Gentle parenting?

[Parentingconfusing]

I don’t even know whether this is gentle parenting. So ignore that phrase if it’s not.

But basically I am getting super confused. I have a preschooler and I would say about 75% of the parents around me have and do continue to parent like the parent in this Instagram video.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTosvyLgma4

Now don’t get me wrong this instaguy is obviously really thoughful. He seems really kind. He’s doing his best so I am not meaning a judgement directly on him - who am I to judge anyway! But this is a perfect example of the type of parenting I see around me all the time. Which is useful as it’s difficult to describe.

And I just dont know. This is supposed to be making great well adjusted adults. But in honesty all I am seeing is parents having near heart attacks all the time in anxiety and panic whilst pretending to be super chill about it - but you can hear in their voice they really aren’t. Their children running off round corners and nearly running into roads - I did actually see one fall into a road last week after running round the corner not waiting or listening.

Constant negotiations and centering and walking on eggshells either because they are or it’s an expectation that they are on the verge of a meltdown - in a very mundane and normal situation.

So this post isn’t really about this insta video. It’s about the ethos it embodies. Which on the surface looks lovely and as a one off that’s potentially a really nice bonding resolution moment - but in reality that’s probably 10 times a day of conflict - (yes an assumption because I barely see these kids and everyone I know who does this parenting is having this atleast once on the school run or 3-4 times in a play date). And not to make it about this insta guy - but if you look on his timeline you literally have one filmed an hour later where he’s walking on eggshells trying to get this kid in a car. It’s not a one off. This is all the time!

And maybe that’s the point - I see this video or these instances occurring in RL and I see that as a conflict. Yet they are purposefully framing this as not a conflict - it’s character building, boundary bending, emotional regulation learning.

I don’t know. I am confused. 🫤

I am certainly no perfect parent. Far from it. But I am not walking on eggshells every two minutes and ‘being calm and trusting’ watching my kid run off and into roads 50m away or trying to convince them to get into a car.

Wiser people who have good well adjusted kids older than 30… What parenting should we really be aiming for?! This ‘gentle parenting’ stuff is crazy isn’t it?

Ahh, my mother used to say non English accents are classless. Ie. One can not distinguish said persons social class.

So I would take that as a win 😂 she was always proud she could move in social circle unjudged.

Ours are a battle of regional accents. Why I said x… wouldn’t want to offend anyone and open that can of worms 😬

Thank God for some common sense posts, including this one.

The "gentle parents" brigade is just as insufferable as the "be kind" brigade. They'll soon be backpedalling from this parenting fashion, give it another 5 years if that. It's a trend that will backfire. I feel sorry for the teachers and those children who are mature enough to understand "no" and social norms because their parents actually parent.

The fact this parenting guru records his children's tantrums and plasters them all over Instagram for money is sickening. The blind following gentle parenting sheep love him though because unsurprisingly, lack of critical thinking is prevalent in that group.

I haven't laughed as hard as I have reading some responses on this thread in a while, particularly those referring to first time parents not knowing how to parent when they bring their firstborn from hospital. I mean, I'd risk a statement this has always been the case and it has precisely nothing to do with gentle parenting, but hey ho 😂 thanks for the laughs! 👌

Gentle parenting might work if you have the right kind of kid. Maybe. But more of us are getting confident in our own parenting style: I’m in charge, I’ll say no to you when necessary.

Kids raised with gentle parenting are now in the workplace and they are often a fucking nightmare to manage - struggle to deal with even the most constructive feedback. I don’t think it makes for well adjusted adults at all.

I genuinely want to understand this.

How does this approach work in a class of 30 children?

How does it work when a child is with other family members or out socially at birthday parties or groups such as Beavers or dance?

I have an education degree, four years of training including child development, a post graduate qualification again in child development, and years of experience in early years and across primary. I have completed research into ‘four year olds in school’, ‘trauma informed support’ , ‘boys in school’ - you name it.
I have supported the PVI sector, worked as a head teacher, and now work in a senior education position within the local authority.

Our grandchildren are being gently parented. Their parents are knowledgeable, well meaning, and experienced in mental health.

And yet, it is incredibly difficult to be with the children.

We see the children throwing themselves on the floor in cafes, with responses like “are you having big feelings?” They are left to regulate themselves ( I sometimes think those ‘big feelings’ will come when someone trips and drops a hot drink on them!)
.
They were not toilet trained until four and a half. One has not started school yet and has been deferred for a year. They still use a pushchair. They break things when they visit us.

One child is now in Year 2 and is really struggling. She cannot meet expectations such as sitting for a ten minute phonics session, working with others, or staying regulated. She sulks and removes herself. She is far behind in learning to read, largely because she chooses not to engage at home or school.

I do not enjoy their company and that is painful to admit.
Everything feels tense. The skills and experience I have built over a lifetime do not seem to count and do not work. The usual norms feel irrelevant for these children. I don’t want to offend by advising and don’t know how to work with our grandchildren.
The most I can do is create situations that are less tense and less likely to cause issues (lots of walks in the park, much less time at home). If they visit I am careful to make sure there is time outside and that we are with them constantly. It is rather like having toddlers in the house, the same needs, the same acceptance of less focus, less understanding of expectations.

