of GP, by the GP is very different to the outcome experienced by everyone else.

People coulddo a quick Google, theycouldread at least some of the dozen pages with people talking about the topic, but they won't. They'll just continue to argues it's so confusing and Tarquin has never been told no in his life.

My first google result to gentle parenting:

https://www.verywellfamily.com/what-is-gentle-parenting-5189566#citation-2

Mostly opinion based talks about research but refences 3 papers- but I'd have to read to see if they actually have anything to do with gentle parenting because titles suggest they may not.

1. Grady JS. Parental gentle encouragement promotes shy toddlers' regulation in social contexts. J Exp Child Psychol. 2019 Oct;186:83-98. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2019.05.008. PMID:31203109.
2. Augustine ME, Stifter CA. Temperament, parenting, and moral development: specificity of behavior and context. Soc Dev. 2015;24(2):285-303. doi:10.1111/sode.12092
3. Kim SY, Wang Y, Orozco-Lapray D, Shen Y, Murtuza M. Does “tiger parenting” exist? Parenting profiles of Chinese Americans and adolescent developmental outcomes. Asian American Journal of Psychology. 2013;4(1):7-18. doi:10.1037/a0030612

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-harsh-realm-of-gentle-parenting

Gives impression it base on one book and fairly loosely defined.

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-is-gentle-parenting/

Which is more opinion based.

https://www.guidepostmontessori.com/blog/beginners-guide-gentle-parenting

https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/is-gentle-parenting-effective.html

Seems critical not big on definitions or research.

I have read the posts of gentle parenting - seems to basic parenting and anything good is gentle parenting and everything else has clearly negative labels and child must be damaged just because.

It's clearly not well defined or widely well understood - it's clearly really important label/philosophy to some posters but outside that bubble it's just not well understood.

Wait until you see what's happening in classrooms!

If I describe myself as a brain surgeon and stick a knitting needle in your ear to help with your headaches, it’s not the fault of brain surgeons.

Crap parents who call themselves gentle parents aren’t the responsibility of those who actually have taken the time to learn about what gentle parenting actually is.

I gentle parent for the most part and tell my kids no all the time. If they hit someone at the park, for example, they are told 'no hitting' and made to check in with the person they hit and to apologise. I would usually keep a very close eye on them then and interject before they had the opportunity to do it again. If they made a move to be violent again I would stop them and say 'if you hurt others park time is done for the day' and made sure they repeated so they understood. Third time I would stop them before they were violent again, but it would be a 'I am not going to let you hurt anyone, park time is finished for today'.

We don't usually talk about feelings etc in the moment because kids are rarely receptive to it then.

'Tarquin was GP and never told no, and now he throws books at people in school and wallops them in the head, so GP is terrible'. Completely failing to recognize that if Tarquin were actually GP, then he would have developed an understanding of his own emotions and those of others, and learned how to deal with them appropriately through all the effort and modeling that his GP gave him so far. All those explanations that non-GP find so insufferable and effortful and boring, that's the effort that leads to these emotionally healthy teenagers that actually do not have mental health problems and hate their parents. GP teens are largely respectful, trustworthy, interesting, and fun people to be around. They haven't been scared and shamed into doing as their parents demanded for no reason other than "because I said so". People making comments about 'the world won't be kind/center of the universe' drivel don't seem to understand that the entire premise of GP is to enable children to develop the understanding and skills to be emotionally capable adults. GP is a philosophy rather than simply being softly spoken, it's about the underlying beliefs about children and the role that adults play in supporting them. The children throwing books in school are the ones who received the opposite of GP.

Then there are people saying 'I didn't hit or shout, so I'm a gentle parent (and told them No, Do as you're told, XYZ other NON-GP statement) so it doesn't need a special name'. When seemingly it does, because they don't understand what it is, displayed by their use of terms like being the boss and deliberately naughty.

PlanetJanette
Well said.
If I came on a thread where brain surgeons were clearly explain that Steve down the pub with his knitting needles isn't a brain surgeon, regardless of what he said, I'd not get half a dozen pages in and be confused because "I've spoken to a lot of people with knitting needles and they said shoving them in your ears does solve headaches and it doesn't work. Brain surgery is rubbish and totally confusing"

Why do all the 'gentle' parents on here think the rest of us are going round constantly shouting and screaming at our kids? Every one of them has mentioned it. 😂

Pointless statement to be honest. What’s happening in terms of running classrooms is well beyond parenting tactics. The education system is hardly fit for purpose unless you have a child who can hit average or slightly above targets in academic achievement whilst rarely making a peep in class. There’s no funding for much needed TAs and classrooms are overfilled. SEN support is beyond a joke so the children who are most likely to need support aren’t getting it - they are the children most likely to be causing a disruption whilst being labelled ‘naughty’ and the product of weak parenting. If you have an issue with this then perhaps lobby the government to stop running schools like businesses run by Tory mates who’ve never taught a class in their life.

