To think gentle parenting is being taken too far?

[gpbs]

I've got DD 2yo and we meet up with mums with similar age kids from time to time, people I've known since pregnancy or since DD was very small. Examples are taken from some of those mums I know but also some mums I randomly encounter when out and about. Some of them take gentle parenting to the extreme I feel. A few examples:

1. Child A chasing Child B with a stick. Mum A says to Child A "sticks are for looking at, not for hitting" or "gentle hands please". Child A hits Child B with a stick "oh no we don't do that, do we? Hitting is mean!" (Wouldn't you grab the stick out of their hand before they hit?!)

1. Child A snatches the toy off Child B whilst B is holding it. Mum of A says "we don't snatch, do we? Can you give it back? Please give it back? Ok at least say sorry? No snatching please" as Child A walks off with the toy that she's just grabbed

1. One mum told me that she asks her son before brushing his teeth and if he says no, they don't brush it. Because body autonomy. He's 2.5.

1. Child throwing sand around, including at other children, whilst their mum calmly explains that it's best not to and how it would hurt other peoples eyes. Child not paying any attention, sand still being thrown, mum still talking at him. (Wouldn't you move them away from sand so it can't be thrown?)

All examples are things I've seen but all are about different children. Ages 1.5-3 in all.

And I know that's not what gentle parenting is MEANT to be about, but it's how the majority of parents who say they gentle parent actually parent.

I feel like I should clarify this, because the implication has been made that the posters saying that hitting is developmentally normal are only doing so because they are the ones with the kids doing the hitting: my son does occasionally get a bit of a whack from a school friend. Their games can get a bit boisterous and the child is a fair bit younger. I know this child’s parents and I trust them not to let this kind of thing go unaddressed. They’re great friends, he’s a likeable kid, and I’d never say “don’t hang out with X any more”.

(By contrast, incidentally, one of my (older) daughter’s friends gives her a fair amount of verbal abuse which upsets her a great deal. I feel as though she’s old enough to know better and I do warn my daughter about maybe distancing herself from her.)

I understand.

As a rhetorical question (I'm not actually requiring an answer) - what makes you think she's old enough to know better? Perhaps, an instinctive observation of her level of understanding etc. Comparison with other kids the same age. Things like that.

Those are the same feelings that move me to think that the boys who hit/push dd and co are "old enough to know better" - or at least, old enough to be taught not to behave this way.

I will say that at least one of the three boys has seemed to stop doing it as much. I don't think that happened without intervention; I know his mum and that both the nursery and his parents have worked really hard on teaching him not to. They haven't shrugged it off as developmentally normal behaviour.

I'll also say that they were all invited to dd's birthday party (except one who hadn't joined the nursery yet so we didn't know him).

So I'm really not treating 3yo boys as adult abusers. But I also really won't accept them simply pushing and hitting dd day after day, as if that's merely unpleasant and developmentally normal.

I said above that I don't dislike them as individuals. You can bet dd does though. You can bet she resents being pushed over. In fact she said the other day "F is so naughty, he's always pushing people over. Not me though, he tries but I don't fall over if I'm holding onto the table".

Ffs. It's not remotely ok and no one is going to convince me otherwise. Thankfully the nursery is taking it very seriously and not shrugging it off as normal.

Thanks for understanding. And honestly, I can see exactly where you’re coming from. Your little girl’s being hurt, and it doesn’t actually matter whether the people hurting her are doing something “normal”: it’s not okay and you want it to stop. (Poor thing, having to hold onto the table to stop herself falling over!) I’m glad things are improving a bit and that nursery are taking it seriously.

I will add that on the odd occasion my two get pushy with each other (fortunately they don’t do it with anyone else!) my “gentle parenting” does tend to go out the window a bit - I think a lot of us have a visceral reaction to our kids either hurting others or being hurt, and it takes a more phlegmatic temperament than mine to remember the “correct” (according to gentle parenting) thing to say at that moment. So I do very much understand the frustration with the whole “gentle hands, darling, gentle hands!” thing when you just want your child to stop being hurt.

To answer your question, I feel as though ten is old enough to know when you’re upsetting someone BUT I absolutely take your point - according to a primary teacher friend Year 5 is when the most friendship issues happen between girls, so I guess that’s normal too!

I’m afraid you are the one who is wrong. And your judgement is meaningless.

Thank you - it seems like we agree on a lot more of this issue than we disagree! And thank you for your sympathy for my dd. I hope yours is OK too after what happened to her.

To the advocates of ‘gentle’ parenting, it might be worth re-considering the assumption that children prefer feeling around in the social darkness rather than living life within the safety and comfort of rules, boundaries and routines.

This is my issue with gentle parenting discussions - you are always told you don't understand if you disagree. I just fundamentally disagree with the above. I do understand - I'm a teacher, a very well liked teacher, and a SENCO, and a mother and I understand child development. I'd imagine I've spent many more hours with small children then most people. I just don't think 3 minutes on the naughty step, or thinking step or whatever you call it is a problem. I think it's infinitely preferable to having a child who hits. I think I used it twice with my eldest. We also had no tolerance for tantrums at all. Our children were considerably better behaved than the vast majority of their friends from age 2. They're very well loved and very emotionally secure. I have no issue with how I raised them. I don't particularly have an issue with effective gentle parenting, I just don't think it's the only way.

