What Is The Gentle Parenting Approach..

What is the gentle parenting approach? So I teach parenting, I've been teaching it actually for 27 years now. It's not something I ever thought that I would do, but I got put in that world because of the therapeutic treatment care that I did for troubled teens and all of the work with families over the years. And so I watch what happens in parenting trends, especially because I know what really works. I know child development and I know what really helps in the hardest circumstances because when I worked with those therapeutic treatment care youth, I had to help them through some really difficult stuff. So when the gentle parenting approach came out, I was interested. I was like, wow, okay, is there going to be somebody else out there that's maybe teaching some of the same things that I'm teaching? Because the parenting world crosses, right? It crosses over, there's little bits here and there of things. And so I thought the name of it sounded pretty promising. And so I looked into it and what I found was sadly a little bit disappointing. So what I'd like to share with you are four of the key tenants for the gentle parenting approach, so that you can know exactly what's in there. And then for your own interest, I would like to compare for you the teaching self-government approach. All right, tenant number one is respect. So the gentle parenting approach really does nail the point that children should respect parents and parents should respect children. And that sounds pretty good, right? In fact, people have said that to me for years. They've said, okay, well I think my family has two problems that I can see. Number one, they don't respect me. Number two, I don't respect them. And then I follow it up with a question, well what does it mean to respect them? Who are they? Parents are taken a little back by that. See, I've written a whole book on roles and so I've examined it very closely. And so when I ask the question, they're like, huh, okay. And I explain you have to know who each other is or you really can't respect the person. And it is true that people should respect each other, but we've got to make sure that we're careful about that. So in the gentle parenting approach, respect is we are equals. We are both people, we are both humans, we are going to understand each other, care about each other as equals. And so I'm going to respect you the same way you want to be respected by me. We are going to respect each other equally. The problem with that is it doesn't actually take roles into account. In fact, it dumps roles on its head. This is the same problem that happened with Dr. Benjamin Spock. So Dr. Benjamin Spock, years ago back in the 1950s, post-World War II, he wrote a book about parenting, which actually became the parenting philosophy that birthed the hippie generation, okay. And his whole philosophy was that we shouldn't think of them as much as our children, but more like a friend. The problem is with a friend, you don't say, hey friend, you should wear deodorant or hey friend, that's not the right way to dress to go to a wedding. Or hey friend, you eat really loudly and we need to work on your social skills. You don't say that to your friend. That's not proper etiquette. So what he did at that time was he put parents and children on equal. Friends, that's equal. It's going to be dysfunctional every time because children need someone to teach them and guide them. They want someone to help them and care for them. That's what they hope for. That's part of their secure foundation. And without it, they start wondering who they even are. And when the parents put so much pressure on them to be equal to them, then suddenly the parents are expecting less of their children as far as development. They're really just worried about how it feels in the back and forth in the relationship. So in the teaching self-government model, we talk about roles. In fact, like I said, I've written a whole book on that. I've written 15 books actually, parenting books. And that's one that people really love. It was an instant bestseller actually because it's such a great read aloud with children because it's a story that you can learn through. The whole idea is that teachers need to know their teachers and teach. And as soon as the teachers don't teach or the learners don't learn, then we end up having dysfunction. And so often that is a problem that families are facing nowadays. Tenant number two for gentle parenting is empathy. So, you know, caring, trying to seek to understand where they're coming from. So there's going to be a lot of questions like, well, why did that happen? Well, what does that, how does that make you feel? You know, oh, that's really disappointing, right? And and just really showing that you care about the person, which I do think is a really positive characteristic. I think that parents should be caring about their children and recognize their work in progress. They're developing. There's lots of different reasons why parents should care about their children. It's sad to me that that would even need to be said. I would hope all parents would care about their children. The gentle parenting approach kind of took the empathy into a different direction than I would. What it did is it basically would start asking questions that would give them an out like, well, is this really a skill that they can learn at this age? Are they still kind of too young for this? You know, that type of a questioning, which actually was then giving them a way out, making a justification for why they wouldn't have to make that change for themselves. That's very different than empathy with teaching self-government. So empathy with teaching self-government, I'm going to be thinking, I care about you. I love you. As I'm doing a correction, I'm going to say, OK, so just now this is what happened and this was the result of that and this is what you should have done and here's why and now let's practice it the right way. Here's the consequence you earn, you know, and I'm going to go through a full process of a correction, but my tone is going to be so calm, so caring, so understanding. I might