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.

Can I ask what you do for a living Bertie? I’m just curious.

@BertieBotts Sarah Ockwell-Smith talks about gentle parenting as though she invented it - I’m not saying she did, but she’s certainly claimed it as her own personal ”brand”.

Apparently she’s now written no less than fourteen books (after claiming the first was the only one you’d ever need). And she’s written a new and improved version of one of them and has implored people not to buy the old one second-hand (make of that what you will).

The principles have been around for decades. It was my grandmother who taught me to never leave a baby to cry (she was a nurse and a social worker), she was taught the same by her mother before 1900…

People have just added a hashtag and a catchy name, and lost all sense of proportion.

I'm a SAHM currently but I'm looking at retraining as OT. Why?

I realise that Sarah Ockwell-Smith wrote a book called Gentle Parenting in I think 2016, but the term was in use on parenting forums since somewhere in the mid to late 2000s. Gentle Discipline seemed to predate it (around since at least 2001) and Positive Parenting was used prior to this, though Positive Parenting differs slightly in that it was actually a specific method. That got used as a catch-all term too though, particularly in the 90s when it was popular and often used as a sort of counter to the debate of the day, which was about whether smacking was still appropriate.

Also Sarah Ockwell Smith does exactly the same as most of the gentle parenting proponents on social media - lots about what not to do, not much in the way of actual structure of what TO do, or how/why it works. So even if you're saying people are using her term, it's meaningless because she doesn't seem to have a method. In fact I just went and looked up what she says in her book and all she says is that it's parenting choices which are "informed, educated and made out of respect and empathy". It's such a wide definition you could literally put anything into it, including plenty of things which Sarah Ockwell-Smith doesn't like despite them being supported by evidence.

@BertieBotts Tbh I just have a bee in my bonnet about SOS: if she didn’t claim to have invented gentle parenting herself, she certainly does nothing to disabuse anyone of the notion (and I agree she has very little actual constructive, practical advice, just a lot to say about what we’re all doing wrong).

I'm not a fan of her either. I read her books when my son was tiny and there was really very little in there that was helpful.

@BertieBotts you just write a lot of posts which sound quite authoritative about child development so I just assumed that was your background or current role.

@BertieBotts I just wanted to add that I read something you wrote on another thread about how part of the problem with gentle parenting is that people who are already inclined towards it read about it, come to the conclusion they’re being too controlling, and then end up sliding towards permissiveness (whereas the people who are inclined towards authoritarian parenting and could maybe do with being a bit less controlling are never going to read about it in the first place) and thought it was the most sensible thing I’d ever heard about gentle parenting. Just saying!

Yes, you can find writing advocating for child-centred parenting starting in around 1907 I think - I wrote this down somewhere but I've lost where I saved it to. That was the oldest record I found. I am sure the same ideas must exist previous to this. It might just have been there that I stopped looking. I'll go and follow the trail again at some point.

Something I have noticed is that a lot of people writing about shifts in parenting and the way children behave is that they all seem to think they have a unique idea of "Oh we shouldn't go back to when it was really REALLY strict, that would be too much, but we should go back to this exact period which in my rose tinted memory was perfect."

But you can actually find people suggesting this in all different generations. I am not going to give the supposed Plato quote because I'm sure everyone's seen it before. But I quite suspect that there's a combination of there has always been a variance in parenting standards (some people are much too lax, some are much too harsh, most people are somewhere in between, most people are doing their best) the exact methods people use probably don't matter a huge amount for the majority of children, and at the same time cultural norms about how formal society is and how respect ought to be shown and whether a hierarchy exists based on age and status, these change over time.

Also I think as we get older we get exposed to more of a wider selection of society/people/practices. So if you grew up with certain standards being enforced and then you're seeing around you a combination of these standards being taken less seriously AND you're noticing that there are people who don't even enforce the generally accepted standards of today, then you might well link them, but in fact people who don't enforce the standards of the day have always existed. I certainly remember my neighbour being all "Don't do that Ashley" while Ashley proceeded to run riot everywhere, and my mum complaining about it to a friend. I doubt that she read any gentle parenting literature because it wasn't a thing.

@BertieBotts so why do you think professionals who have worked with children for decades are saying standards of behaviour have rapidly declined in the last 10 years compared to whatever came before? Do you think they’re misremembering, being untruthful or exaggerating for some reason?

It’s just on every thread I see you arguing that nothings changed, X or Y has always been that way, and giving long explanations as to why that are mainly just personal opinion or interpretation. Until now (I’m definitely not saying you’ve misrepresented yourself, it’s obviously just an impression I incorrectly got) I assumed you had some kind of professional knowledge of child development, but if not, why wont you believe those who do?

Go over to the Staffroom sub thread and have a read.

Have a look at these:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-68317126.amp

https://news.stv.tv/scotland/major-report-finds-worrying-increase-in-violence-in-scotlands-schools

I appreciate these pertain to Scotland but that’s because the report was carried out there. But it mirrors what professionals are saying south of the border.

Why are you so keen to make out there isn’t an issue?

@Naptrappedmummy I am a professional who has worked with children for two decades and I agree behaviour and attention have got worse (though I would say that in my experience the big shift came after Covid). But I would argue that 5-year-olds being addicted to Minecraft and teenagers accessing the dark web and bullying each other on SnapChat is a bigger problem than parents not sleep-training their children and explaining why they shouldn’t do x rather than just saying “no”.

I assumed you had some kind of professional knowledge of child development, but if not, why wont you believe those who do?

