Gentle Parenting: What It Is; What It Isn’t
There’s a fairly new term being thrown around in parenting that has some people confused. The term is gentle parenting. The confusion starts when it is thought to be a parenting approach that means kids do whatever they want while their hippy-dippy parents wave peace signs and say, “Yeah little dude, whatever you feel like doing, you get to do it.”
That, my friends, IS NOT, gentle parenting. It is not permission for kids to do whatever they want without any consequences or to run the house sans discipline. Okay, it just IS NOT. Are we clear??? Good, let’s move on!
Does the gentle approach to parenting work right away or all of the time? Well, no. That’s the thing about lasting learning, it takes time. One of the things I hear the most from parents is “How do I get my kids to___” fill in the blank. The truth is, we just can’t force our kids to do and be any particular way. Yeah, we could scare them into doing something when they know we are watching, but what about when we aren’t. Gentle parenting is not a how to get my kid to do something I want him or her to do now, it is more of a how do I get my kid to become a well adjusted, functional adult that can live without me.
Now we have an idea of what it isn’t, so what exactly IS gentle parenting? Well, I could send you to a few dozen authors and websites to explain but that would put you into the interwebs and we all know you’re probably borrowing time just to be in this corner of said interwebs so I will just summarize for you. Gentle parenting is a respectful approach to raising little people into adults, and concentrates on parent-child connection and teaching. It’s connecting then redirecting.
Connection between the parent and child is the first key here. Before we try to redirect, correct, or discipline, we first work to engage with our kid and remind them they are valued. We can replace our “you’re in big trouble” dagger eyes with heart eyes, or respond with a “that must be tough” rather than “I’m sure your teacher didn’t mean it that way”. I mean, when was the last time you loved being told what to do by someone who seemed mad at you? Um, probably never! So connect, connect, connect, before trying to redirect.
Once we connect, then we can redirect. It’s not thinking about discipline as punishing children by conjuring up super awesome instagram-worthy forms of consequences with charts and stars and fear-based tactics. Instead it’s teaching first by example, then by word, while allowing natural consequences to guide behavior.
Once our child feels connected to us we have so much more opportunity to discipline. When our kids feel connection we can engage them in the learning process by asking questions like, “what are some ideas you might have to solve this problem?” Or, “can you tell me a little bit about what happened just then when you were upset?” We can talk about what the natural consequences of their behavior might be and about what we could do differently next time. In essence discipline happens together and not in a, “I’m bigger than you so you have to do what I say” sort of way.
So that, my friends, is gentle parenting in a nutshell. Go crack that sucker open!
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