If you're a parent, there's a decent chance you've seen buzzwords relating to different parenting methods; Helicopter Parenting, Free-range Parenting, Positive Parenting, and a whole host of others. They each have a unique, and often somewhat unspoken, set of rules that aren't exactly clearly defined, but that people are very passionate about. What we're talking about today is a relatively widespread Parenting Method that's taking the spotlight; Gentle Parenting.
As I said, the rules are often somewhat unspoken in a parenting method, for, as we know, children and parents are all unique, but the general idea is that a parent treats their child very gently. It's the antithesis of Authoritarian Parenting (where the parent has all the authority and demands respect and complete obedience from the child).
In Gentle Parenting, a few things that are very common is Co-sleeping with your child for as long as they want to stay in your bed, following their hunger and sleep cues rather than having a strict schedule of events for any given day, allowing the child to explore unhindered with only a mild amount of influence from the parent. It's similar, although less extreme than Free-Range Parenting (children are given complete free range to wander and do as they please, which has been criticized as being neglectful and very dangerous).
At it's core, the idea behind Gentle Parenting is about a give and take relationship between Parent and Child. Parent's are encouraged to follow the child's lead during play, to listen to and help them through a tantrum or emotional moment rather than punish or scold, never to pressure their child into anything they are uncomfortable with, including hugging relatives or getting tickled. There are no punishments, and no rewards, merely taking each moment as it comes. It's often touted alongside Attachment Parenting, especially for younger children, although a lot of supporters of Gentle Parenting believe that Attachment Parenting should continue as long as the child desires to be close to the parent, and not just as an infant.
It's certainly an idyllic view of the Parent-Child relationship, isn't it? No punishments, no yelling, no hard and fast rules; only love and snuggles and exploring the world with freedom.
Unfortunately, a lot of grizzled older parents can tell you that it's not quite that easy.
I first heard of Gentle Parenting when my oldest son was about 2 or 3 years old. He was going through the 'terrible twos' and I was at my wit's end with potty training, bedtime troubles, and meltdowns and screaming matches every single day. Being strict with a 2 year old is hard, even when you know what you're doing (do we ever know what we're doing?) but as a first time mother, it's even harder. Am I giving him enough attention? Does he need more stimulation? Is this a regression? Should I take him to the doctor?
I was Googling questions like these, and hundreds more, every week, not realizing that his behavior was entirely normal for his age, and instead thinking something must be wrong.
Enter Gentle Parenting.
Praises for Gentle Parenting
I learned that his meltdowns were likely due to overstimulation, and I started taking him into a quiet, dark room when he started screaming and throwing things. I would sit nearby, but never touch him or try and hold him still (unless he was hitting me, himself, or otherwise engaging in potentially a dangerous or harmful activity). I would ask him if he needed a hug, or a snack, or a nap, and I would wait.
And sometimes I would wait for an hour. Often I would get up and leave the room with him still wailing on the floor, because I needed a break, or it was food time, or I knew that looking at him was making things worse.
At first, the tantrums would last, and last, and last. But gradually, he started being able to control his body, because he saw me controlling my self. I wasn't yelling, I wasn't hitting, and I wasn't screaming. I was waiting, patiently. And then, he would get a hug, and get a snack or a nap, or just go back to playing. I would narrate my own emotions to him as they arose, so he could see me dealing with them. I gave him helpful visuals so he could point to what he was feeling (we used a weather chart; stormy means angry, sunny means happy, tornado means afraid, etc.), and we talked about ways to deal with our emotions when we weren't having the meltdown. That was important; having open and honest conversations with my then 3 year old about what to do when he was angry, but not when he was already angry.
He learned during this time that he can be a turtle. Instead of hitting, kicking, biting, screaming, he can go into his 'shell' (this was sometimes his bedroom, most of the time just a ball on the floor wherever we were at), take 3 deep breaths, and think. And like magic, he started being able to tell me how he was feeling, we could solve the problem, and the tantrums were relegated to the rarest of occasions.
