To think gentle parenting is actually permissive

[theedgeoftheforest]

Even though those who favour it are very insistent it isn’t - well, it is, isn’t it?

Its all ‘they have no impulse control’ (they do) ‘you’re expecting too much’ (you’re not) ‘the teachers reward and sanction, complain to the school’ (nonsense.)

I know post after post will insist that gentle parenting does have boundaries and to be fair I see gentle parents talk a lot about boundaries but they don’t seem to have a clue how to implement them and their kids run rings round them.

But that's also not what gentle parenting can be or is 'meant' to be if you're following it as a 'movement' and not just saying you like to be a gentle person (which is totally different)

Gentle parenting would be saying 'I can't let you play with these as they could break and someone could get hurt' and then removing them 🤷‍♀️ So the real issue is not that your friend is a GP, but that she has interpreted whatever she thinks being gentle means to her parenting and is applying it to poor effect.

What's clear from this thread is that gentle parenting is used to cover a whole range of parenting behaviours, but if we are talking about gentle/authoratitive parenting at the core of what it's intended to be, a lot of these examples of poor parenting are not examples of gentle parenting. They are parents who are ineffectual, who don't want discord or confrontation, who don't actually know how to communicate properly with their children. Not the exclusive domain of gentle parenting as we know! The whole point of GP is about effective communication.

And gentle parenting absolutely advocates physically removing items or your own child from situations. I wouldn't let DC bang about glass things either, especially at someone else's house. You don't need to be an authoritarian or 'traditional' parent to physically intervene when your child is at risk of causing or suffering harm. That's just being a responsible human being.

@doodleschnoodle I hear you. She prefers to broach things like tiny steps, anything short of being the baddy who says no, because on the rare occasion they do that with him he blows a fuse. He's a nice kid, genuinely sweet, it's just that firm resistance to what he wants is so rare it freaks him out. Maybe she has has just interpreted it wrongly, but it has a lot to answer for is so many people are buggering up in this way thinking that's how it's done. Like when he started flinging my husband's valuable books from the shelf and her way of trying to stop him without causing him upset was, "Now darling, I don't think there are any fun pictures in those for you."
I couldn't have cared less what enjoyment he might derive from those books, they weren't for him, call him off them! 😂

Yes I honestly think 'gentle' is a pretty bad name for it at this point as it's just got too much baggage. I prefer respectful or authoritative as I think that reflects more the kind of ethos about it. I don't really think of myself as being 'gentle', I'm just trying to treat my DC respectfully and find non-punitive ways of dealing with stuff.

I hate judgey parents like that. It’s no wonder many mothers have poor mental health (and it usually is the mothers who get judged).

Gentle parenting is supposed to be a type of authoritative parenting.

"Authoritative parenting is a parenting style that involves a close, nurturing relationship between parents and children, while also setting clear expectations and guidelines. Authoritative parents are supportive and responsive, but also firm and fair. They use disciplinary methods as a tool to support their children, rather than as punishment."

Authoritative parenting does not include violent punishment.

You may be thinking of authoritarian parenting.

I think that's why public perception of gentle parenting is so low - the ones quietly getting on with it with well behaved kids no one notices but the self proclaimed ones with out of control kids who judge others who everyone knows about.

I got told off by self declared gentle parents for insisting my kids walked with me on school run - mad with cars and people - but also there was one of me and three of them and we don't drive so to go anywhere often needed public transport so good practise to stay close- gentle reminders no shouting. Their kid went off ahead and as I was explain yet again why no my kids weren't going to be allowed to run off - their child was hit by a car luckily going slow - loads of shouting etc - week later kid was back to being way ahead dodging cars and they're back to lecturing me about my parenting.

There's not really any "official definition" of gentle parenting either though, except everyone who thinks they are doing it thinks they are doing it the best way!

The facebook groups are insane and so unrealistic. Things like never telling your child their behaviour/actions have made you sad because they should never feel responsible for your feelings. I want my child to know their actions impact on other people's feelings.

There's one gentle parenting facebook group which recently said that gentle parenting is not authoritative (against the person who coined the phrase "gentle parenting") because an adult should never be in authority over a child. So they've invented a whole new definition which is definitely permissive. They're the parents going round smugly telling you to allow your child to play in traffic.

Yes but gentle parenting doesn’t involve no boundaries either, my point is it’s about the individual not the supposed parenting “style”.

Gentle Parenting is not what most people interpret it as. It uses boundaries, rules, discipline and mutual respect. Many people confuse gentle parenting with permissive parenting, when they aren't at all similar.

I did gentle parenting, naturally. I have a well-adjusted, kind, caring, intelligent, happy teenaged boy. He has never had a tantrum in his life. Not one. He was never, ever allowed to misbehave in restaurants, put himself or others at risk (not including safe "risk") and has never once been in any sort of trouble. He didn't get so much as a detention throughout his entire school life.

Obviously, much of this is down to the individual child's personality, but the things that self-proclaimed "gentle parents" let their children do, are sometimes quite unbearable. I see out of control children constantly, and more often than not, they are, "just expressing themselves", "being children", "having fun" etc.

