Reply to “The Harsh Reality of Gentle Parenting”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m a mental health professional and loved this article. There is a lot to like in gentle parenting but the ideas that parents should constantly disguise their emotional state is a big problem. There’s a world of difference between “you make mommy sad!” and a gauzy, cooing “it seems like you’re having such a good time hitting mommy in the face with your train’” type response. Also, the part about hitting the little sister was perfect example of the excesses/absurdity of the gentle parenting ethos. [/quote]

I’m also a mental health professional, and I have to say that there are probably a certain number of kids who really do need this kind of parenting.  I do a lot of DBT for borderline personality disorder, and my patients talk a lot about how they can’t trust their feelings.  Most of them had abusive parents, but there is a certain subset that had normal parents, but were born with heightened emotional response to situations.

Marsha Linehan gives a great example in her book (CBT for Borderline Personality Disorder).  She talks about a parent taking a child to the ocean, and the child is afraid to get into the water.  Normal parent makes the child get in the water.  Instead of calming down, the child screams louder and louder until normal parent takes them out of the water.  What happens next time they go to the ocean?  Child decides to skip the middle part and just starts screaming.  
When this same kind of thing happens over and over again in different situations, a child who already had heightened emotions learns to either go off the rails screaming or stamp down her emotions (which later leads to cutting or other self harm).

I can see how a gentle parenting approach might really work for these kids.  I wonder if the authors of these books were highly sensitive children or abused as children and struggled to see their own emotions as valid.  And if you can match up gentle parent and highly sensitive kid, it probably works out really well.  (Of course, these women often marry narcissists, so I wonder how dad feels about all of this gentle parenting…).

But a normal kid doesn’t need a parent to sit on the beach and talk about his feelings.  He just needs to stand in the waves for a minute and get used to it.  And a kid who isn’t highly emotional might actually feel smothered by all of this, and later on might see her mother as weak and unable to stand up for herself.

All this to say that I don’t think that there is fundamentally a problem with this approach, but it is useful only in certain situations and with a certain type of kid.  For example, this might be a really excellent approach for foster parents of abused children.  But it isn’t a catch-all for every situation.

Also, if this really speaks to you, and you feel that you weren’t validated as a child, I think that there is a good chance that you married someone who doesn’t validate you (people do), and if you do this, [b]you might just be training your whole family to see you as weak and like your feelings and opinions don’t matter.[/b]  [/quote]

How you get there from all that is nutz. [/quote]

It really isn’t.  
- you are used to having your feelings invalidated, so you don’t really trust them or ask for what you want. 
- you don’t want to have that happen to your child, so you make sure their feelings are always validated
[b]- this builds a relationship that is pretty one-sided where only the child’s feelings matter, and mom’s feelings don’t.  [/b]
- as they get older they see that dad’s feelings matter, their feelings matter, their friends feelings matter.  There is only one person whose feelings don’t matter. 
- they see you as either too weak to express your feelings or so stoic that your feelings don’t matter.

Now, if you have an especially sensitive or perceptive child, they might pick up on your emotions anyway, and they will still make this a two way relationship.  I will tell you that this is the only way therapy with my borderline patients works.  If I try to be some traditional Freudian therapist and be a blank slate, they get pretty distressed.  But normal people are happy to walk all over you if you don’t stand up for yourself.

So, if you have a normal kid and not an especially sensitive kid, this might not be the greatest way to ease them.

I’m going to say something else that you will find insane here too.  Your kid might see you as weak, but feel that they need to stand up for you, and all of this coddling might actually parentify them from a early age.

[/quote]

These are possible scenarios but not causation from more gentle/authoritative/child-led parenting.  Specifically the bolded. You also seem to have some assumptions that only mothers are raising their children AND that if both parents are involved, only Mom is choosing gentle parenting.

You are all over the place with assumptions.[/quote]

I think the PP has leapt to some conclusions that could be totally off base to who she is responding to. But I think there is a lot of truth in the patterns they describe. The idea that a mom should so to the garage to scream to shield her children from her pain is, to me, insane. I try not to yell but when my kids do things that hurt me, I let them see it. I don't freak out, but when they are too rough and hurt me, I am sad/mad and stop the play. When my daughter was chatting away with me for an hour in the middle of the night after a nightmare and in frustration I finally was like, 'omg! I need you to go to sleep! I am so exhausted! It is 3am!' not yelling but clearly distressed, that was ok. I was tired, and it is not nice to keep people up for hours in the night. And yes I want my feelings to matter to my kid. So that when they are 12, and they make a giant mess or break something, they understand that their actions actually have an impact on the person who loves them. I think shielding your kids entirely from your mental labor allows them to take you for granted.

The flip side, is making them feel 100% responsible for your emotions, to the point where they have to be your parent, which is just as bad if not worse. It isn't easy to walk the line, but moms take on a LOT. And that is what makes them good moms. But you want your kids to see you as a person too. And you REALLY want your kids to see your husband treating you like a person. These are REALLY important things IMO. You want your kids to see you as a person, who has feelings, but who also has control over herself. Who they don't need to worry about, but who they should not treat badly or take for granted. [/quote]

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