The term “gentle parenting” can elicit varied and strong reactions from parents, and sometimes even from adults without children. It recently has become a hot topic on social media, as well as in news stories.
Parents put a lot of thought into which parenting strategy to implement. It is a priority to know the little ones they are raising will be successful in adulthood, in more ways than their careers. Parents want to know their children will grow into adults with the ability to engage in healthy relationships and good social skills, and who are less likely to be burdened by mental illness. For children to become emotionally stable adults, they must learn to regulate their emotions as children.
Gentle parenting techniques have been championed for their ability to help kids exhibit behaviors that parents want to see. But why is that? What evidence is there to show that the gentle parenting style is an effective way to raise emotionally sound and understanding children?
Why Gentle Parenting?
According to the article What Is Gentle Parenting? by The Cleveland Clinic, “The goal of gentle parenting is to raise confident, independent and happy children through empathy, respect and understanding, and setting healthy boundaries.” The article examines evidence that gentle parenting is an effective parenting style, especially in contrast to the very traditional authoritarian style of parenting.
Authoritarian parenting relies on punishments and rewards to achieve the desired behavior from children. The issue with this is that the child does not actually know why what they are doing is wrong. They will stop the undesired behavior because they are afraid of the punishment.
Unleashing the Power of Gentle Parenting on PositivePsychology.com describes the gentle parenting technique as working to “address the root cause of misbehavior by helping children develop their self-regulation skills and understand the impact and consequences of their actions.”
Gentle parenting emphasizes the importance of understanding where your child is developmentally. The goal is for the child to understand what behavior they exhibited that was not acceptable and to be accountable for it. This can look different depending on the age of the child.
This style of parenting is more successful the earlier it is implemented in the home. Many misconceptions about gentle parenting revolve around the notion that it means kids running wild, doing whatever they please, and having no structure. It’s an easy connection to make because that is assumed to be what’s involved when a child’s wants and emotions are a top priority to parents. However, a more accurate assessment of gentle parenting would be parents working together with their child to prepare them with emotional regulation skills. That way, they will be prepared to handle difficult situations.
Implementing it in your own home:
Positive Discipline
It can be daunting, trying to ingest a large amount of new information in general. But when that new information is for the purpose of shaping your child’s future, it can become even more overwhelming. If you are interested in incorporating gentle parenting into your home, here is an overview of what to focus on.
According to Positive Psychology’s Anna Katharina Schaffnner, Ph.D, one of gentle parenting’s main components is positive discipline. Technically, it’s a parenting style all on its own and may sound like an oxymoron. However, it’s a pretty simple and proven technique parents can use to hopefully avoid but also deal with a child’s misbehavior.
The first step is to give clear instructions to the child, so that they understand your expectations of them. As they follow your instructions, praise or reward them for engaging in the correct behavior. The reward could be verbal praise, a favorite treat or anything of significance to them. If the child doesn’t follow your instructions and behaves in a negative way, there should be a natural or logical consequence for that. The consequence should be something related to the misbehavior. Ideally it would be something that corrects it.
It is also extremely important that the parent remains calm during all conflicts to model desired behavior for the child. In the Cleveland Clinic article, Dr. Karen Estrella, MD, states: “Kids learn a lot by imitating their parents. If they know their parents react to things by yelling and screaming when they’re agitated, kids will respond the same way because they think it’s OK.”
After the consequence is finished, you can invite the child to come back and try again. This time model the correct behavior for the child to make sure that they understand what is expected. Offer choices that emphasize your respect for their autonomy and try to be as consistent as possible with the child, so they know what to expect.
An Example
An example scenario that depicts the type of positive discipline that gentle parenting pulls from would be to imagine you invite your four-year-old to help with the dishes. Before you begin, you state the expectations: “We are going to do the dishes together. The water and dirty dishes belong in the sink. We need to keep the water and the dishes inside the sink, okay?”
As you begin to scrub dishes and pass them to your child to rinse with clean water, you offer praise for his ability to follow instructions. You clap together and say, “good job!” But then he throws his plastic cereal bowl, full of soapy water, out of the sink and onto the ground. This is when the logical consequence comes into play. You turn off the water, so he is not distracted, and say, “We need to keep the dishes and the water inside the sink. Can you please help clean up the mess and put the bowl back in the sink?”
Offer paper towels and demonstrate how to wipe the water, if necessary. After the bowl is back in the sink, offer another reminder to keep everything in the sink. Then ask whether your child wants to continue doing dishes or try a different activity. This is the choice and autonomy aspect of positive discipline.
If the authoritarian parenting style was used with the same scenario, it would have differed in a few ways. The consequence for throwing the dish might have been something unrelated to the situation like taking away a toy for the night or being put in timeout for a few minutes. The parent may have been the one to clean up the mess.
Attachment Parenting
Another parenting style that gentle parenting incorporates is attachment parenting. Attachment parenting is based on the importance of the bond between parents and their children. This is most effective if focused on during a child’s first years of life.
The most effective way to implement this into your own parenting is first, to be responsive. When your little one is upset or fussy, don’t pause. Respond quickly to your child. This will help to build your child’s trust in you.
Next, as they begin to grow and start having big feelings, be there for them in those times. Even if the problem may seem silly to you as an adult, these are the first times in their whole lives they have encountered any type of difficulty. That is going to be new and scary. Try your best to be there for them and help them to process these new feelings. This will help to foster the connection between you, and it will express to the child that you are a safe space for them to share their emotions. And finally, encourage their independence. Offer safe environments where they can explore and try new things (with your supervision of course).
Setting Them Up for Success
The reputation of gentle parenting as being for those easygoing and even lazy parents might seem off base now that you’ve read all that goes into implementing it in your own home. It can be a lot of work to consistently look at things from your child’s perspective, but over time it will become second nature.
If raising your child(ren) to be empathetic, understanding and emotionally regulated teens and later adults is important to you, then this could be the parenting style for you!
It is my goal as a parent to set my son up for success. To make sure he is stocked with all the skills, information, and experiences he needs to make that transition into adulthood a little bit easier.
I hope he will feel prepared to do things on his own and also will know when he is overwhelmed, that it is okay to ask for support. He will know that I am always going to be there for him.
Sophie Hamel is a freelance writer and works in advocacy for victims of interpersonal violence. Her son is two-and-a-half years old.
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