even say to them at the very beginning of a correction, something to be effective. I know you were in a rush this morning as you were getting ready to leave. You had a lot of things to do, but we gave you an instruction to make your bed and I see that that didn't happen. So I'm going to say I understand there was a lot of things happening. I get it, but you did have an instruction and we have to be consistent. So the empathy with the gentle parenting is not about consistency, where the empathy and understanding still helps a parent in teaching self-government model to be able to maintain some consistency and so they can teach their children cause and effect. So tenet number three would be to understand the development and I think that's great. I've taught many classes actually on development and I think I've said to parents multiple times, well you know they're three and that happens when a person's three. There is a difference between understanding a person's development and going I need to keep that in mind and making an excuse of why they don't have to handle something because you're rationalizing because of the stage of the development they're in. Children can always be learning all along the way and when you teach your children, you're always teaching them one new adult skill. How to load a dishwasher is an adult skill, a life skill. How to brush your teeth is an adult skill, a life skill. All the different skills and things that we teach are technically adult skills. For you to exclude some training from someone because maybe they're not developmentally ready could be a little short-sighted. So in the teaching self-government system, we start working with children on the four basic skills of communication when they're very young. Sometimes even before they're verbal, they can still learn to do self-regulation just because of verbal cues from their parents. They can learn how to take deep breaths, get themselves calm before they can even form complete sentences. They learn things like how to follow instructions, accept no answers and criticism, accept consequences and disagree appropriately among many other skills that are going to be helpful for adult life. So in the gentle parenting approach, it was well, is that happening because they're just young? Is that happening because nobody taught them yet? Well yeah, they're just in that stage of development. So it's kind of like giving them a pass why they wouldn't have to learn, where in the teaching self-government approach, we use every opportunity as a learning opportunity. Tenant number four is boundaries and this is something that probably in social media wasn't talked about as much related to gentle parenting, but it is something that was promoted that hey, you should have boundaries. You should have types of expectations for your children and you should be calm when you're talking to them about those expectations if they don't meet the expectations. Those types of things were discussed, but I have to say with implementation people didn't really get to that. I think that most parents got so caught up in the empathy and understanding and the emotions and the feelings and all of those types of psychological things that were going on that when it came to the corrections, they didn't really have the skills that they needed. And here's the if you're going on mutual respect, how are the boundaries and corrections going to actually happen well? In a way it kind of counters the other. So in the teaching self-government model of parenting, there's roles. We know who each other is in the family and then because of that, because there's someone who's a teacher, then we know they can give instructions to the learner. So then when the learner doesn't follow the instructions, then the teacher can come and have a teaching moment with them about it. They can talk about it, correct it and give the person an opportunity to accept consequences so that they learn cause and effect and they can ultimately learn self-government. And that's just a mini example of the difference, but the roles is super important for actually being able to get to a place where you can really teach a child about boundaries. The other thing too is we're catering to all of these emotional outbursts when we are in the empathy step in the gentle parenting approach and so then how are they going to be able to learn the boundary of accepting a no answer? So all boundaries are actually no answers. Here's a line, a boundary you don't cross over, don't touch other people, don't hang on other people, don't steal things, don't those are all lines you don't cross over, right? They're just no answers. Well to accept a no answer, you look at the person or the situation, you keep a calm face, voice and body, you say okay or you ask to disagree appropriately which is another one of our skills and then you drop the subject, you don't think about it anymore, you move on, you observe a boundary. But if you're worried about your emotions with the boundary, how are you going to do it observing the boundary? That's going to be very difficult and I think this is what many parents found with gentle parenting approach is that it just simply did not work. So there's lots of different ways for you to find out about teaching self-government and if it can be right for you and help you, there's many videos on this channel, one that's even a full-length class called the not so known secret for parenting success, you may want to look at that. There's also an app which has podcasts and blogs and videos and free four basic skills charts and free job jar function, there's a nickelene bot that to ask questions there if you're a member of the TFG community, there's a lot of things that are there. So if you go to your app store or your play store and you find teaching self-government as an app, there's a little house with a family in the house, that's what it looks like, it's completely free, there's tons there for you. Keep learning, keep growing because the truly gentle approach to parenting is one where people learn all of the skills and boundaries they need and it feels safe in the process but they're not entitled along the way.