It's just strange that this is what 90% of people who call themselves GP in real life are though.

Rather a lot.

One of the most damaging things to come out of my own ( born late 70s) generation of parents is this absolute obsession with Parenting as a verb. I think, if my own experiences are common, that a lot of my generation were really under "parented" which has led to us feeling like we are desperate to do it better, different, perfect.
My parents were wrapped up in their own world, very little was ever for our benefit directly. We were fed, clothed in hand me downs and sent to school. That was it. No extras, not too much thought to our individual needs or development. It just wasn't a thing.
So now, parents in their 40s at least are trying to redress the balance, and everything is focused on children.
We think every little word, action or mistake will somehow screw them up beyond redemption. But I really think in reality any parent who provides love and security, doesn't go apeshit over tiny problems and tries to teach general respect for others is probably doing a decent enough job.
Endlessly dissecting the impact we have as parents will ( imo) lead to a whole generation of anxious, fragile young people who will in turn obsess over their own parenting, trying to rectify the awful mistakes that they perceive to have ruined their lives.
I wish my own childhood had been a little more focused on me as an individual, but I'm not sure being the centre of the known universe would have led me to being the curious, adventurous resilient person I became.

That honestly just sounds like normal parenting to me.

Why do all the 'gentle' parents on here think the rest of us are going round constantly shouting and screaming at our kids? Every one of them has mentioned it. 😂
I don't think everyone is going around screaming. A lot of people I know, whatever they call it, tend to fall broadly into an authoritative approach to parenting, with some using a more authoritarian approach at times with the more Supernanny-style techniques to greater or lesser degree.

I do think that there's a lot more drifting into authoritarianism than some parents would like to admit to. The amount of times on here children are called awful things for being children, babies and young children and considered to be manipulative, that adults need to take on boss mode and show them who's boss, that taking time to be respectful and empathetic to children makes them narcissistic, they think the universe revolves around them if you give them choices etc

@literalviolence The devil's in the definitions.

Explaining reasons in practice often seems to mean explaining them over and over again because in reality the child is not taking no (or whatever words one uses instead of the dreaded 'no') for an answer and couldn't care less what your reasons are. Not talking down to them in practice often means giving one year olds a long psychobabble explanation for why they're whacking the other child over the head. Not shaming them seems to mean ensuring they never feel ashamed of their behaviour - when in reality there are times when that's the perfectly appropriate emotion to feel.

Then your child goes out into the real world and realises that other people are not like his mummy they are complete wankers. He will have to learn new skills in order to work his way around so people don't jump on him. Let's hope that he doesn't suffer from anxiety when he learns that people are not nice and you do need a back bone to get on in life.

So what are you suggesting, exactly? That parents should treat their kids like shit so that they toughen up a bit? Because that is the logical conclusion of your post.

Your thinking on this is utterly fucked up. Kids do not learn resilience and self confidence from having to cope with parents who don't respect them. Having their needs met and their feelings respected when they're very young enables them to develop the resilience and self confidence that they need to tackle problems when they are older.

The problem is you and others seem to assume that the alternatives are binary - gentle parenting, a very specific parenting philosophy, or not respecting your child. That's really odd you know? I think the only way to have a conversation about this is to get past all these meaningless platitudes about respecting feelings and meeting needs and get specific about what exactly that looks like in practice.

So you believe the way to prepare your children for the world is to treat them
as badly as the rest of the world will eventually? Because GP means understanding that the world is a big bad place and that home and parents is a safe haven. No, life ‘isn’t fair’ but if they know one place they won’t get judged, yelled at, told their likes and personalities aren’t wanted, that their achievements are minimal then surely it should be home. The rest of the world doesn’t need to meet your childrens wellbeing on every level, but parents do and there’s no need for the extra negativity of ‘but the world is shit so get used to it.’.

No it's when your child reaches school and your with other children who are unpleasant. Yes be kind but prepare them for the bullies. I have entered threads this week that are shocking to read gentle parents don't know what to do with their chaotic children. They have always spoken to them gently and gone down to their level and as soon as they enter school they mix with lunatics. Then the pressure comes in and they have to look cool so all that positive parenting goes out the window.

I teach my children not to put up with it and to discuss on themselves and their education.

*Focus on themselves and their education.