To think gentle parenting has made some kids unbearable to be around?

[KindButFirmFox]

Boundaries aren’t oppression.
Sometimes “gentle” just looks like “ineffective”.

AIBU to think balance has been lost between empathy and discipline?

DD - porridge or milk and breakfast biscuits
DS - black coffee and a cigarette.

Just kidding.

Or more likely will decide that Bratson is "highly gifted" 😂

Gentle parenting / permissive parenting , call it what you want . The kind hands brigade or hands are not for hitting , still results in little shits who dont behave🙄

Our children aren’t loud in public, they don’t scream or screech. We don’t physically abuse them. As someone who only left the UK fairly recently I very rarely ever encountered loud children beyond young babies who have just learned how to make noises.

How is authoratitive parent with clear and consistent boundaries permissive?

I'm also 42 and also have a very biddable child and one who is less so. What you're saying is my considered responses to behaviour are somehow lesser than your 'dunno what I'd do, likely leave'

Also, nowhere did I say if comfort your child, just that I'd apologise for them having their toy snatched. Which is literally just modelling manners to children. 'sorry he took teddy Belinda, here you go'

Physical violence isn't the answer.

No, she isn’t as yet overly interested, but I think part of that is you have to be sat down to watch the telly, you can’t be rolling around on the floor, playing with toys etc, so it typically gets switched off fairly swiftly.

You are absolutely correct. It's not just the the practice, but the entire premise which is flawed and was always set to fail except perhaps with a tiny, select group of children, if they did not have to live in the real world.

Ineffective parenting (which is what I call Gentle parening) fails from the outset by positioning the child's emotions as the centre of everything, encroaching on other people's right to boundaries, and fostering entitlement and an inability to handle real world behaviours, requirements and challenges.

When you add to that the reality that those who prefer ineffective parenting are usually exactly the people who should be avoiding it, due to their own huge biases in favour of their children and inability to understand that little Jasper is considered a painful pain in the arse by most of those around him, it has been a recipe for disaster.

The Gentle (Ineffective) parents of the world are the dog owners who refuse to put their dog on a leash and keep telling you how friendly their dog is as you try to rescue your terrified baby from their unwanted attentions. They just will not listen.

Excessive emotional accommodation undermines resilience and creates self centred children.

See "Gentle Parenting Is Creating a Generation of Entitled Children” by Louise Roberts, The Telegraph (2024) which documents how child-centered discipline erodes authority and produces demanding, uncooperative behavior.

And "Why Gentle Parenting Backfires” by Dr. John Rosemond, Parenting by the Book newsletter (2023) which cites clinical observations that children raised without clear hierarchy view themselves as the most important person in every interaction.

You will not get any of the ineffective parents to listen to you though, and when their child meets the entirely predictable consequences of their own ineffective parenting, cannot manage socially, is a bully who becomes bullied, is friendless, cannot rself regulate, hold down a job or otherwise has huge struggles because their parent has not raised them to live in a society and they think the universe revolves around their feelings, the parents will blame everyone but themselves.

https://www.timesnews dot net/ living/family/john-rosemond-why-gentle-parenting-is-a-cult-mentality/article_4662d8a6-6a97-11ed-9e4f-6be439fd7d45.html

Yep.
I used to work in a school and there was a coterie of parents who would arrive at the door of the classroom with a complaint locked and loaded if the teacher or TA had had words with Little Johnny.

A friend of mine, a kind, gentle and very experienced TA had a complaint made against her by a particularly deluded parent because she had the temerity to expect an indolent, insolent and arrogant 10 yr old to actually do some bloody work. She was cleared, but she had a term's stress over it. TAs are paid peanuts, and all work hours of unpaid overtime, but parents like that make them wonder why they bother.

Said child (I also had the joy of his company) will, at the rate he's going, leave school barely literate and functionally innumerate while thinking he's a demigod and expecting society to pay his bills.

Another parent was constantly danced around by the school lest she complain county. I wish county would stand up for the headteachers who refuse to pander to parents like that.

Did you ever see the episode of Doc Martin that had a pair of gentle parenters moving into the village, and their kid was a nightmare? They ignored their kid's bad behaviour, like keying cars, because telling him off turned it into a "child-centric moment." 😂

Yep, I know a few people with feral children because they’re not being parented

”Darling would you mind using your indoor voice” at screaming child in a library
”Let’s use kind hands please” at their child literally clouting another child in the head.
”We need to leave now, so please put your shoes on nicely” at tantrumming toddler rolling around on the floor kicking.

FFS.

Tell your child they will be immediately removed from the situation if they cannot behave, failing that get them in a fireman’s lift and bodily remove them.

Stop negotiating. These children are going to be unemployable.

In my experience the problem is when the parents think they are gentle parenting but they've slipped into permissive parenting without realising. Or those who are permissive parenting all along but thinking they are gentle parenting.

I've seen it with quite a few people over the years and the problem is always the parents denial / inability to realise they were not actually gentle parenting when they completley kick off when they are ironically gently challenged by someone quite close to them on their parenting.

