Giving up on Gentle Parenting
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Anonymous
I disagree. Gentle parenting is not authoritative. Gentle parenting is where kids and parents are on the same level. Authoritative means that the parents are in charge. Gentle parenting is permissive with an emphasis on feelings and emotions. Kids are basically little adults who get to have autonomy and to make decisions too. Don't like your house being a disaster? Gentle parenting says that this is just a season of life that parent *chose*. It's more important that your kids feel loved, nurtured and having fun than for you to be a nag and have a clean home. You aren't supposed to yell, nag, have consequences. Kids naturally just learn to pick up and be part of the family unit. I think that this actually works for some kids. It would likely have worked on me. My parents were okay with spanking but I only remember being spanked once in my life. I just mostly did what I was supposed to do and liked doing chores. |
Anonymous
Lansbury is against time-outs https://www.janetlansbury.com/2016/05/why-timeouts-fail-and-what-to-do-instead/ |
Anonymous
Several posters said they prefer yelling to gentle parenting. Several posters said they yell because it gets results. Some of y'all are majorly abusing your children. |
Anonymous
It's really obvious that "gentle parenting" is widely misunderstood because I've never heard any actual childhood behavioral expert describe it the way you or OP describe it. I agree with the PP that gentle parenting as described by actual experts is the same authoritative parenting. Anyway, it's not that you aren't "supposed to" yell, nag, or have consequences. I've never heard of any parenting expert advocate against consequences, that's silly. Any parent who tells you that kids aren't supposed to have consequences is doing their own, dysfunctional thing. Yelling and nagging simply are very effective parenting tools (and parents don't enjoy them anyway). I am a "gentle parenting" and I sometimes nag, and even when I'm doing it I'm thinking "well this is useless, if I have to remind them 18 times then obviously this whole approach isn't working and I need to rethink." This is an improvement over the way my parents handle it, which was by thinking "if I have to remind them 18 times, it's because they are inherently bad people and we should beat them the stupid out of them." Which is why the phrase "gentle parenting" exists. Many people who are now parenting young kids were raised in homes where their parents had basically no emotional regulation skills and resorted to yelling and hitting whenever kids didn't obey direct commands. When you grow up like that, as an adult you often realize that it screwed you up in a variety of ways, because you didn't learn how to function within a family unit -- you were just responding out of fear to abuse. So gentle parenting is really targeted at people like me who don't want to abuse their kids but didn't have a better way modeled for them, and it provides tools that helps you avoid hitting and yelling -- tools for staying calm and parenting in a gentle, authoritative way. I've personally found it really useful. |
Anonymous
You do know there’s a middle ground, right? Gentle parenting is letting the kids decide their bedtime letting their kid have ice cream instead of a healthy balanced dinner, giving their kid the lollipop when they demand it because you’re afraid to say no. Some of us can have boundaries and rules and be consistent about them without screaming at our kids. Honestly I think gentle parenting is somewhat abusive…you are leading your kid to build zero resilience, zero exposure to frustration, zero practice not getting their way—so real life hits and they will understandably not cope and then they’re blamed for being a bad kid or having some disability they don’t really have. |
Anonymous
| The trouble with parenting these days is that we put our kids first. I grew up in the 70's - the child of a single mom. She put herself first - it wasn't easy for her by any means but there was no coddling of us. We went to bed when she told us to, ate (for the most part) what she put in front of us and managed ourselves all day when she went to work. I remember breaking my foot as a child and having to wait until she got home from a late dinner to look at it. My kids are nagging me all day to get them some food or this or that. I have begun to feel like a servant more than a parent - so now I embrace my mother, sit on the couch with a book and give them the evil eye when they ask me to get them a snack. |
Anonymous
I dont think you understand gentle parenting. Which is fine, but dont trash it if you clearly dont actually understand what it is or means. Especially the second bolded, is absolutely not true. |
Anonymous
That's really sad. I dont disagree with most of your post, but that, that is really unfortunate. |
Anonymous
DP, but did you read the link you sent? Her point is not that time-outs are evil or she is "against" them, but that they aren't very effective. Why? Because they fail to actually teach children the skills or tools they need to behave better the next time, in most cases. Authoritarian parenting (the yelling/hitting/timeout model) is premised on the idea that if you punish kids for bad behavior, they will think about their behavior and the punishment and draw the logical conclusion that if they want to avoid punishment, they must stop engaging in the bad behavior. What gentle and authoritative parenting experts are saying is that this assumption is wrong, ESPECIALLY for young kids who lack the cognitive reasoning skills to draw those conclusions. Instead, yelling/hitting/timeout teaches kids a bunch of other lessons that parents might not intend (lessons like "I'm a bad person" or "when things are hard, my parents want me to go away" and "the bigger and stronger person gets their way") but doesn't actually help them become better functioning people who can avoid the negative behaviors that parents are punishing in the first place. But consequences are essential to gentle parenting. It's just