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?

i did watch plenty of tv as a child when my parents were busy I have to admit. But while my parents let me do this they also took time to read us books and encourage other activities and I spent so much more time outdoors than kids do these days. I just think everything in moderation. We turned out just fine: Nothing wrong with the odd cartoon I say.

I totally agree.

I’m helping my son to bring up his daughter and we do have slightly different views on how to bring up a child.

I take her to play groups etc and some of the behaviour is atrocious, from children and their parents.

I’m very much “manners cost nothing” and expect age appropriate reasonable behaviour (she’s 2). We also have a strictish routine (dinner/bath/story with cuddles and milk/bed) but he’s much looser in his parenting.

if it was just him bringing her up I’d leave him to it but I’m not having a disrespectful child living with me 4 days a week. Although she’s my first GC and I do spoil her in some ways and she definitely gets away with more than my children did.

I give her 100% of my attention and I don’t sit on my phone. I interact with her and play games with her, we cook together and clean and sing stupid songs. We go out and Jump in puddles and get dirty.

I see some parents who don’t seem to have any idea how to play with a child if it doesn’t involve a screen and it’s sad. they just let them get on with it, I don’t even think that it’s gentle parenting, it’s lazy parenting.

The words "kind hands" makes me cringe. I think it patronising even for a 3 year old.

Yes @Thequeenandthesoldier that captures the moment so well.

You always have to awkwardly wait whilst the gentle parenting moment takes centre stage.

When it’s minor stuff I think just name the problem quickly and move on. It always seems so laboured. With the (non) sweeping problem I just steam rolled the parents solution and got out the hoover 😆 I wasn’t going to wait for a child to badly and reluctantly clean the carpet!

And if you read my posts you’ll see I have nothing against colleges. This poster is putting words in my mouth. We have our reasons for not wanting to send our DS to the local college. Which I explained. You don’t need to explain why college is right for your DD. I don’t know your DD and I wouldn’t for one second purport to know what is best for her.

I was spanked as a child and me and all of my siblings turned out fine. Maybe its a culture thing. I'm south asian and ive noticed there's less disrespect towards parents in our culture (DS seems to disrespect and belittle me regularly, but he recieved little discipline as a child beyond a few situations)

But he could still do that at sixth form college.

DD has chosen to go to a sixth form that allows girls at sixth form (and is thriving this isn’t about her) that has a good reputation (and high up for GCSE) and locals are quite snobby about

but my god some of the things she tells me about some of the boys who clearly aren’t in the right environment for them!

Plus they let the kids know about stuff etc rather than parents which is hilarious sometimes. The sixth form environment to college isn’t THAT different including leave early and going out of the grounds. The differences tend to be in what you can learn not how

Guide and discuss but don’t force. There is only one thing worse than having to live with mistakes you made and that is resentment towards someone who forced you into the wrong decision for you!

I might be wrong here, but I sometimes wonder if gentle parenting is a path people take when they were too firmly parented themselves. This is definitely true in my case. I'm a personality who has been trained to cave into what others want - I had no say in my own likes or dislikes even - who is desperate to make sure my children don't have the same problems, and now stuck between a very strong parent and a very strong child. It's a struggle. Only one of my children is a handful, but I do think it has deeper roots than a few books I read when pregnant. My other gentle parented child is a gentle and considerate soul.

I think the cba parents ignore their kids until they are irritated by them, then resort to shouting. See it often, poor kids

Your late husband was a legend! Sometimes a spade just needs to be called a shovel.

I was out with a friend in a pub the other day and there was a piano. The piano lid was down and had a sign on saying "Our piano is only to be played by pre-booked performers. Kindly do not allow children to play on the piano". This dad came with his two kids, probably around age 3 and 5, MOVED THE SIGN, lifted the lid and let the kids bash on it. They made a horrible racket. We told one of the floor staff, and she looked scared and said "oh, well normally we'd say something but they're with that big party over there". I said if you're not prepared to stop them ruining our meal because they're putting more money behind the bar than we are, you can afford to give us our dinner for free then. Lo and behold, she went and got the manager. Dad then spends 10 mins trying to gently persuade the kids to come away from the piano, eventually resulting in an epic tantrum by the younger child while he stood helpless and the older one continued bashing the keys.

Eventually my friend, who is a foster parent and has dealt with many a difficult child, went over, lifted his hands off the keys, shut the lid, gently but firmly guided him towards his father, told dad to pick up the younger one and get them back to their own table, as we thought we'd come to a pub, not a zoo. My friend has that way about her you don't mess with, and sure enough, he somehow scraped the tantrumming kid off the floor and disappeared with them.

Some parents need to learn how to explain to their children that sometimes in life, you want to play on the piano and you're not allowed to, and you have to respect the no even if it makes you sad, and even if you think it's not fair.

Seriously, are you lecturing me on HOW to parent my child? My child that you don’t know and have never met?

Again, I will repeat that I WORK IN EDUCATION and I don’t need you to describe the virtues of your local post 16 college to me.

We will make the right decision for our child based on my extensive knowledge of the local
post 16 landscape and of our child, whom we have raised for 16 years and know inside out.

Frankly it is laughable to me that you (a) want to school me on the best way to parent my child whom you’ve never met and (b) seem unable to digest my posts describing the reasons we will not be applying to the local college for OUR DS (which have zero to do with the merits of your local college or mine, or what is best for your DD whom I have not met).