I strongly believe in communicating well with children, explaining the ‘why’ behind boundaries, involving them, and creating shared thinking. I believe in warmth and understanding. But this feels like something different.

I genuinely worry these children are being done a disservice and that they will struggle to function in wider society. A society where the rest of us don’t understand or practice gentle parenting or where a group situation makes recognising and addressing each individuals needs impossible.

the child has a meltdown then that’s fine.

No, it isn’t, and I think this is the problem with gentle parenting, to be honest.

The parent thinks they have held the boundary but actually the behaviour as a result of not getting what they want is completely unacceptable. Obviously there is an age where it is tolerated to a point - I am the first to say MN can be really odd about toddler tantrums - but while I am generally quite chill and relaxed about most stuff no way would I say a child hating a meltdown (by which I’m assuming we mean screaming and so on?) because I’ve said no to sweets!

That’s exactly what I am seeing too. These are NOT lazy or uncaring parents. Nor uneducated. They are highly educated. Both academically in a traditional sense and in what they are doing with this ethos and this philosophy comes from somewhere and that’s what I am trying to understand. And it’s not less effort. It looks to me 1000% more effort to parent in this manner.

I am sorry for GC are struggling. Fingers crossed it all works out

I hate watching parents trying to negotiate at length "Noah sit down and eat your food" repeated several times, please Noah!
Fuck that. You will sit down, i'm in charge, end of. No violence, no shouting but they will understand that I'm the boss.

@Parentingconfusing I hate to tell
you, it’s fashion. Parenting gurus who seem plausible but in real life, it goes wrong. Parenting fashions change over time. We were not smacked as dc in the 60s but other dc were openly smacked - in the street. Other parents used belts and the heads used canes.

The latest fashion is gentle patenting which many parents don’t understand and children are not being served well.

All the buzz words start coming too. If anyone else talks about regulating I’m going to scream in a very unregulated way!

Yes this regulation thing does confuse me a bit too. What really is good regulation in adults. I know when I don’t see it. I don’t know what it is when it’s working. Well then I suppose it’s in the background. Maybe it’s practice or maybe in a cyclical way it’s an apathy of age 😂

edit - and sorry! Not to make you scream lol 😂

I think parents need sensible guidance but not fads or extremes. Not screaming! No worries.

Not unreasonable imo. To me parenting is about guidance, education in life skills, setting and respecting boundaries and explaining what they are and why they exist.
I see the same as you, lack of discipline and respect for others and few or no boundaries. I think this leads to entitled and self-centred kids and, later, adults. Some kids i see are on the path to being feral 🤔

I think children thrive when they have calm, clear boundaries and that is what gentle parenting is all about. But I think the priority with parenting is trying to regulate and model that with children.

Yes, this is hard in the short term but makes parenting much easier IME and you end up with children/teens that can regulate thier emotions.

The worst behaved DC I know have shouty, chaotic parents.

I think "regulate" is shorthand for "calm down, take a breath, consider your approach before you go in all guns blazing ready to shout and smack and escalate the situation".

People sometimes get aggy if you tell them to "calm down", so regulate is a useful shorthand in that sense 😂

To add, I saw a video the other day that mentioned parenting is much harder these days as there is so much advice and scripts on what we should be doing and research into the impact of our parenting and that makes parenting really, really hard. Until very recently you just 'were' a parent and did what you needed to do whereas now parenting is a role that you must perform well at and will be monitored every step of the way.

Regulation is massively overused as a buzzword now, but the concept of dysregulation when I first learnt about it was genuinely game changing.

Most NT DC and adults don't get dysregulated often. Dysregulation is the kind of state that a child gets into when e.g. you've been travelling all day and you're stuck in a hellish airport immigration cue, you've run through all of the snacks and they badly need to run around, have a proper meal and then a sleep but they can't do any of these things for another 20+ minutes, so they turn into utter gremlins who can't be reasoned with. Or after a party when it's hours past their bedtime and they are running on fumes and sugar. Or as an adult when your DC are pushing you to the absolute limit and you have 100 other things in your head so you snap and do/say something regrettable.

Children with extra challenges be that trauma or a chaotic home life or ND or other difficulties get dysregulated much more frequently. Often several times a week if not multiple times a day. It's exhausting to have to deal with and normal parenting advice (whether gentle, traditional, whatever) doesn't work, and because dysregulation is essentially a danger response which is being incorrectly triggered, we (humans in general) are sensitive to it and one person being agitated (dysregulated) will tend to increase nervous system arousal in response to this unconsciously-perceived threat - you know if you see someone have an adult meltdown/tantrum in public it usually makes you feel nervous or on edge even if they are not directly shouting at you. So if you have a child who is frequently dysregulated the adult will often be in a state of stress pretty much all the time and often dysregulated as well, which makes it hard for them to follow calm strategies to de-escalate the situation plus if you're dysregulated yourself, you can't co-regulate the child back to a calmer, regulated state.

