Is gentle parenting effective

[Lifeisinteresting]

I was born in mid 80s so my parents parented like typical 80s parents, more tough love than softer approach. My daughter was born in the 00s we took a boundaries, firm but fair approach. I see posts on MN or with my friends who now have young kids who gentle parent and can't help but think half the reactions are down to not setting reasonable boundaries and responses.

Hmm I don't agree with pp insisting gentle parenting is all about boundaries really. I have 2 friends who are very committed to gentle parents. Read all the advice about it and are quite intentionally following it. I do think it is basically a very talky form of permissive parenting. Every child is different though so it would be hard to tell unless I knew hundreds of children which approach really worked well for the kids in the long run. I think it seems anecdotally to mean children are less "pleasant" as they seem to do what they like more and aren't held to manners as much etc. But whether they will end up happier adults who aren't people pleasers, that remains to be seen.

Or just parenting. 🫣

I think they might end up expecting people to please them - too much negotiation and explaining everything every single time creates quite self centred teens/adults. Those of us with older children can testify to this. It also creates problems in the classroom.

I am old - kids are teens - I just think 'gentle parenting' is a terrible name. And leads to some really wishy washy 'gentle hands Toby' ineffectual parenting. From what I gather a lot of it is basically what used to be called attachment parenting so assume the child wants to do their best, help them - scaffold them to do it and put your relationship above everything else. Keep that strong and everything else will follow.

I do sort of cringe for many parents of 2 to 7 year olds that I see out and about. Many of them doing loads of absolutely pointless interventions from 'gentle hands' through 'why are you acting like this I've told you before' to absolutely losing their shit and dragging kids home. But I suspect I was just as bad. Parenting small children is hard and we should try and bouy each other up, rather than criticising (like I just did).

Yes, it's the most sensible approach imo. These are the basics of gentle parenting, but it gets a bad rap on social media because so many people see the word 'gentle' and assume it means 'permissive'. Then every time they see parents out in the wild being permissive they assume it's an attempt at gentle parenting and it reinforces the negative stereotype.

There are also lots of people who think they're gentle parenting but are actually being permissive. That doesn't mean gentle parenting doesn't work; it just means you have to actual do it for it to be effective.

@KeineBedeutung we were young parents so took what we liked from our parents style, removed what we didn't like 80/90s parent yelling and applied common sense without over thinking it. Basically we followed our gut/winged it. DD has just graduated med school so hopefully the winging it worked.

As many have said before, gentle parenting works on gentle children! It largely worked on my eldest (it is probably also more effective where you are not juggling the needs and wishes of multiple children). It resulted in my youngest DD getting essentially quite naughty by age 5. A year of more traditional approaches and she's a happier, well behaved, calmer member of the family.

I dislike the fact that it:

• expects you to validate all children's feelings. Young children often react disproportionately to things and display feelings that are rather selfish. I think an important part of parenting is not to validate excessive feelings or antisocial emotions but to help children put things in proportion.

• places no real value on obedience. I am the parent, I do not have to explain the why of every decision to an emotionally immature being who does not understand. I expect my children to obey adults just as I obey those in positions of authority. I don't expect the air hostess to explain why I have to follow instructions to evacuate the aircraft, I am going to do as I'm bloody told.

• does not really have an answer for a situation where there either: there are no natural consequences, or the child does not give a shit about the natural consequences. Sometimes only a punishment will prevent a repeat of intolerable behaviour.

• it fails to recognise that children feel safe when a parent is in charge. Children given constant decisions to make, who feel like they are in control, often rapidly become anxious. They are desperate for parents to take charge.

The worst behaved students I taught were those whose parents either did the whole tinkly laugh "oh dear what will we do with him!" permissive parenting, or those who'd shout at their kids constantly and had a "do as I say, no questions asked" attitude. The two ends of the spectrum; certainly not the gentle parented ones.

Gentle parenting should really just be called "parenting" - it's effective, it's respectful, it's authoritative rather than authoritarian.

The options aren't gentle parenting Vs losing your shit. From what I've read the style of parenting that produces best outcomes for kids long-term is authoritative parenting (not authoritarian). I would say gentle parenting is far off authoritative parenting. Too much talking, not enough clarity for kids.

Oh and every single parent I know in RL who describes themselves as a "gentle parent" is in fact a permissive parent who:

• imposes no firm boundaries
• has quite a selfish impulsive child
• risks a lot of bad/unsafe behaviour because there's no real punishment, so its "worth" the "consequences" they often do not care about.

I think it's the opposite of authoritative parenting as you give the child a lot of authority over things they probably don't understand and talk to them loads which probably just confuses them.

Being a nice parent isn't the same as gentle parenting.

Gentle parenting is authoritative, it's the absolute primary rule of gentle parenting.

