Gentle parenting is an approach to raising children that prioritizes connection, empathy, respect, validation, and positive discipline. It emphasizes fostering a safe, nurturing environment that meets children’s emotional needs. This philosophy, sometimes called child-led parenting, aims to raise children through the core principles of respect, empathy, and communication. The tools of gentle parenting include connection, communication, and consistency.
Grateful parenting involves no punishments or rewards, but rather a partnership between parents and children where they want to do the right thing for their children. It is a philosophical approach that avoids punitive strategies like time-outs. It is an evidence-based, peaceful, soft style that focuses on establishing a collaborative parent-child relationship. Parents practice empathy, respect, understanding, and consistency.
Gentle parenting involves having clear boundaries, such as “It’s not kind to hit. I will not let you hit me”. They enforcing these boundaries as a way to show the child they can safely. The goal of gentle parenting is to raise confident, independent, and happy children through empathy, respect, and understanding.
A gentle parenting example would be sharing a toy with a friend or helping a sibling with a task. Praise the child for their kindness and encourage independence. Being a “gentle” parent means that the child is never unhappy, and the parent is always engaged in loving, joyful connection with the child. Gentle parenting guides parents to remove blame, validate their child’s feelings, and encourage independence.
📹 What is ‘gentle parenting’? An expert explains
Gentle parenting: It might be a term you’ve never heard of before, especially if you aren’t on TikTok. Over the last two years, …
What is considered gentle parenting?
Gentle parenting aims to raise confident, independent, and happy children through empathy, respect, understanding, and setting healthy boundaries. It focuses on age-appropriate development and focuses on improving a child’s self-awareness and understanding of their own behavior. Traditional parenting styles, such as timeout or spanking, focus on punishment and reward, while gentle parenting focuses on improving a child’s self-awareness and understanding of their own behavior. This approach is more effective and less harmful than traditional methods.
What are the side effects of gentle parenting?
Gentle parenting can cause stress and frustration for parents, as it can make it difficult to stick to a routine and lead to more challenging behavior. It may also increase challenging behavior, as children may misbehave to get their parent’s attention. To address this, parenting experts suggest using emotionally neutral discipline techniques and providing minimal attention, such as time out. Gentle parenting also treats children as isolated units, making it harder for them to learn how their actions impact others.
For example, a mother who experienced a child hitting their sibling might feel judged and misunderstood, so her solution is to make the child who hit their sibling feel accepted. This approach may not be ideal for all children, but it is important to consider the impact on the child who was being hit.
What are the 4 pillars of gentle parenting?
Gentle parenting is a concept that emphasizes mutual respect, empathy, understanding, and healthy boundaries between children and parents. It has been studied and introduced globally over the past century, with Dr. Alfred Adler in the 1920s introducing the concept of teaching children respect and empathy without spoiling them. Dr. Magda Gerber advocated for respectful treatment of infants and children in the 1940s and 1950s. Positive Parenting, introduced by Dr.
Jane Nelson in the 1980s, is now well-studied. Sarah Ockwell-Smith popularized the term and has a collection of parenting books on Gentle Parenting, Gentle Discipline, Gentle Sleep, and Gentle Eating.
What is a negative of gentle parenting?
Gentle parenting can cause stress and frustration for parents, as it can make it difficult to stick to a routine and lead to more challenging behavior. It may also increase challenging behavior, as children may misbehave to get their parent’s attention. To address this, parenting experts suggest using emotionally neutral discipline techniques and providing minimal attention, such as time out. Gentle parenting also treats children as isolated units, making it harder for them to learn how their actions impact others.
For example, a mother who experienced a child hitting their sibling might feel judged and misunderstood, so her solution is to make the child who hit their sibling feel accepted. This approach may not be ideal for all children, but it is important to consider the impact on the child who was being hit.
How to do gentle parenting correctly?
Gentle parenting is a parenting approach that emphasizes connection, empathy, respect, and positive discipline to nurture strong emotional intelligence and social skills in children. It involves setting clear expectations, communicating these expectations, using positive reinforcement, providing logical consequences, modeling good behavior, encouraging problem-solving, using time-in, not time-out, staying calm, and offering choices. This approach has gained attention in recent years, as it helps parents navigate the confusing and overwhelming journey of raising happy and well-adjusted children.