This thread is about gentle parenting and the various opinions about that. It isn’t about the merits of post 16 college vs sixth form.

Thank you for the clarification!

Quick question though: what if your DS wants to go down the vocational route because he doesn't want to go to uni and rack up £££££ debt? What if he can achieve what he wants to in life without A-levels? He'll be 16 – riding roughshod over their wishes at that age risks them resenting you long term.

Children are sharing sexual content with each other in schools and the parents want the teachers disciplined instead.

Because from an outside perspective it seems as if you are trying to over correct the mistakes you made as a teenager and aren’t letting him make his own decisions but as you say it is going off tangent about gentle parenting

@CrazyGoatLady

And your friend sorted the situation. What concerns me is that the Dad that ‘can’t’ will potentially diagnose the child rather than address his parenting style.

Why do so many then? Im constantly hearing parents refer to their parenting style as 'gentle' and then watching them be permissive.

Threads are constantly posted here criticising gentle parenting and the first thing trotted out is 'thats not gentle parenting'..... But so so many parents think what they are doing is gentle parenting when apparently its not? So it does appear people frequently get it wrong....

Ive never met a 'gentle' parent who was not permissive.

Or, wild idea, people could do proper research into any parenting method they're planning to implement with their literal human children.

I read up on dog training methods for my dogs more than some people read up on parenting techniques. Gentle parenting is a very simple concept, people just don't bother actually reading what it's about, they just follow some brainrot they saw on tiktok and then wonder why their kids are demons. But those parents would be shit no matter what label they put on their parenting, gentle parenting still isn't what's at fault, lazy parents are. And they'd be lazy, shit parents no matter what parenting techniques happened to be currently trending on tiktok.

We're the same, just don't actually use screens that much. We use phones, but don't have ipads or watch TV really. Not because I'm against using tech or watching TV, just that we seem to always be busy doing stuff, and I'm a reader to relax, rather than a TV person (easy reading, not great literary works of fiction).

3yo only watches TV when someone is sick. It's emergency babysitter, so almost never.

I kind of find it a problem now. I want to introduce TV at a limited amount to 3yo. Watch a show then turn it off. Its pretty normal for kids to watch TV and know about TV characters etc. But it turns him into a total monster! I really really notice the difference in behaviour, he'll ask for days after having watched it for more, and pitch a fit every time I say no or switch it off. It just sends him nuts for some reason.

Does this happen to your 3yo ? I feel like I accidentally created a total obsession and I'm not sure how to get out of it because the easiest thing now is just to never put it on.

Just wondered if you'd found the same ?

Sounds like such a minimal problem, but it'd be really nice to have a 20 minute break sometimes!

Wait until they get into the work environment. It's horrendous. Many of us are sick to death of them in the workplace and that's if they hang around long enough but many don't as they can't hack the discipline and rules.
It's quite sad actually.

Good question! I went to university and did an absolutely bollocks degree that didn’t further me into any career (I had to do a conversion course and an MSc alongside a full time job with 2 DC). It’s been costly and exhausting!

However, I said to my DS “please don’t feel you must do a degree when you get to 18. Live a little. See the world if you want. And if a degree (which will take decades to pay off) isn’t a shoe in to a good career then don’t do it! Choose something else”. No snobbiness from me about needing to do a degree.

Obviously he will be 18 and he will have to make his own choices. I can only hope we have given him the best foundations to whatever path he wants to follow. Vocational is good. Academic is good. He’s very smart (but bloody lazy and immature!). I have organised vocational work experience in two different places which have given him a good taste. Do I think he wants to be a builder? No. But he’s had the chance to have a go. He enjoyed it. But I don’t think it’s for him.

youre not wrong but sometimes it just looks like they cant be bothered-my dh was on train home from work and 2 kids kept banging into his leg running up and down he let it go thre times then told their father to stopthem running up and down-he aquared up to him

my dh isnt shy he stood up and told him to parent his children he just got told to fuck off

Gentle parenting produces children who are indulged but not nurtured.

To the detriment of everyone, especially the children.

@Frankenchino Don’t know what parenting style your parents used but I see it resulted in some lovely manners.

Exactly. We are compensating. And we are not allowing him to make the same mistakes we made because we know they will be crap decisions based on immature logic. Not all 16 year olds are like that. But he is. So “gentle parenting” and standing back and allowing him to make a mess of his future because we don’t want him to feel infantilised and want him to have agency isn’t going to happen.

You must parent how you see fit. Based on your values, your experience, and your extensive knowledge of what is right for your DD. (Just as we will). It’s not for me to tell you otherwise.

They really do. My theory is that children are so loud in public because they know full well that they can't be physically disciplined. I'm British but live in the States. I live in a famously Democrat, left-leaning state. But physical discipline is even allowed here, and I'm convinced that's the difference between the volume between US and UK kids. When I go home, I'm struck by how often there are children screaming their heads off in public as if they're being hung, drawn and quartered. It's full-on Captain Caveman yelling. An American bf commented on how whenever he called me when I was out, during visits home, there were always children screaming blue murder in the background. And there were. Of course, children are noisy here in the US too, but you don't get the unrestrained top-of-the-lungs screaming in public that goes on and on, like you do in the UK.