Agreed. A level of damage control is needed

Exactly why the term gentle parenting is meaningless.

Let's have a discussion about whether naughty step/time out is harmful or not - at least that's a concept people all know what each other is talking about.

There are gentle parents who use a version of time out/naughty step and consider this reasonable and gentle (in comparison to maybe shouting, hitting, chaotic discipline for example)

There are gentle parents who think it is harmful in all the ways outlined above. Often because of an overall philosophy about reward and punishment being a problem.

There are gentle parents who have come across the arguments about it being harmful but somehow think if you define it differently, don't use the words "time out" or "naughty" then it's fine because it's the labelling which is the problem.

Or that are very against time out/naughty step because of all the criticism they have read about it but they will happily use other punishments (e.g. related consequences) because they haven't read criticism about those.

Gentle parenting is a meaningless phrase! If I could banish one word it would be this one. I wish we could actually have an interesting discussion about whether or not punishment, time out, etc (in any form) is necessary, useful, harmful etc without it devolving into cirular "but that isn't gentle parenting" arguments.

I actually think most arguments about parenting come down to a clash in belief systems about whether you think children start out inherently selfish and need to be trained into being reasonable humans, ie behaviour is normal but needs to be actively curtailed, or whether you believe children inherently want to be good, and behaviour is communication that something is wrong. And the linked beliefs of whether parents ought to be benign dictators vs experienced mentors.

The mistake people make is assuming that "gentle parenting" occupies a specific place on these belief systems when IME it does not - there are too many different definitions.

Lots of people spend a lot of time with children, and lots of people are teachers- that isn’t indicative of anything. And of course, anyone is free to think whatever they like.

I can remember having "tantrums" and feeling visceral distress that no one was listening to or helping me.

The children should be seen and not heard mentality is unfortunately still alive and well.

@BertieBotts

I actually think most arguments about parenting come down to a clash in belief systems about whether you think children start out inherently selfish and need to be trained into being reasonable humans, ie behaviour is normal but needs to be actively curtailed, or whether you believe children inherently want to be good, and behaviour is communication that something is wrong. And the linked beliefs of whether parents ought to be benign dictators vs experienced mentors.

This is very very true.

Added to which so so many people can’t decentre and realise a discussion about optimal child development isn’t a discussion about them, or accept people think that they are wrong without being upset and feeling under attack.

And the general public actually aren’t educated about the topic- it isn’t something many people have been taught about or researched- it isn’t like history or maths that everyone has done at school.

People are just going on ‘what they believe’, or ‘instinct’- which basically means they are largely reproducing what was done with them because that is what they feel comfortable with, with a bit of whatever is fashionable at the time thrown in.

People are just going on ‘what they believe’, or ‘instinct’- which basically means they are largely reproducing what was done with them because that is what they feel comfortable with, with a bit of whatever is fashionable at the time thrown in.

I think a lot of the time people do the opposite of what was done with them - this is why I will never say “because I said so” to my kids.

I agree though that a lot of the time people will say “X happened to me and it never did me any harm” without thinking about what sort of harm it might have done them (an extreme example is “there’s nothing wrong with hitting kids; my parents hit me and it never did me any harm”: well yes it did, because you think it’s okay to hit kids) or that it might harm a child with a different temperament: authoritarian parenting didn’t do my brother any harm, but it left me hypersensitive to criticism and lacking in self-esteem.

Also re: the phrase “gentle parenting” - agree that the spectrum is so large it’s become a meaningless term, but I also think it doesn’t help that the general perception of “gentle parents” is that they’re a bit superior and judgemental of other parents. My overwhelming experience of people who call themselves “gentle parents” is that they think they’re right 100% of the time, and a large proportion of them will judge you not just for your approach to your children’s behaviour but also for whether you have ever allowed them to touch plastic, eat anything but kale, or be in a room with a screen in it (I was thrown out of a GP forum for saying lotus births seemed a bit dangerous). It feels to me as though people are put off some really good parenting principles by some very negative associations.

Exactly, @ZebraDanios . There seems a strain of pomposity running through “gentle parenting”. How on earth do they know categorically that they have it absolutely right?

On another point, there’s a lot of talk here about hitting and wotnot. But very little about meanness . I am intrigued about this as I have come across a few children who are sneaky and mean and also have “gentle” type parents. Dealing with a toy car on the head must be far easier than recognising that you have a child inclined to spiteful words and being unkind.

Yes, I think a lot of people become pompous zealots about things- home educators can be like that, and vegans. It’s tribalism, just the same as teenagers grouping up according to the clothes they wear and the music they listen to and thinking they are superior to the ones who wear something else and listen to something else.

I think a lot of the time people do the opposite of what was done with them - this is why I will never say “because I said so” to my kids.

People try to, or think they are, but your upbringing permeates everything, be it your attitude to food, your emotional reaction to rejection or your attitude to risk- it’s a rare person who has processed all that and applied critical thinking to it all.