When an adult is caring for a baby or toddler and the baby/toddler has got themselves all worked up but the adult is calm because they understand this is a completely normal thing for a baby/toddler to do and they offer soothing presence e.g. cuddles, pats, rocking, soothing tone of voice (but we know the actual words don't really matter - you're not telling your baby to be rational and expecting it to work) this is co-regulation in action, the baby is soothed by your calm presence and the vast majority of children will develop self-regulation skills which start to emerge around age 3-4, in part because of this early exposure to co-regulation, which is why tantrums tend to reduce around this age and most children will start to seek less parental reassurance although obviously they do still need you for many more years yet - but they start to get a bit more independent with it.

So yes technically co-regulation is a feature in "normal" parenting but I do feel that the term is used everywhere and 90% of the time it's misused or misunderstood so that regulated = calm, perfectly behaved compliant child and dysregulated = any deviation from this and that just isn't a helpful or accurate line, IMO.

It's not dysregulation for a child to be disappointed, or frustrated, or excited in response to experiencing something which triggers those feelings, even if they can't be instantly soothed - those are normal appropriate feelings. It might be dysregulation if they are veering between feelings like despair, rage, and hyperactivity, especially if it's over things other children their age aren't reacting to, and especially if it's prolonged or almost impossible to soothe.

This whole thing is the fallout from ‘child centred’ development theories that started to be popular in the early 90s. They have been wildly misinterpreted by parents and now they are desperate to be seen letting the child do anything they like for fear of being stigmatised as authoritarian or disadvantaging their children. Of course this is totally disastrous and as pp have alluded to, create havoc in schools and in children’s mental health.

I heard a leader in education say the other day that one of the biggest challenges facing schools is that parents don’t run their own households any more, the children dictate them. It doesn’t matter how ‘educated’ parents are, they’ve all fallen for the cult of creating little pampered princes and princesses with more power than they can cope with.

Child led approaches mean that the parent studies the child and adapts parenting to the child’s nature so that you optimise your power as a parent, not the other way around.

Ultimately I find it baffling that modern parents cannot cope simply saying no, or asserting themselves. A child needs to know an adult is in charge to feel safe and secure. You decide the boundaries and you keep them - that’s it. Within the boundaries children are still free to grow, play, make mistakes and be themselves. And boundaries can still be held in a loving and firm way. I just don’t get why so many can’t or won’t do it.

It wasn't gentle parenting that drove me out of teaching. It was the lack of parenting and the handover to the internet. Kids raised on YouTube and tiktok with no understanding of social norms, who'd never read a book and experienced empathy and imagination. It was the narrowness of these kids' lives and their hostility to any attempt to widen their perspective that defeated me in the end. I think that's fucked this generation up a lot more than gentle parenting.

And my kids have phones and internet access btw, they game and they text their friends and watch some absolute brain rot on YouTube as well. But we also have always read books, watched movies together (phone free), had conversations at the dinner table, gone to the theatre and on walks. Their lives have always been more than just screens. But there are a terrifying number of kids who have none of that and go down a very dark social media hole at a very young age. Those kids needed so much more than they were getting and schools simply cannot fill in the void where their lives are supposed to be.

@Poemsandthesands Films are screens! Utterly passive. However dc need variety - totally agree.

It is unlawful for a parent or carer to smack their child, except where this amounts to ‘reasonable punishment’.
Not assault unless it crosses those boundaries.

It’s assault in Scotland and Wales. We have zero tolerance to assaulting children.

Yes. Gentle parenting, permissive parenting, authoritarian parenting. None of that readily matters if the whole thing is just for show and no connection is being established.

But I’m sure they’re just “raising awareness” ☠️

What an interesting thread! Thank you for posting about this.

Fwiw, I think the guy on insta is batshit, and that filming his distressed child is abusive.

Yes, this was English legislation.

I don't think it's screens that are the problem really - I phrased it badly. It's watching short form videos and random slop on YouTube/Tiktok with no narrative, no structure and no art to them. I think sitting and watching a movie together is good for kids - good for learning about storytelling, empathy, different perspectives and lives, good for thinking critically. I have no problem with TV and films, but a massive problem with social media and the relentless churn of poor quality content. It distances children from the world, whereas reading a book or watching a film roots you more deeply in the world - and builds a child's attention span, which is something critically under threat right now!

For me I don't follow gentle parenting but follow the pick your battles methodology. In his example I would have done similar bar 2 things 1 I wouldn't have gone out of line of sight there was clearly a car park which is dangerous but would have said OK I will wait here.

2nd I wouldn't have filmed my child having a tantrum.

I have most definitely put my foot down when my eldest has wanted to do something I can clearly see as a serious risk to him. I have stood there whilst he has a meltdown and given him 2 options the safer one or leaving and I don't budge from that position.