I had nothing but praises to sing about Gentle Parenting. It solved one of our biggest issues, and was well on the way to saving us from many others. Weeks turned to months and years, and I knew that being gentle and following the lead of my highly sensitive son was the way to go.
And then, we got pregnant with baby number 2.
When Gentle Parenting Goes Too Far
My oldest turned 5 just 3 weeks after my youngest son was born, and everything changed. Suddenly, my little guy turned into a big guy and my infant was monopolizing my physical reserves. We had just come off an emotional year where we had seen very expected, but still very frustrating, regressions in my oldest during my pregnancy, a severe illness (you all can probably guess what it was without me getting flagged for saying it) shook us to our core and disrupted every ounce of Gentle Parenting work I had put in for following my son's lead, my husband left his job to start earnestly following what he knew he needed to do, both sides of our family were in crisis mode, my son started going to public school, and then our baby was born. Everything was different, and my best attempts at Gentle Parenting were ineffective and causing more trauma and stress to everyone involved.
Nevertheless, I insisted that my 5 year old needed me to follow his lead. I had let him choose to join Pre-K at school instead of Homeschooling like we had planned. I let him stay up and talk well past bedtime. I was making separate meals for him, at any hour of the day, because he didn't want to eat what we were eating, constantly having to find a way to explain things to him because his feelings would be injured anytime I asked him to do anything that disrupted whatever he was doing, which included being a little quieter because the baby was sleeping.
And I was beyond exhausted. Catering to the 'needs' and whims of a 5 year old drains you, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Add to that the truly demanding needs of a newborn, and a husband who needs your support, and there was nothing left in me by the end of the day that was never actually over.
One day, my oldest came inside and told me the chickens had hurt his feelings because they pecked him when he was trying to pick them up. I told him that maybe he should consider how the chicken was feeling, and respect that she didn't want to be picked up, and then he told me that I was hurting his feelings because he just really loved the chicken.
He stormed off to be a turtle in his bedroom, and in that moment I realized that Gentle Parenting had taken us too far down the road of respecting emotions. In fact, I was no longer merely respecting that he had emotions, I was coddling him into putting his emotions over everything else around him, making everyone's lives more difficult, including his.
I am the first person to say that we should hold space and acknowledge emotions. The emotion itself isn't a problem; they're merely a hormonal and chemical reaction in our brain. But there does come a time when we can't just hold space, but we must learn to react correctly, and sometimes getting our feelings hurt is on us, not the person who we feel slighted by. I couldn't handle having to coddle his every emotion, especially since I barely had time to breath, let alone process my emotions and someone else's as well. It was just too much.
And so I took a step back and really started looking at the Gentle Parenting Ideals. I followed a lot of Gentle Parenting advocates on social media, and I felt like they had given me so much amazing information. But as I looked deeper, I realized that most of them had only 1 child, and they were often very young. They touted the idea that they would always be this way, and that both them and their children were happiest like this. Many would even go so far as to claim that you're damaging your children if you set boundaries and made rules. And the deeper into the Gentle Parenting movement I had gotten, the more I had believed those lies.
Finding A Middle Ground
My realization was intense; was I actually doing more harm than good? Was Gentle Parenting harmful? Had I made a huge mistake?
I took a good hard look at the families around me. Not just the Gentle Parenting advocates, but the families who had several children, or better still, adult children. I talked to my mother, and my mother-in-law, I asked other women I know who have children, and I reached a conclusion.
Parenting Methods are a trap.
Not because they're all wrong, but because they're not all right.
Parenting is not, and cannot, be a strict method. It's an ocean of complexities, and changes like the tide. Each family, each parent, each child, and even each season of life is so very different from each other. What I was able to use with my 3 year old doesn't work well with my 5 year old, even though he's the same child. He's older now, he's learned more, he's more responsible, and beyond that, now he's an older brother, not an only child. And I know that my youngest son won't be his older brother, and I will have to be diligent about paying attention to his personality and season of life so I know how best to interact with and parent him.
