Reply to “The Harsh Reality of Gentle Parenting”

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Reply to "“The Harsh Reality of Gentle Parenting”"

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[quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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