I would say gentle parenting is far off authoritative parenting. Too much talking, not enough clarity for kids

Agree with this - gentle parenting relies on lengthy verbal communication over everything, kids often either tune it out or just miss the point. They often simply are not emotionally mature enough to understand.

Does gentle parenting work ?
Not if my experience in shops , parks and any public spaces is anything to go by.
Parent to screaming , running around, rolling on the floor, bashing into other people child :’ oh darling, we use our quiet voice in here, don’t we?’

Child: ‘NO, NO, NO’….
Gentle parent: ‘If you push the trolley into that lady,,it might hurt her, so we have to be gentle, don’t we? Child : ‘ha ha ha’…….

One of my friends follows gentle parenting as per the popular social media accounts and some of it is permissive. I do agree that gentle parenting could be authoritative, but it's not how most of the social media accounts seem to show it. My friends kids run wild and I don't invite them over anymore as they just run through the house tipping stuff out, doing whatever they want and won't listen. They are also home educated (unschooled) so don't have any external authoritative figures like teachers. Our childminder I would say uses authoritative methods but my friend wouldn't send her kids there because of the way CM talks to the kids, e.g. she will say a firm no to things, she will sit one child out of the activity if they are e.g. hitting.

I think it's hard to quantify gentle parenting as in theory it is authoritative but a lot of the social media accounts seem to offer at least some permissive methods.

I've gentle parented, although I didn't know that's what it was called until recently.

It's worked very well for me.

I generally tend to role my eyes that anyone who describes themselves as having a parenting ‘style’ as opposed to just parenting their child. Our parenting choices are shaped by a number of different things (our personalities, our children’s personalities, the situation, our childhoods etc) and so to reduce it to following a ‘method’ has always seemed somewhat reductionist.

Oh and i don't think its a problem if a parent gets a little angry or upset once in a while. Children need to see that their parents are people with feelings too, and that their actions have the potential to make others unhappy with them. Parental anger is a natural consequence. There are children in both my DC class who can't cope with a raised voice because they've never heard one, they are afraid of the range of human emotion but also as a result lack the skills to respond to other DCs emotions effectively.

My DC have learned that certain things will make mummy angry (deliberate unkindness, unsafe behavior etc) and important this a) deters that behavior but b) they've learned about interacting with someone who's upset and how to apologise properly/make someone feel better after you've upset them. This is important.

Where does this idea come from, that gentle parenting = long winded verbal explanations? I've read about six different books on gentle parenting and none of them have recommended this!

For example, say a two year old threw a toy. A gentle parenting approach would be to say 'no throwing' the first time it happened. Second time it happened you would say 'no throwing' and remove the toy. You might then find a safe alternative ('you can throw this ball in the garden') if possible, or distract them with something else entirely if not.

That's gentle parenting - authoritative but respectful. A permissive approach would be to allow the behaviour to continue, an authoritarian approach would be to punish the 'disobedience' of the second throw.

This may not be what you think of when you think of gentle parenting and there are probably lots of people claiming to gentle parent who aren't doing this but if you read the experts (Philippa Perry, Dr Beckie, Alfie Kohn etc) this is what they're saying.

I think the original gentle parenting movement needs a rebrand as it’s obviously been overtaken by permissive sorts who put it all over social media. A bit like HSP and empath. The people who talk about it a lot are not the people actually coping with it.

I turned my eldest around when we abandoned authoritarian parenting in favour of gentle parenting. He turned out to be ASD and authoritarianism was escalating every conflict. Disastrous.

Again, that's just parenting.

DS came home from a history lesson and said to me Marxism as a theory isn’t that bad is it, it actually kind of makes sense
and I agreed because he is right it is just (a) it doesn’t necessarily work in practice and most importantly (b) the people who utilised it used it for them own purposes and changed the theory of it

and gentle parenting is exactly the same. It is a really good parenting technique but
(a) requires the right child and the right understanding of that child
(b) the parent to understand and follow through
(c) like everything the occasional adaption as needed

i have done so with mine - for me the core values of my parenting is not NO corporal punishment ever at all and to avoid arbitrary and unnecessary punishment.
I would also like to say no shouting but I am human and have a 16 and 12 year old that doesn’t happen but when it does and everyone has calmed down I also apologise for my behaviour

@tiswa i think just this. I think it’s unrealistic to not shout at a child once or twice in their lifetime. Hell my husband is mid 40s and his parents shout at him at least once a month 😂.

These children can be really difficult in school. They Think they are justified in behaving badly and expect long and protected negotiation for the simplest of requests. A teacher doesn’t have time to talk about feelings with individual children every time she says ‘right let’s open our books and put the date and title in.’

Well what does that mean, 'just parenting'? Because a hell of a lot of people aren't following these methods, as this thread illustrates. It's not like everyone in the world is just doing this automatically and without conscious effort.