Reply to “The Harsh Reality of Gentle Parenting”

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[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, you might just be training your whole family to see you as weak and like your feelings and opinions don’t matter.  [/quote]

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