What are the three C’s of gentle parenting?
British childcare expert Sarah Ockwell-Smith, author of The Gentle Parenting Book, believes that gentle parenting helps build a relationship with a child based on their willingness and choices, rather than expectations and rules. The three Cs Ockwell-Smith believes are central to gentle parenting: connection, communication, and consistency. The longest hour of the day in many young families is between dinner and bed, and seemingly simple tasks like picking up toys, bathing, and brushing teeth are often battlegrounds. However, it is possible for a child to willingly choose to do these tasks, as long as they are based on their willingness and choices.
What are the downsides of gentle parenting?
Gentle parenting can cause stress and frustration for parents, as it can make it difficult to stick to a routine and lead to more challenging behavior. It may also increase challenging behavior, as children may misbehave to get their parent’s attention. To address this, parenting experts suggest using emotionally neutral discipline techniques and providing minimal attention, such as time out. Gentle parenting also treats children as isolated units, making it harder for them to learn how their actions impact others.
For example, a mother who experienced a child hitting their sibling might feel judged and misunderstood, so her solution is to make the child who hit their sibling feel accepted. This approach may not be ideal for all children, but it is important to consider the impact on the child who was being hit.
Why is gentle parenting not effective parenting technique?
Recent articles argue that gentle parenting may not be effective for difficult children, as the only failure is if the parent hasn’t identified the child’s need yet. While tools can be supported by scientific research, they may not fit with people’s values. While respecting well-behaved children is acceptable, children who misbehave need to learn compliance. While compliance may make life easier in the short term, it won’t help reach long-term parenting goals.
Misbehavior occurs when a child has a need that hasn’t been identified yet, and once found, they will stop being aggressive and difficult to manage. Meeting a child’s needs will also meet their own needs.
Can you say no in gentle parenting?
The interviewed individuals may not be engaged in the practice of gentle parenting, which involves assertive communication, establishing clear boundaries, and implementing disciplinary actions, but they do so with greater awareness and intention.
What do psychologists say about gentle parenting?
Aliza Pressman, a developmental psychologist and co-founder of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center, suggests that gentle parenting involves sharing a sense of calm with children, teaching them how to regulate themselves when they sense a potential threat. She emphasizes the importance of self-regulation, or the ability to respond to experiences in a socially acceptable way. Pressman suggests that infants and children learn self-regulation through co-regulation, which involves various responses like a warm presence, acknowledging distress, and a calming tone of voice, as well as modeling their own process of calming down.
What is criticism of gentle parenting?
Gentle parenting has gained a strong following among some parents, but many report that it doesn’t work for their individual child and family. Research suggests that gentle parenting strategies alone may not be effective for every situation and child, particularly for more serious, challenging behavior, such as aggression or oppositional children.
When gentle parenting isn’t working, parents may feel at a loss for how to apply these principles in more difficult situations. To help, gentle parenting advocates suggest using consequences, which are consistent with research and included in most evidence-based parenting programs. Consequences are not recommended by most gentle parenting advocates but are consistently supported by research and included in most evidence-based parenting programs.
Instead of using consequences, gentle parenting advocates suggest that children should be motivated internally to behave rather than responding solely to externally imposed consequences. This can help parents develop a more positive and supportive environment for their children.
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Thank you for this article, you have some great ideas. However, I wanted to say for the sake of some parents perusal this, that I totally understand if taking your child back to the car when they are having a tantrum at the store is not possible. First, that would be easier if you had only one child, but add, one or two more and walking back to the car is just adding to an already exhausting trip. Second, I live in Vermont, so if it’s freezing cold outside, and snowy or slushy, I’m okay with my child having their tantrum right there in the warm store. Today my toddler had a bit of a tantrum, we were almost done shopping, and she was right to be upset, because she was tired and hungry. Right before her nap time. What did I do, I just rushed to finish what I had to finish and tried to distract her by going really fast through the lanes. She was amused enough and we got out of there without too much screaming. Sometimes, what’s best for them in one way, is not best for them or you in the big picture.