It always does, and nobody can ever give us a definition of gentle parenting.
I was chucked out of a gentle parenting group on FB for suggesting using the vanishing chair for sleep issues. Apparently it's traumatising.

For me, one of the objections is the explaining. No child understands things at an adult level. That's the definition of being a child. "Because I say so" is sometimes necessary and sufficient.

Yabu. It’s got nothing to do with gentle parenting. Or different examples introduced in this thread such as kind hands etc. I think I gentle parent my son, but he knows consequences and boundaries. I just don’t find hitting etc.as parenting method.

I think it's such a snapshot of kids you see when out and about. Even the greatest of (especially very young) kids can throw a massive wobbler, and as a parent, you can know that is not the moment for going in all guns blazing.

I had a hilarious incident outside a supermarket the other day.

I bought a, usually forbidden, flavoured water for my toddler. Inside the shop I gave this massive talk - its a sharing drink, you have to share it with me, I'll be taking it off you at the car, no fuss when I do etc. All very stern.

Went outside and after drinking some he came out with this tiny, ever so polite voice saying "would you like some mummy, it's so lovely, let's share it, thank you for giving it to me".

A passing elderly lady basically just melted on the spot.

10 minutes earlier I'd been issuing all manner of threats running around tkmaxx trying to save their inventory from crashing to the floor.

It's easy to just reinforce your own opinion that kids are now all a certain way and parents don't put their foot down if you're looking for the bad behaviour, because all kids act out sometimes. And it's oh so noticeable when they do. But really, they're strangers; you're just seeing for a moment of their day.

I don't think anyone would consider me a gentle parent, but I have my moments when I look at my child and realise they're on the edge, tired, hungry, had enough but we can't leave yet - and I give more flexibility. I think everyone must sometimes. If you witness that moment in my week, sure you might think it was always that way. It's not though.

There are tons of articles explaining why it has failed, but the ineffective parents haven't read the memo yet, and are unlikely to do so :) sorry I was trying to add links and whatnot but I had some problems and I hit post too soon.

"Loving parents need to communicate two basic facts to children. First, you are the center of my world. Second, you are not the center of the world.
Gentle parenting communicates the first in a wholly dysfunctional way, and fails to communicate the second, because it is premised on the false notion that the correctness or incorrectness of all speech, behavior, and thought is dependent upon personal feelings—those of the child and those of the parent.

Actual parenting, by contrast, requires authoritative clarity about appropriate behavior to which parents (by virtue of their age and experience) have access, and children (by virtue of their youth and inexperience) do not. Moreover, it requires a concept of right and wrong that supersedes mere emotion."

lawliberty dot org/the-case-against-gentle-parenting/

The reality is that gentle parenting is NOT proven to work for all or most children and it's failed the real world test.

Don't expect any of the cult members on this site to listen to facts though :)

TBH “because I say so” is frequently necessary and sufficient when children are small. It’s the default really.

The idea that you can reason with a surly toddler and persuade them into good behaviour is a fantasy.

Yes, I expect the unbearable brats to be ready to tackle the world more heads on. I believe many will adjust and be happy assertive adults. Some won't adjust and will turn to "world is not fair" self pitty. Nothing is perfect.

I'm old but this is correct. My mother never entertained me and my sister - ever. We were a by-product of the marriage and were never asked to make decisions and had no power or influence whatsoever and the same went for most of my friends.

We had to make our own entertainment with our toys and games and crafts.

If I had asked Mum to play with us or arrange things for us to do, she would have laughed and it would have been a flat no.

My brother and his wife raised their kids as if they were little gods and they are a pair of obnoxious wankers.

The thing is, its not gentle parenting what is not working. People mistake gentle parenting to no parenting.
People dont want to lets say shout at their children but dont bother to stop them whatever they are doing wrong, I guess because they dont know how to do it the gentle way.

@Barnbrack Actually making a child apologize is the opposite of gentle parenting. In that situation I'd explain we don't snatcg, take item and give back to child snatched from and ID apologise. Then deal with any upset from my own child.

Genuine question but in your opinion when should children have to (or be made to) apologise for their actions? I know a child who has been gentle parented and never had to apologise for anything, including deliberately breaking or trying to take toys belonging to other children. Her mum gives a tinkley laughing "oh sorry about that, what's she like?" reply and that's it. She starts school next year but I can't imagine what a bewildering place she's going to find the world as she gets older and finds that not everything is going to as acceptable to other people as it is to her gentle parents.

And no, it is not a question of misunderstanding what gentle parenting is.

The premise is flawed from the ground up and for the vast majority of people, it does not work.

The ones who think it is working for them would get a huge surprise if they could hear what others around them are thinking :)

It's a pity for the kids though, only a minority of them who are ineffectively parented in this way wil thrive as adults in the real world.

You'll be no true Scotsmanned for this.

Genuinely curious, why do you think having clear and consistent boundaries is flawed and ineffective parenting?