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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Serious question: is there any research showing that gentle parenting works? OP please let go of thinking you have to parent this way and give yourself the freedom to figure out what works for you and your family.[/quote]

Gentle parenting is a form of authoritative parenting.  Authoritative parenting has been shown with superior outcomes in studies.

https://parentingscience.com/authoritative-parenting-style/

That being said it does require a lot of self-regulation from  parents, something the OP seems to be lacking.  It is of course easier to be authoritarian or permissive neither of which is associated with as positive outcomes.  (Neglectful parenting has the worst outcomes according to studies.)  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6323136/#:~:text=This%20work%20consistently%20demonstrated%20that,of%20neglectful%20parents%20were%20poorest.
[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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