If you’re about to become a new parent, you probably want to do everything right for your child. That’s why we propose gentle parenting discipline. So, what is gentle parenting? We’ve prepared a guide on this parenting method for you.
First, we’ll explain what gentle parenting is, and then you’ll learn if gentle parenting is effective and what consequences it has. Moreover, you’ll learn about its techniques and punishment methods. Once you’ve read our guide, you can successfully implement this parenting method in your household.
In this article
Gentle parenting is a parenting method that’s founded on mutual understanding. It results in raising happy and independent children that are respectful and confident. While its name might suggest parents should be lenient and indulgent, it’s much more than that. Showing empathy, respect, and understanding while setting some boundaries will result in healthy and happy children.
By focusing on teaching your child age-appropriate behavior, you’re developing the child’s emotional intelligence. Moreover, you’re prioritizing your child’s mental and emotional health, which will result in raising compassionate and healthy people.
Fostering the qualities you want in your child while understanding their own needs and desires allows you to create a healthy environment for your child to grow and develop. Furthermore, gentle parenting teaches children to express and channel their emotions correctly and to solve problems together as a family.
Gentle parenting is focused on age-appropriate development. Thus, gentle parenting is focused on four crucial elements. It’s based on respect, empathy, and understanding while setting clear boundaries. It’s important to note that all four elements are based on mutual trust and reciprocation.
Setting clear boundaries can be the most challenging part of gentle parenting. However, it’s vital to set clear and reasonable boundaries and explain the reason behind them to your child. Since gentle parenting is based on age-appropriate behavior, boundaries will change over time as your child grows.
Having no boundaries will result in your child not knowing how to behave in different scenarios and toward others. It can also happen if your child has too many limitations, so you must set a few clear, meaningful, and reasonable ones that you can consistently enforce. However, it’s a two-way street – if you respect their boundaries, they’ll respect yours.
It’s crucial to show understanding to your child. Always bear in mind that their life is much different from yours as they’ve had much less experience in life, which automatically means they have much fewer frames of reference to go by. Thus, if your child behaves in a way that’s so different from your behavior, try to understand their point of view and their emotional maturity.
Understanding your child or communicating so you can get to an understanding builds their confidence and makes them feel heard and appreciated. Just try not to force them to communicate, as that would have a counter effect and lead you nowhere near understanding your child.
Every parent expects respect from their child. However, you can only expect respect if you respect your child first. Always remember that you’re an adult in the situation. Therefore, your child will express some raw, uncontrolled emotions. It’s your responsibility not to lose your temper and control your emotions as an adult.
You should respect their feelings, even if what they’re communicating sounds that seem insignificant to you. Gentle parenting involves allowing your child to come to the solutions themselves and you, as a parent, respecting their logic and problem-solving while only gently guiding them toward the solution.
Listening to your child makes them feel respected and understood.
Showing empathy for your child is the core of building trust between a parent and a child. If your child reacts angrily or frustrated, stopping and objectively observing the situation is essential. As an adult, you might see your child’s problems as absurd, but you must acknowledge them.
You have to stop and ask your child why they’re feeling what they’re feeling and tell them you understand what they’re going through. If not, your child won’t deem you a safe space to come to when they’re having a problem.
Compassion should be practiced consistently throughout your child’s development. When your child feels your empathy, they will consider you safe to help them channel their emotions and find comfort.
Some people confuse gentle parenting with other parenting methods, such as permissive or free-range parenting. However, you need to know the difference, as gentle parenting aims to raise happy children that are allowed to behave in an age-appropriate manner. Other parenting styles that strict parents confuse gentle parenting with a focus on different things.
Permissive parenting focuses on bonding with a child instead of disciplining them. While permissive parents prioritize their friendly relationship with their children, the children’s discipline suffers as they haven’t learned how to behave and channel emotions. Gentle parents balance the parent-child connection and boundaries.
Free-range parenting allows your child to make decisions and do things independently. While this method endorses independence, children are not suitable to make all decisions themselves. On the other hand, gentle parenting encourages guiding your child to make their own decisions and setting a clear set of boundaries to help them learn how to behave.
Now that we’ve explained gentle parenting, it’s time to focus on its effects on children. We’ve already mentioned that gentle parenting prioritizes the child’s age and the family bond. Thus, with your child as the focal point of your family, there are numerous benefits of gentle parenting for the child.
