We learned this the hard way with our first child and luckily stumbled into a therapist who was more child adapts to family. Our kid had realized basically he was in charge and was miserable and making us miserable. For me it is easy to accommodate and comfort till I’m exhausted and it’s much harder to push them and uphold boundaries for them, but they are so much happier and calmer after we established boundaries and reinforced parents are in charge.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just about everything being "child-led": I don't think that's a problem at all.

I think that when you make things all about what the child needs, it can relieve this huge burden. You can just focus on getting your kid what your kid actually *needs*, rather than trying to make your kid behave a certain way. Like, my child does not *need* to get good grades. What she needs is to learn to work and to figure this out for herself. So I offer help but her grades are her responsibility. I rarely spend any time helping her with school, and I think I have much more time to do fun things instead of checking parentvue every day.

Also it doesn't mean you have to be a doormat. In fact, kids need to be taught to not treat others like doormats. They need an example of somebody standing up for themselves, setting boundaries, and getting their own needs met. And I think the principles in gentle parenting that I have learned help parents do this in a really effective way. Parents need to deal with their own issues instead of just trying to make kids act a certain way.

+1 and I think one reason I like "child-led" parenting is that it's a reminder that my job as a parent is to guide and facilitate my kid becoming a functioning adult. I think parents who are very authoritarian also view it as the child's job to adapt to their (the parent's) adult life, including their moods, schedule, etc. I think this is wrong. My kid's job is not to make sure I'm in the right headspace for work, or that I meet my social obligations or whatever. It's not her job to be quiet and unobtrusive and compliant so that I can take care of all my grown up obligations. None of that is her job.

If my kid doesn't understand how to calm down after getting frustrated, my job as a parent is to stop and figure out how to help her learn. I might have to do it a bunch of times. The end goal is that she learns to handle frustration. If my response to her getting frustrated and yelling is "I don't have time for this, just be quiet" then maybe I get to go back to my work or TV show or adult conversation or whatever, but all she's learned is that as long as she is quiet I don't really care if she understands how to manage frustration. That's not "authoritative" it's neglectful.

DP, who mentioned child-led being a problem, and I was referring more to parents who make EVERYTHING child-led with their very young children. Sleep, eating, potty-training, on and on and on, regardless of parents’ needs for sleep, to not act as short order cooks, etc.

The above examples aren’t, to me, child-led so much as informed about how children and their brains actually develop. That’s where the gentleness comes in. And there absolutely parents who interpret “gentle” as children running the show, never setting boundaries, etc. Again, that’s more what this specific article discussed, rather than books like Whole Brain Child, which are clearly authoritative parenting, in a neuroscience framework.

Anonymous wrote:People have pointed out that They have seen kids whose parents tried a gentle-parenting approach and who have no self-control, no boundaries, think they’re the center of the universe, etc.

Well I have seen parents who seemed delighted to tell their little kids that they needed to stop crying, who sent their kids to their rooms, who rolled their eyes at the conversations I had with my kids about feelings, etc. And now those little kids are teenagers who hate their parents and don’t want to talk to them.

Whereas my daughter tells me she is so glad I’m her mom, because I treat her like a human being who she can talk to because she knows I care about her.

So please stop with the dramatic anecdotes. They don’t mean a lot, especially when there is research out there.

Again you are acting like the options are “gentle parenting” or abusive 1950s parenting. If it works for you to never say “stop it, Emma” and instead do the whole narrate their emotional state/give choices each and every time that’s great! The problem is acting like that’s the only way to be a non-Neanderthal parent (and when parents don’t regroup when their kids have serious behavior problems as older children.) I also have great teens who are glad I am their mom and I literally never yelled at them or said they were making me sad or whatever bland I gave them lots of choices. However I also used “cut it out” plenty and when they had something that was hard had no problem using kazdin style rewards for a bit. Both of those things are frowned upon by “gentle parenting” experts.