that Lansbury and other advocates are pointing out that in order for consequences to work, they must be coupled with things like: (1) Clearly articulated expectations. A child can not meet an expectation they are unaware of, and young children in particular are not just going to pick up on expectations -- you have to tell them. (2) Consequences clearly linked to negative behaviors. Timeouts are rarely directly linked to the negative behavior, and they also isolate a kid in a moment of upset or conflict when it would be useful for someone (like a parent!) to be there to explain what is happening and why so that the child actually learns something they can apply in the future. Sitting in ones room alone after being yelled at is not actually the learning experience some parents seem to think it should be. (2) Communication. This is where a lot of parents struggle and with reason -- it can be hard. I think this is wear gently/authoritative parenting resources can be most helpful. I've gotten some very helpful ideas for how to better communicate with my kids from resources like Dr. Becky and (when my kids were younger) Janet Lansbury. It can feel awkward and stilted at first, but you get better with time. |
Anonymous
Is there someone on this thread that was advocating authoritarian parenting? I guess I didn't see that post. It doesn't matter though. Just about everyone else advocates authoritative parenting, which apparently is the same thing as gentle parenting so we're all arguing about nothing. Typical. Time outs didn't work for my kids. They work for me, though! I give myself a time out and I love it. |
Anonymous
I don’t remember reading that in any of the books. |
Anonymous
Yes! Literally OP is like "I want to lay down the law," which is authoritarian. Authoritative parenting requires communication and setting expectations and explaining stuff to kids when they don't meet expectations so they learn (instead of just punishing them without explanation, which is WAY easier but ultimately not as effective). And lots of people agree this is easier and just want to yell at their kids and are tired of the "gentle parenting" (i.e. authoritative) parenting advice which says not to do that and instead to meet a higher parenting standard that requires you actually teach your kids how to do stuff and model healthy emotional regulation. It's hard, that's why people don't like it. My family uses timeouts, btw, but in the way you mean -- people put themselves in timeout. We don't send kids to their rooms for misbehaving, but when someone is clearly dysregulated, we'll ask if they want to take a break or if spending some time on they own might help them feel more calm. Sometimes the answer is no and sometimes it's yes. Works for adults, too. This actually goes to the question of "giving kids agency" that has popped up on the thread. We always try to give our kids agency to do something that is going to be helpful to helping them behave. So giving a kid space to choose to take a break for a bit, or to choose how to make amends with a sibling they hurt, or to choose how to own up to making a mess, is a good kind of agency. It's not "do whatever you want!" It's "I trust you to make your own choice here, and if it doesn't work out, I'll be there to talk through how to make a better one next time." |
Anonymous
Regarding consequences, if children cant link timeout to behavior, why can they process those emotions with the parent and thus change their behavior? I think it’s a lot more likely that children will associate dysregulated behaviors with undivided attention and catering to. If I tell my three year old to stop spitting or he will sit on the time out step, he stops. No yelling required. |
Anonymous
Consequences should be as related as possible to the offense because children are still just learning how to be people and the whole point of consequences should be to teach them how to better behave in the future. That's why "natural consequences" are preferable, whenever possible, because natural consequences will not only teach a child to do better next time, it will also teach them WHY to do better next time. So an example would be trying to get a child clear their plate and help clean after dinner. An authoritarian parent might take away TV privileges or say "no dessert" if a kid failed to follow the expectation that everyone in the family clears their plate after dinner. But neither of those things have anything to do with cleaning up, and also don't teach the kid anything about WHY cleaning up after yourself is a useful skill. But if the consequence is that you leave their dirty plate at the table with the food still on it, and then serve them dessert or breakfast on the plate that still has they dinner remnants on it, and they say "hey, that's gross!" and then you explain that yes, it is gross, which is why you need to clear your plate and rinse it and put it in the dishwasher after every meal, they will start to understand why cleaning up is important. And gentle parenting would suggest doing this in a kind, playful way, so it feels like a lesson and not some kind of horrible punishment, because then your kids are more likely to listen to the part where you explain it instead of just feeling horrible and mistreated. Natural consequences are not always possible but they are possible more often than many parents think, and if you can come up with at least related consequences the rest of the time, you discover that the lessons tend to stick better and your kids trust you more because they will view you as a guide who has some wisdom to impart as opposed to a jailer who is alway telling them "do this! don't do that!" with no explanation, and then taking away their favorite activities when they can't keep those rules straight. |
Anonymous
The thing is, kids are not that dumb. They can understand punishment/consequences and modify their behavior. Breastfeeding mothers react to a biting baby by either pulling away or smashing the baby in - and the baby learns not to do that. Babies can figure this out but toddlers, children, teens can't? Can you even hear yourself? |