You, as a parent, are a role model to your child. By practicing gentle parenting, you’re showing empathy to your child, asking them how they feel in stressful situations, and understanding their point of view and their emotions.
Eventually, the child will pick up on that and recognize your feelings. If you’ve shown the child understanding and empathy during stressful moments, they’ll use that as a frame of reference for their behavior. The child will learn that behavior and reciprocate, showing compassion and empathy towards you and, later in life, toward others.
If your response to your child’s bad behavior is to punish them and criticize them, your child will pick up on that and get anxious when they do something bad. You can’t avoid your child doing things you deem bad since they have to explore the world themselves to learn.
However, if you show support and encouragement while being consistent with such reactions, your child will know what to expect from you – safe space and support. It will reduce the anxiety of coming to you with a problem and reduce the chances of future social anxiety in your child.
While your child is younger, they won’t know how to express their emotions, good or bad. Thus, you’ll eventually push your child in the right direction through communication, understanding, and empathy. Gentle parents gradually teach their children to express emotions according to age.
It will result in individuals with high emotional intelligence that can understand what they’re feeling and communicate it clearly. Your child will progressively widen their emotional vocabulary and be able to explain complex emotions they’re feeling.
We’ve explained gentle parenting in detail; now it’s time to see how it can be used in real-life events. For example, how to prevent your child from running off in public? It’s important to explain that your child should stay by your side to be safe. Explain the reasoning behind your requests. Moreover, make sure to compliment them on respecting your request after. This way, you show your child you acknowledge them and pay attention.
Another situation could be when you must stop the fun and leave the park. Your child can easily misinterpret this as ruining their fun, so set expectations before going to the park and be kind when informing them the time’s up. Tell them you understand their feelings and that feeling that way is normal.
For many parents, going to the store with their child is a nightmare as they’ll have to decide what not to buy. You must understand that your child doesn’t understand why you can’t buy them another toy, so you should remain calm. Instead, acknowledge their want and ask for their help picking up another thing you came there to buy.
First, let’s clarify that there isn’t a rulebook for gentle parenting. You can’t just learn and implement all the rules by the book. Every child and every family is different, so you’ll need to adapt gentle parenting techniques to your family. We’ll explain several gentle parenting techniques that could be a guideline for your family.
First and foremost, be consistent and make sure your boundaries are clearly explained to your child. If you tell them “because I said so,” your child won’t learn why something is wrong and will just do it when you’re not looking.
Another principle of gentle parenting is to work together as a family. It will create a sense of support and strengthen the parent-child bond. Avoid giving commands but invite your child to act together – instead of saying, “Tie your shoes”, say something like, “Let’s tie your shoes together.”
Lastly, never comment on the person but on the action. This slight change in wording can make a big difference. Instead of saying, “You broke the glass,” try saying, “The glass is fragile and breaks when it falls. Maybe we can try being more gentle with it next time.” It shows your child that mistakes don’t define them and that they happen to everyone.
A common misconception is that gentle parenting has no punishment methods. It’s true that gentle parenting doesn’t condone time outs, taking child’s possessions from them, or corporal punishments, such as spanking. Instead, gentle parenting aims to explain to your child why their behavior is bad.
First, gentle parents must stay calm and calm down their children. You should reassure them and calm them down by telling them they’re not in trouble. Then, you should explain in words your child can understand, according to their age, why their behavior wasn’t proper. Again, make sure to comment on the action, not the person.
However, nowadays, the biggest problem for children is too much screen time. It’s hard to control your child’s internet usage and set the period they can use their phones. Because if you, as an adult, get sucked into surfing the Internet for several hours, you can’t expect your child to have any concept of time.
Thus, we suggest implementing a parental control app in such a case. However, explain to your child why you installed a parental control app on their mobile device. One such app that allows parents to set their child’s screen time and block inappropriate content is Wondershare FamiSafe.
The consequences of gentle parenting can include losing the parent-child dynamic. To avoid this, make sure your child understands they come to you to find comfort and that you guide them toward being independent, not the other way around.
Moreover, your child can start avoiding you if you’re inconsistent with your reactions. Always control your emotions, so your child can know what to expect from you, and that’s support and understanding.
As a new parent, gentle parenting sounds like the right way to go. It focuses on teaching the child age-appropriate behavior and the proper emotional expression while solving problems together as a family.
Gentle parenting is based on boundaries, understanding, respect, and empathy that should be practiced daily and set as an example for your child. Eventually, your child will adopt those practices and grow up to be a happy, confident, and independent person.