‘Gentle parenting’ is no way to bring up children – and I should know

The mild-mannered parenting style popularised by millennials – which means never saying ‘No’ or raising your voice – is facing a backlash from exhausted and confused mothers, worried they’re producing a generation of indulged and self-obsessed brats. Polly Dunbar, who tried it on her own son, understands why

Polly Dunbar and her son, Nat (Polly Dunbar)

I can pinpoint the exact moment I was done with gentle parenting. The soft play session had ended, but my three-year-old son didn’t want to leave, and he’d had “three more minutes” at least four times. He was hot, hungry and tired, and I could see exactly where things were heading. We’ve been there before, and neither of us liked it.

I tried The Script – the one the Instagram parenting gurus swear by. First, you validate their feelings: “You don’t want to leave. It’s so tough. You’re feeling cross.” Then you hold the boundary: “It’s time to go.” Then you sprinkle on a little sweetener: “You can choose which programme you want to watch when we get home…”

Did it diffuse the situation? If anything, it inflamed it.

In that moment, it was very clear to me that I could have the diplomacy skills of Kofi Annan paired with the relentless cheeriness of a CBeebies presenter, but they would be useless here. Sometimes, if you want a pre-schooler to go somewhere they don’t want to go, what you really need is to stop talking, pick them up and carry them out.

Among millennials, gentle parenting is ubiquitous. An approach intended to be more respectful and empathetic than the authoritarian, rigid style common in previous generations, it’s all about offering choices rather than making demands, and avoiding shouting and using negative words such as “don’t”, “no”, “can’t” and “bad”. Gentle parents don’t resort to punishments such as Supernanny’s favourite, the naughty step, instead delving into the feelings causing unwanted behaviour so children feel understood, which in turn theoretically makes them better able to regulate their emotions.

Of course, I want more than anything to be kind and patient with my son, as my late, adored mum was with me. Sometimes, though, living with a threenager can leave me feeling overwhelmed, to put it mildly. Since his birth, I’ve discovered shortcomings I had no idea I had. So when I discovered gentle parenting exponents such as Big Little Feelings, Dr Becky Kennedy and Janet Lansbury – a woman who embodies serenity – on social media, I read everything they had to say and tried to incorporate their wisdom into my relationship with him.

Much of what I’ve learned from those particular experts has been useful, particularly the emphasis on trying to calm yourself down first before intervening with your child, to avoid adding fuel to their fire. But it’s also no surprise to me that in the US, where most of the gentle parenting authorities are based, there’s a growing backlash against the movement in general.

Parents – including me – are starting to resent it for making us feel exhausted, confused and ashamed, and are also questioning if what it’s doing to our children is entirely positive.

For an approach designed to be non-authoritative, there are actually many rules to gentle parenting – it’s just that most of them are for the parents rather than the children. And failing to follow them correctly apparently means risking your child’s future self-esteem and happiness. Saying “Good boy/girl” is frowned on, in case you make them dependent on external validation. Ditto “You’ve made me really angry/sad”, which might trigger toxic co-dependency. Shouting will lead to depression and lack of confidence in later life, and possibly also make them a psychopath.

With stakes this high, losing control and raising your voice once in a while can feel traumatic. But I’ve found it’s more likely to happen if I’ve spent all day engaged in tortuous discussions about feelings – not my own, obviously – trying desperately not to say “Because I said so!” and ignoring my gut instinct, which is that clear instructions peppered with the occasional firm “No” might, whisper it, be far more successful.

Anyway, is shouting sometimes really so detrimental? I want my son to know that all humans get upset and angry at times, adults included, and that his actions impact those around him.

When you’re searching your frazzled brain for the right, gentle parenting form of words with which to respond – never react – it’s also very easy to get it wrong and lapse into permissive parenting, ie, allowing them to do whatever the hell they want. It’s a distressingly short journey from validating a child’s feelings to letting them cause mayhem in a supermarket, and from trying not to shout “Stop that!” when your child throws sand at another to standing impotently, watching it happen. The experts say boundaries are vital, but when you’re focusing all your energies on not losing your cool, those are what often vanish instead.

And while nobody wants their child to grow up believing their feelings don’t matter, I’m also unsure that a toddler’s every emotional experience needs to be indulged. I don’t always have it in me to muster empathy for the distress caused by an incorrectly cut piece of cheese. More seriously, I worry that the constant focus on emotions will raise a self-obsessed, entitled generation who see their feelings more important than anything else, including objective truth, or different, perhaps equally valid, viewpoints.

Recently, I’ve been trying to listen to my gut more, which tells me to try to emulate my own mum, who was kind, yes, and gentle, too, but also firm, sometimes even strict. I know what she’d say if she could see all the gentle parenting social media posts: that parenting can’t be taught via 30-second videos, and that there’s no such thing as a script that every child will respond to.

I think she’d also greet the idea of someone using a detailed narration of their recalcitrant toddler’s feelings to cajole them into leaving a soft play session with amused incredulity. Increasingly, I feel the same. Sometimes you just need to get home, even if it takes a fireman’s lift to achieve it.