Again you are acting like the options are “gentle parenting” or abusive 1950s parenting. If it works for you to never say “stop it, Emma” and instead do the whole narrate their emotional state/give choices each and every time that’s great! The problem is acting like that’s the only way to be a non-Neanderthal parent (and when parents don’t regroup when their kids have serious behavior problems as older children.) I also have great teens who are glad I am their mom and I literally never yelled at them or said they were making me sad or whatever bland I gave them lots of choices. However I also used “cut it out” plenty and when they had something that was hard had no problem using kazdin style rewards for a bit. Both of those things are frowned upon by “gentle parenting” experts. |
DP, who mentioned child-led being a problem, and I was referring more to parents who make EVERYTHING child-led with their very young children. Sleep, eating, potty-training, on and on and on, regardless of parents’ needs for sleep, to not act as short order cooks, etc. The above examples aren’t, to me, child-led so much as informed about how children and their brains actually develop. That’s where the gentleness comes in. And there absolutely parents who interpret “gentle” as children running the show, never setting boundaries, etc. Again, that’s more what this specific article discussed, rather than books like Whole Brain Child, which are clearly authoritative parenting, in a neuroscience framework. |
Reading a lot of these responses, I just want to note:
Seeing a parent interacting with their kid occasionally is not really as informative of their relationship or parenting style as many of you seem to think. Unless you live with someone or see them every day, you don't really know. I have friends with same age kids who I see a couple times a month and have even vacationed with, and I don't assume I can perfectly assess their parenting. Which is good because it's really not my job. People tend to parent differently when they are being watched. Sometimes they overexplain things because they know you are listening. Sometimes they are shorter with their kids because they think you expect them to be. Some people parent a bit differently in front of their friends, and then a bit differently in from of their parents. And kids act differently in different settings. Sometimes kids throw you for a loop at the most inopportune time. New parents tend to do stuff like this more than experienced parents, because they are a bit more sensitive to judgment and less sure of themselves in general. Most parents settle down a bit after those first few years and their parenting gets more consistent. I am sure if you heard me talking to my kid on a playground when they were 2, some of you would have rolled your eyes. Some of my choices didn't work out and I had to make different ones. That's normal. No one enters parenting a parenting expert -- there is a learning curve and it's specific to your kid. You cannot conclude much about a person's parenting from occasional observation. Focus on your own parenting. People on this thread have explained why gentle parenting works (or doesn't) for them. That's fine. Take the info that is useful and disregard the rest. But the argument that a particular parenting approach is bad because you've seen it in action and it didn't work out? Unless you were talking about a spouse you co-parented with or a family you lived with for an extended period, you probably have no basis for drawing those conclusions. |
We learned this the hard way with our first child and luckily stumbled into a therapist who was more child adapts to family. Our kid had realized basically he was in charge and was miserable and making us miserable. For me it is easy to accommodate and comfort till I’m exhausted and it’s much harder to push them and uphold boundaries for them, but they are so much happier and calmer after we established boundaries and reinforced parents are in charge. |