Did anyone else hear about Gentle Parenting on 5 live this morning? About not saying “no”?
What a load of rubbish! The way it was explained seemed to make it come across as always saying yes and never saying “naughty”.
Firstly “no” is an equal part of “gentle parenting” or whatever you want to call it. I call it “thoughtful parenting”. You still have to say “no”, “bad” etc but it’s always with why. Children can’t get the subjecting band contextual part of “naughty”.
We always try to say yes or know but with an explanation at their level. We talk about how it makes us feel, about how the action and our emotions make them feel. It has to be at a level and about things they understand. Know where the child is at and pitch it there.
Yes we have had tantrums, so what, that’s normal, yes they happen in public, so what that’s normal. It’s how we deal with them that is important, thoughtful rather than a war.
We have only had one major meltdown in public in the 3 years since we started it. We didn’t get any advice of the internet for it or read any books. We just grew our parenting with out child, let them guide us with their development and built techniques to make sure they understood what we wanted them to know.
It’s not perfect, it needs the word “no” and naught isn’t banned. It’s just knowing that more than one word is needed to explain a situation to prevent it or reduce its impacts in the future.