Gentle Parenting taught me many lessons, not only about ways to handle my child, but ways to handle myself. My children do see how I react to a situation, and they mimic it. It's how they learn. It is important for them to be able to recognize their emotions, and how to ask for help when they're overwhelmed. It's important that they learn how to make good choices, and that they deserve love and respect as much as any grown-up, and to know that they can say no when someone makes them uncomfortable.
But it's equally important as a parent for me to set boundaries. Letting my son choose to go to school at 4 years old put a lot of undue stress on him, which later turned up in a huge attitude, and him thinking he was old enough to not listen to anything I had to say, which in turn created huge amounts of stress and anxiety in me, which put a strain on my marriage because I was so cross constantly and wondering if I was doing the right thing.
Giving children the freedom to be creative, to make mistakes, to learn, to grow, is very important. Giving children too much freedom can be catastrophic, as they have too much responsibility placed on them too quickly, before they're mentally or emotionally capable of understanding the consequences of their choices. Its a form of Parentification, and can have very harmful outcomes as a child gets older. My son wanted to go to school full time because he liked the playgrounds at the school, and because he was comfortable doing 2 hours a week at a pre-k program without me. Even though I told him that 8 hours at school was a long time, he had no concept of how long an hour even is, nor how different his barely structured days would become in a much stricter school setting.
So What Do You Do?
Gentle Parenting works. Attachment Parenting works. Helicopter Parenting works. But they all have their limits in understanding you and your family. Some parents love co-sleeping for years, and it works for their family. Some parents can't function with their sleep space invaded.
There is no one right way to raise your child. Only you know the daily ins and outs of your family. Only you know your limits, and the personality of your children. You know that one child might need only a stern look to stop hitting, and another might need some time to cool down. A one-size-fits-all parenting method would tell you what you must do for every single child. If someone tells you that you're doing irreparable damage by not following their method of parenting, it's a good sign to take a step back and question that person.
That isn't to say there's no room for improvement. There always is, not just as parents, but as people. There is a lot of evidence that suggests that keeping a steady head around your kids instead of yelling helps promote more peace, because we know they will do what they see you do. Pediatricians are telling us that responding to your newborn's hunger cues and cries right away are helping set up for a life long sense of security. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that thoughtfully and kindly parenting your children help to raise thoughtful and kind adults. We can all stand a little more kindness and understanding in this world.
One-size-fits-all is a fallacy. One Parenting Method cannot fit every family, or even every child within that family. That's why it's important to keep an open mind, pay attention to your children, and listen to your intuition. And to know that as parents, we are not perfect either, and to always save space to learn more about our children's minds and needs.
On this blog, I will, and do, talk a lot about different ideas, different things we do, or want to do, and different ways of parenting and handling issues. I personally am a big fan of understanding the science and phycology behind things, especially in my family because it helps me to be more empathetic towards them. If I know that a 4 year old is capable of certain chores, then I can help them along towards becoming more independent. But I also know my own children, and while one is afraid of the dark, the other is fearless. I know we cannot watch scary movies, and we need to wind down before settling in for the night. I know my family, but I do not know yours.
As with everything, research for yourself. I am merely sharing my own experience with strictly following a Parenting Method for 2 years, and the results in my own home. And like with everything, what I share on my blog is what has worked (or not worked) in my family. I encourage you to read and learn and share with other parents, so that we all are able to find the most comfortable and productive way to raise our own children.
And if you're feeling lost, or confused, or just don't know what you're doing, my greatest advice is to reach out to older parents, and ask them how they managed. They might not remember every single night when their baby was awake, but they do remember it happening. Times have changed, but people have not. Ask your mother, father, aunts, and uncles. What worked for them might seem dated compared to what modern so called parenting experts tell us, but you might be surprised how well it could work. Gracefully take advice where it comes, discard what doesn't work for you, and snuggle those children of yours. They won't be little forever.
*Pictures from Wix.com
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