I do agree with you, but my issue has always been that I don't know what to do when this tactic (logical consequences) doesn't work. I try this every damn morning, but my son just doesn't care, so I end up doing "I'm going to count to 5 and if you're not here to get dressed then (insert consequence)." It's usually that his current favorite toy is away for the remainder of the day, or after school tv time is cancelled. I know the consequence isn't connected to the behavior but it's the only thing that gets us out the door. I think the dissonance that a lot of parents feel is that we feel like if we're doing gentle parenting the right way, we shouldn't have to resort to authoritative parenting. But that just doesn't seem to work in practice. I still think a lot of gentle parenting tenets are great, but I think a lot of parents get wrapped up in doing them perfectly (especially with the constant exposure to "do this, not that!" type posts on social media). |
I know someone who is genuinely stymied by a (very unpleasant) behavior of her tween daughter because she does the whole gentle parent thing each time the child does the (honestly pretty gross) thing but has not ever (and won’t) say “no xyz is a house rule.” The behavior is not typical for a child this age and is starting to cause social issues as she did it at a friend’s house and from my perspective it seems much kinder to say (kindly and without shaming) “we have a house rule that there’s no spitting in the houseplants” (not the behavior and not nearly as off-putting) rather than “I see you’ve spit in the houseplants again, blah blah.” Also, the kid is perpetually surprised/wounded when they get (normal but not “gentle parenting” style) feedback from teachers and kids at school. Lots of aspects of gentle parenting are great for lots of kids but if you think it can’t go awry or that other styles necessarily involve shame and telling you’re wrong. |
+100 Sometimes reading the advice given in books and articles I feel like these people have never actually met a real young child. They are like parents who had one easy child and think they know it all. I empathized, gave voice to and validated feelings but we also provided clear rules and consequences and a lot of structure. |
This is the only thing from gentle parenting that is useful to me. |
How old is your kid? |
You’ll also note that the PP espousing gentle parenting eventually has to use physical means to get her kid to comply. “Put your shoes on or I’m going to do it for you.” I remember watching my pregnant friend telling her kid to get down from the swing to leave the park, she did the reminder, the countdown, etc, but it always got to “ok I’m going to have to move your body for you now.” So she had to wrestle him out of the swing and carry this large child to the car. And all I could think was how exhausted she always seemed and how this discipline method was going to fail 100 percent as soon as that baby was outside her body and she no longer had free hands all of the time. |
I don’t understand this criticism of gentle parenting methods because I don’t really get what the alternative being proposed is when we’re talking about challenging behaviors.
My general approach is to do what I can up front to avoid challenging behavior, which generally stems from my kid not having basic needs met (she’s tired, hungry, overstimulated, bored, or doesn’t have enough structure or predictability, etc.). None of this is gentle parenting OR authoritative parenting, it’s literally just the logistics of parenting. We have schedules and systems, we make sure meals happen on time, we don’t over schedule but we make sure there is some structure to gives days shape, etc. There’s no parenting philosophy behind this— it’s just my literal job as a parent. But of course life isn’t perfect, kids are still learning, and issues are inevitable. When they happen, I find that staying calm is more productive than yelling or getting mad. I get better results and also it means we all feel better after. Is the argument that I should yell, threaten, and criticize instead? That sounds awful to me. Yes, staying calm and patient is hard sometimes but I just don’t really see that there is a viable alternative that will get me good results and not destroy the trust and security I’ve worked hard to build. |
I think there has been a parenting change in the last ten or fifteen years and now when I watch parents of toddlers, I am struck by how much long-winded talking they do to very small children. I mean long speeches about the shoes, or really complicated speeches to a toddler messing around in a sandbox, like, "I can see how you're getting dysregulated, you feel dysregulated don't you, that's why you're making poor choices, now if you keep making that choice you'll have to go inside." It seems both crazy tiring and also crazy ineffectual. It's exhausting even to overhear.
I am not saying we should treat toddlers like dogs, but it was actually a big parenting breakthrough for me when I realized my kids at 2 could only process one to two word instructions ("Shoes!" "No throwing!"). They could actually get that. It was confusing for them when I hid the instructions in a pile of words. I watch parents with little kids and I want to say, it's obvious the kid isn't really taking in a single thing you are saying. |
It was happening 20+ years ago too. I remember one awful time lining up in the jetway to board a plane and a family with two littles behind me. Kid runs up and starts banging on the switchboard that controls the jetway. Mom has a lengthy talk with the 3/4 year old about how that’s not the right thing to do. Could have killed me, as I was the person on the edge of the jetway, but whatever. Same kid kicks my rolling suitcase all the way down the aisle. Then when we find our seats, kids are literally jumping up and down on them. I wasn’t a parent then and kept my mouth shut. Having raised my own kids now I wouldn’t handle it the same way again. |
35 year old mom of 3, newborn to 5. There’s just so much judgment whatever you do. If you do gentle parenting, posters like many PP’s on here judge you bc it’s inefficient/ineffective. If you don’t do gentle parenting, you are marked as “uneducated.” No matter what you do, you’re a failure from the start just for having kids that need to be disciplined in the first place. A good mom would have kids who don’t misbehave in public at all! |
Ugh, no that’s not the alternative. “Gentle” in gentle parenting isn’t simply your vernacular understanding of gentle. It’s clear in the article. |
That is every parenting method. Eventually you have to do it if they don't do it themselves. But I don't give multiple and multiple opportunities and get more and more frustrated. By holding the boundary you're letting them know that there isn't any wiggle room. Consistency is key. I personally don't care if you wear shoes outside or in the car but the rule is that he needs to have shoes on at school so I enforce that rule. For example I don't make my kid get dressed if he wants to wear pajamas like he did to a fall festival great cool hope you're comfortable. What's your great idea that doesn't involve using physical methods at some point like for example the shoes? |
What I have absorbed from the zeitgeist is that I should be always validating and agreeing with the child’s emotions while never negotiating on rules and behaviors. But maybe I just haven’t read enough. I found Dr Becky irritating so I unfollowed. |
My understanding of the logical consequences thing comes from Parenting with Love and Logic which I give a solid C in terms of realistic-ness, but I think it would say that the natural consequence is that they have to get in the car barefoot. They carry their shoes into school in a bag. There’s a whole long example about this and dressing in the book and I kind of forget the details but you might check it out if you like books. I found a lot of the book super helpful and some of the examples to be just bonkers and not realistic so ymmv. |
PS one of the parts that WAS helpful to me is that whether you do their shoe thing or not, you kind of accept that sometimes allowing natural consequences for your kid means some collateral damage to you as far as embarrassment, time, and planning (eg explaining the shoe plan to the teacher). So you have to accept and balance that. |