Reply to S/O What are the major parenting "you do what??" triggers

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"Gentle parenting" PP, you do you, and you sound basically reasonable. But the idea that it's unhelpful to lose your composure is not some major breakthrough. And it sounds like you are not taking it anywhere near as far as some people do. It's not like you own this term and have exclusive rights to define it.

Observed in the wilds of Bloomingdale/Eckington, it means a SAHM is bored and maybe a little depressed, emotionally sensitive, and she needs to feel like she's parenting in a special and enlightened way because she doesn't have enough else going on in her life. So every tantrum or bad behavior is rewarded with attention and accommodation-- and with a self-conscious public performance of "gentle parenting"-- even though the behavior of kid and mom both is annoying to others. As behavior continues to lag behind same-age peers and a social chill sets in, the mom becomes more anxious. Lots of social media posting about "gentle parenting", emotions, etc., while others roll their eyes that the parent of a badly behaved kid is trying to give advice. Eventually the mom goes back to work, the mom gets over the parenting philosophy or realizes it's more for toddlers, the kid matures, the kid gets treatment for special needs, or whatever. Or they just grow into an older child with poor behavior and emotional regulation, that happens too.

This may sound harsh, but people get salty about "gentle parenting" because 1) It's annoying; and 2) It feels like the kid isn't being taught proper boundaries and behavior, instead the kid is being indulged and enabled to behave like a much younger child, so it seems like it's a dis-service to the child. Now, you can always say that the kid would be doing even worse under standard parenting, and there's no way to prove the counterfactual.[/quote]

If you grew up in a house where people yelled and hit a lot, then staying calm while parenting IS a breakthrough.

I think the gentle parenting movement was essentially invented by and for people who were raised by abusive parents, as a way to break that cycle. Like the comments on this thread "everyone parents this way" or "yes, that's authoritative parenting, that's what we all do" are telling. I mean, yes, it's what I do, but it's not what my parents did and I needed a different approach. [b]I don't know why the term triggers people so much.[/b] What people are describing as gentle parenting is just people being lax and having no boundaries. That's not "gentle." Gentle just means, you know, using your indoor voice and not flipping out on your kid, something that actually is pretty hard for a lot of people.[/quote]

I think people are triggered 1) When they think something is actually harmful to the child and 2) When something is annoying to themselves. Gentle parenting can be both. Just not yelling isn't what people mean when they say "gentle parenting". It means taking tons of time with your kid's every little feeling and tolerating bad behavior for longer than other people would. Some say this pays off in the long run, I dunno, maybe it does maybe it doesn't. But "gentle parenting" definitely means more than just not yelling.[/quote]

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