Running around a restaurant is not having fun. Screaming on a busy train is not expressing themselves. And the parents meekly say, "Don't scream, darling..." and expect their child to stop? Frustrating.

Bollocks. Have you never heard of the Marshmallow Test? That was done with toddlers.

Stanford marshmallow experiment - Wikipedia

Marshmallow Test Experiment In Psychology (simplypsychology.org)

Tantrums are definitely a personality thing. My SD was no much of a tantrum-mer. If told no to something she wanted, we'd have to endure some sulking, but she was quite easily distracted. My daughter is completely different. It is definitely tempting at times to just give her what she wants to avoid a public display, or having to drag her home from an event we've been looking forward to. We don't, because that would obviously make the issue worse, but it's worth remembering when parents are congratulating themselves on their child never having a tantrum that the unintended consequence might make parents be embarrassed enough to avoid tantrums by being permissive.

The upside is that whilst SD can be a bit apathetic and gives up quite easily when challenged, DD will goes for what she wants with a determination bordering on ruthlessness, which will serve her well. Mostly. We're still trying to tame the ruthless bit. There are definitely a lot of days when I think of SD's easy going disposition with fondness and wish DD was the same way!

The marshmallow study was not measuring developmental capacity for impulse control. Go back and read the information in your link again including what they were investigating and statistical power of the sample.

I've posted on a GP thread before about this because I was the child at home used as a punching bag by my sibling, whose "big feelings" had to be catered to at all times. Any form of punishment, isolation or shaming was described, on said thread, by numerous self-titled gentle parents, as unacceptable and authoritarian. Instead, they said, gentle parenting dictates that the child that's hitting is cuddled and soothed and their "big feelings" explored.

I pointed out that the child that's been hit might also have some "big feelings" and there were crickets from said parents (other than one, I think, who suggested that the hit child would get cuddled first).

This is part of the problem - pretty much everything that gentle parents say isn't gentle parenting, is described elsewhere as gentle parenting by another set of gentle parents.

Permissive parenting can often be due to low expectations of children, rather than lazy parenting. When they truly believe that the misbehaviour in question is inevitable, they feel they must permit it.

Actually children of all ages can often have much more understanding and ability than many people think. We do them no favours when we have low expectations

No as I have teens that are well behaved, academically high achievers and are kind (most importantly) so no I don't think that. I was brought up by pretty liberal parents, 'gentle parents' and again no problems.

I've already addressed this up thread but authoritative parenting can absolutely include physical discipline as ling as it is not overly harsh along with other punishments. If you read the research, rather than just an article, on authoritative parenting and how it is categorised it is high levels of warmth and high levels demands with discipline.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that, I do not think hitting ever fits in with the parameters of authoritative parenting. Hitting is never warm or respectful. Hitting is widely regarded by most experts as abuse and it is thankfully now illegal in many developed countries as a result.

It's not about what you think it is about what the research actually says! I agree with you that hitting a child is wrong but authoritative parenting in academia absolutely does include smacking and other punishments. Feel free to read my other posts.

I have.

Sarah Ockwell-Smith, who founded the gentle parenting movement, disagrees with you.

https://sarahockwell-smith.com/2019/06/03/how-to-be-a-gentle-not-permissive-parent/

The APA definition of Authoritative Parenting is:

Authoritative. In this parenting style, the parents are nurturing, responsive, and supportive, yet set firm limits for their children. They attempt to control children's behavior by explaining rules, discussing, and reasoning. They listen to a child's viewpoint but don't always accept it.

Hitting does not fall into that definition. Whether parents who otherwise consider themselves authoritative also often hit does not change the fact that hitting is not a part of authoritative parenting.

The reason for the incongruence on this, I think, is because of the lay understanding/use of authoritative as being "good parenting" while permissive is "too lax" and authoritarian is "too strict".

It's true that under modern parenting standards and according to research, physical discipline is never necessary and has been found to be harmful, so it's no longer considered good parenting.

But if you're talking about the original definitions of those three styles, they're describing parental approaches as observed, and the authoritative one did include physical punishment, just less often and less harsh. Of course that likely is a product of the time of the study. But there's not been any more recent study excluding physical punishment from the definition, so it's not correct to say that it can never be part of that approach, even though it's likely that if you surveyed modern parents, the authoritative ones would be even less likely to use physical punishment today.

Arguably, Sarah Ockwell-Smith popularised the term, she didn't invent it. And she certainly didn't invent the idea (and has never claimed to).

That's not research. Sarah Ockwell-Smith is just a parent who wrote a book. I don't think she has an academic background in child development.

The APA definition is very vague. They use the words 'firm limits' but don't define what this means but the in the research setting 'firm limits' often meant using punishments.
This is one of the APA books on authoritative parenting https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4318109

I think the APA definition of authoritative parenting is deliberately vague and I think it is a bit of a cop out of them really. They have said that they believe spanking is harmful yet they still refer to the research on authoritative parenting leaving out the bits they now no longer endorse.