LOL I did not say "the naughty step is life threatening"! 😂 I said that social exclusion for children is life threatening. Children cannot look after themselves. Tell me how I am wrong? If you exclude a child permanently from their family (and society) and what do you reckon their odds of survival would be? Definitely less than children looked after by their parents and society. Children instinctively KNOW this, and that is why any form of (temporary) exclusion is using fear based tactics against them.

Come on, look alive please.

There seems a strain of pomposity running through “gentle parenting”. How on earth do they know categorically that they have it absolutely right?

Because, to be fair, the bits of it that are based in neuroscience are right. The fact that a toddler will find it much, much harder than an adult to sit still in a restaurant (for example) can’t really be argued with: that is just the way a toddler’s brain is wired. Same with impulse control - there’s general agreement even on this thread that small children’s impulse control is limited. The disagreements (from what I can see) centre around where you set your expectations: “well they’ll have to do x as an adult so the sooner they get used to it the better” vs “x is really hard for them, I’ll modify my response accordingly”.

The problem for me is that gentle parents sometimes seem to exist in a bit of a vacuum: the only thing that matters is their response to their child regardless of the effect this has on everyone else around them. Of course your child’s feelings matter, but what about the feelings of the child who is being hit? To take a less violent example, I read a problem on a GP page recently where a mum said she was fed up of her own mum undermining her parenting by saying that, when they visited her, she didn’t actually mind her grandson standing on her sofa (this was categorically banned at home). 95% of responses were “just refuse to visit her. Your child, your rules!”. This is where the criticism of gentle parenting being prescriptive and absolutist comes from: is it really better to damage your child’s relationship with his grandma than it is to modify your stance on one rule in a different person’s house?

I’ve come across sneaky and mean children with all ‘types’ of parents, the common denominator is that the parents are usually mean (either to the children, or each other or to people in general).

Sneaky is usually produced by poor internal understanding of right and wrong- children who have been ‘punished’ if they are caught doing something wrong, but never helped to actually understand why that thing is wrong. They are sneaky because in their family being sneaky works-if I don’t get caught thats all that matters.

People try to, or think they are, but your upbringing permeates everything, be it your attitude to food, your emotional reaction to rejection or your attitude to risk- it’s a rare person who has processed all that and applied critical thinking to it all.

Of course your upbringing permeates everything, but for every person who just replicates their own upbringing there must be another person who consciously tries not to. I’m not suggesting a huge amount of critical thinking is happening - more just “I never liked being shouted at so I’ll try not to shout at my kids”.

You don't agree with me using consequence doesn't make have the right to give such a narrative to me as a mum /a human being.

No, I don't agree with using punishments that activate biological fear responses in children. I think they're out dated *and bad for their developing brains. I've said time and time again that I completely agree with logic based consequences (and age appropriate natural consequences).

And, it's obvious you don't agree and opt to only use words and explanations and expressing love with cuddles.

At no point have I said that.

I worked with children who had received such suboptimal parenting/care they were taken away from their parents, and was trained how to effectively manage their (communicative) behaviour. The absolute worst thing we could have done to those children is given them more permissive/authoritarian parenting. That training has made it very clear for me where authoritative stops and authoritarian begins. It also made me very careful not to think it's okay for me to cross that line with my own child, just because he's mine.

Granted, I do cross that line. Parenting (+life) is fucking hard sometimes. I always apologise when I cross that line, and explain that it's not his fault that I started being shitty to him.

I don't purposefully act shitty to him as a behaviour management strategy.

Because, to be fair, the bits of it that are based in neuroscience are right.

Indeed.

People are informed about the science, and respond with ‘I don’t believe that’…

Well, fair enough, that’s your right- but I will file you along with the people who ‘don’t believe’ in evolution, dinosaurs, vaccines, the link between smoking and cancer or that Finland is real.

The neuroscience bits about what you can realistically expect from certain age groups I get. I try not to set my kids up to fail if that makes sense, ie if they've had a busy day and are tired I wouldn't expect them to cope with a 5pm shopping trip.

It's the bit where you talk at them at length about their feelings when they are at an age where they can only manage simple instructions that I don't get.

I mentioned earlier that my daughter has a “difficult” friend. My daughter told me that before a playdate at our house said friend said she wanted to spend the playdate playing with slime up in my daughter’s room. Daughter said “I don’t think my mum would be very happy about that”, said friend said “well we won’t tell her, duh!” as if she was stupid for not thinking of that. What seemed to strike my daughter was not so much the idea of doing something “wrong” and keeping it quiet from a parent but more the tone she used - like she was so used to doing stuff without her parents knowing that there was never even a sense that was a bit sneaky or wrong, it was just what you did.

I actually really like her parents but they seem to operate an odd system of being super strict about some things and totally laissez-faire about others - which I guess links back to my earlier post, about how by far the most common parenting I see is parents not even noticing what their kids are getting up to.

I don’t think there’s ever any harm in acknowledging a child’s feelings but I totally agree, surely a simple “ah, that must be frustrating/annoying/scary for you”
would do rather than a scripted monologue.