The strengths and limitations of teachers knowledge and training has been covered already.

You seem to keep asking the same question, presumably because you don’t like the answers you keep being given? That doesn’t mean the answer will change.

Basically you don’t like what the professionals are saying so you’re disregarding it and accusing me of doing this in reverse? Funny.

After covid is a shockingly short space of time for this to become noticeable. But toddlers aren’t accessing the dark web or bullying others on Snapchat, and the issues start there according to the poster we were discussing earlier. I would be interested in your take on this.

Not at all, have you actually read any of what I have written?

It’s all plainly there to see.

Also, you say ‘the professionals’ as if teachers are the only available source of information on children- they aren’t. They are professionals in education and as such they have some useful insight into that.

It's a personal interest rather than a professional one but that's why I'm hoping to go into a field like this because I think it's interesting and useful. My eldest is 15 and I've been reading parenting books before he was born, I was also fascinated by programmes about child development (child of our time) and Supernanny and whatever the others were in the 90s/00s.

Zebra yes!! I think this is very true and I think it's a huge problem with the identity side of gentle parenting, but I think that actually, realising that it's sort of become this in-group/out-group identity thing has explained something about that to me. Because I was totally baffled as to why barely any of these authors are addressing this, and/or why all the literature and resources (I had considered to be "gentle parenting aligned") are aimed at the parent who initially leans too authoritarian.

I think it was Ross Greene's book where I read a stat that says actually 80% of the parents that came to their clinic for support (he wrote The Explosive Child and works with behaviourally challenging children and their parents, later schools too, but the original clinic was for parents) typically lean towards authoritarian. That surprised me hugely because of the parents I come across online struggling with behaviour, it seems more evenly split or to lean towards more of them being too permissive. I remember wondering is this is a general shift in society - or what, why is my own perception of this so different to his experience?

I think what I hadn't realised is that the group of parents I've encountered online is an entirely different demographic to parents, as a whole, and probably an entirely different demographic again to the kinds of parents who are likely to seek out help from a behaviour clinic with the behaviour of their challenging child. And I do think now I've made that link that the concept of gentle parenting is an in-group/out-group, identity based around "We're not THAT" where that = broadly, authoritarian - yes, it makes way more sense that this group would veer into permissive on average (which doesn't mean every single self-identified gentle parent is permissive).

I can't tell if there has been a genuine shift in the numbers but I do know that when DS1 was little I felt like I was doing something genuinely subversive and radical and totally different and most people didn't seem to understand. How much of this was the in-group/out-group effect I don't know. I do remember it was one of these very very long MN threads that changed my mind - I have no idea who it was but someone said how is this special - this is basically what everyone does. Nobody wants to resort to punishment etc. We do plenty of encouragement, praise, modelling, setting up to succeed - most people only really punish for persistent or particularly serious issues. I realised there was a way bigger overlap between what I thought of as this "unique" thing of gentle parenting and how most people were parenting, and it changed my perspective.

But then I had two younger children in 2018 and 2021 so I'm back in toddler and early primary behaviour management again and it has changed. Undoubtedly. Gentle parenting (and people openly referring to it as such, not just the "overlap" that I had the epiphany about) is the norm and even the expectation in a lot of toddler/young child parenting spaces. People are sharing articles all over the place about how time out is harmful or alternatives to this or that. Nobody asks "Do you ever smack and do you think it's OK?" but people ask "What age does a child learn impulse control/empathy/etc" (and I have seen people claim some bizarre ages here like 7 - as though these are switches which turn on, which is not at all how it works).

And when I (rarely) visit online spaces about parenting teens I'm transported back in time to 2010 with all the Gen X parents again and then I see the change.

So something has changed - I think it's probably social media - but I don't know if this translates to a shift among all parents generally. I think the vast majority still parent according to their own common sense, whichever way that leans.

They are the professionals who see a high volume of children from a variety of backgrounds on a daily basis, and also see them learning and interacting with each other. I trust their judgement particularly when it’s fairly unanimous.

Do you always take what you read on the internet as Gospel truth?

Some random person on mumsnet posted and claimed to own a nursery and gave some opinions. That might be nice entertainment, but it really isn’t something to base any beliefs on.

Ok, that’s fine for you.

😂 so rude

Yes that’s exactly what I do, read 1 thing on the internet, take it as Gospel and then never listen to anyone else ever again.

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I'm interested in this honestly. And I take people at face value on here because what else can you do.

Most often I come across people who aren't giving a specific time period that behaviour has markedly changed. They are just claiming that it is different to their own childhood, which is not the same thing as people who have worked within childcare and educational settings saying they have worked in that area for decades and the shift has happened within that time. That is interesting and I do believe them, and I would also like to know why this is. But I also see a lot of people drawing conclusions they couldn't possibly know. Like people claiming that they "always know" which children are allowed (unlimited) screen time and which aren't. They don't know unless they have access to every child's home to find out whether or not their suspicion is correct. It's actually just a hunch, and the fact their hunch has been right the few times they had been able to verify it doesn't mean that it's right every single time.

I'm also curious why if there's such a clear marked shift in behaviour problems, why are none of the experts that talk about behavioural issues in schools talking about it? Is it just a UK problem? I hear about it on Mumsnet and UK based Reddit subs and in UK newspapers and UK based documentary series.

It's not that I'm discounting people's experience if they have seen a clear shift and can put a date on it. It's interesting if people's perceptions match up here. So far what I've come across is a more general grumbling about standards dropping and nobody has respect any more, which I feel like has been said forever.

No comment on the report I just posted?