Gentle Parenting Isn’t Soft – It’s Strategic: What Most Parents Misunderstand

By now you may know a bit of my story: I was raised by a single mom who had a tremendous amount of support from my grandparents in raising me. When I was too young to attend school, I lived with my grandparents Monday through Friday while my mother worked, and my older sister was in school. I loved it! I loved being with grandparents who cooked yummy food, ate dessert every night, let me watch cartoons, and took me to the pet store to check out animals. They loved me, took amazing care of me, and now I come to realize they were a beautiful example and blueprint of a happy, healthy marriage and supportive parents to their daughters. These are my fond memories of staying with my grandparents. But while I was having the time of my life with my grandparents, I was respectful, I was obedient, I knew my place. This was authoritarian parenting and if I didn’t act right, I could guarantee myself a spanking.

Like many of us who are now raising kids, gentle parenting is not a familiar place. It’s totally foreign. I didn’t grow up in a household where big emotions were met with calm. I don’t really remember what exactly they were met with, but I do remember that if someone felt my emotions were unnecessary, too loud, or being displayed for too long, I should have them elsewhere. I wasn’t co-regulated by a calm adult. I was told to toughen up, stop crying, be a good girl, or else… that else was a spanking. And boy, did I get a lot of them. I loved (and still do) like testing my limits. Maybe this was how you were raised too. And if so, when we try to parent gently in the midst of a storm and under pressure, we don’t have a script. Even when we have a script, from all the parenting advice out there, something happens, and it’s gone. It’s not that we don’t have the best or true intentions, it’s that we have a reflex.

This isn’t a failure on our part. It’s a collision of two nervous systems: ours and our child’s, both trying to stay safe in the old ways they know how. And when things get hard, our body and our nervous system naturally go back to what we know: generational parenting. But when we think about how we want our children to respond to these moments when/if they become parents, we want better for them. We want them to the parents we are working so damn hard to be.

Why “Gentle Parenting” Feels Like It Doesn’t Work

I was recently on a podcast where a co-host said gentle parenting was bullshit. I’m pretty sure I know what she meant, and its common frustrations many parents express from “my child doesn’t listen,” to “there are no consequences,” or “I tried being calm and kind, but they still hit their sibling/refused bedtime/had a huge tantrum,” and “I ended up yelling anyways.” I get it. I feel this way too.

Here’s the truth behind that pushback:

1.      Most parents don’t see gentle parenting modeled, they’re seeing permissive, non-co-regulated boundaries, but that too is referred to as “gentle parenting” but it’s not.

2.      We’re trying to parent in ways we’ve never experienced ourselves. This brings me back to my nervous system comment earlier. In the hard times we go back to what we know, and our bodies don’t know gentle parenting If we weren’t parented that way.

3.      The tools we’re given are often surface-level scripts, not strategies that account for trauma, stress, or neurobiology.

4.      We aren’t asking why. We don’t become detectives and figure out the root behind the cause. It’s not our fault. We juggle so much day to day, and scripts and tips don’t ask to dig deep, just offering advice and we hope it sticks.

5.      A lot of gentle parenting advice doesn’t fit because of your child’s temperament, experiences, developmental age – you name it. One-size-fits-all advice doesn’t fit the child who pushes limits (like me!) or is neurodivergent, or simply complex.

These reasons don’t mean gentle parenting is broken or doesn’t work for your child. It means it’s been misrepresented. And we must get back to basics.

Here’s what the research really says:

-          Children don’t thrive on softness alone; they need structure and connection. Rules and boundaries are real and keep children feeling safe and that someone is in control, other than them. When children feel like they must be in control, it causes chronic stress and a constant state of fight or flight.

-          Emotional coaching (like what John Gottman calls “emotional intelligent parenting”) actually leads to better outcomes in self-regulation, peer relationships throughout life, and academic achievement (Gottman & Declaire, 1997).

-          Secure attachment and behavioral boundaries are not opposite, they’re interdependent and again, very necessary (Siegel & Bryson, 2012).

-          Kids don’t learn to calm down from being left alone. They learn it by borrowing or mirroring our regulation first. Through practice during the small moments so their bodies know what to do when that moment becomes big (Porges, 2011; Perry & Szalavitz, 2017).

But we do need to talk about some overlooked truths about gentle parenting:

-          Warmth isn’t enough for kids if we disappear under pressure and resort back to what our nervous system knows aka generational parenting.

-          Boundaries without establishing emotional safety first feels like punishment so we must repair and reconnect.

-          Parenting gently when no one was gentle with you as a child isn’t soft, its actually strategic, brave, and biologically demanding, that’s why it can feel exhaustive!

A lot of parents I talk to want to know what actually works. First, we don’t have to call it gentle parenting if you’re hung up on the name. Call it whatever you want. This isn’t about scripts or catchy names. It’s just parenting intentionally. It’s about practicing steadiness. It’s aiming to be regulated enough to repair, not to be perfect. Which in and of itself can be challenging even for me because I’m a perfectionist who of course also wants to be a perfect mom for my kids. But it’s exhausting, and kids don’t want perfect – they just want us. But that takes work. It takes you working on your nervous system, even if that means recognizing when you start to get triggered. It’s about learning regulation strategies to practice in the small moments when you get bothered so that when your child loses it, you can rely on practiced strategies to regulate and help your child co-regulate. And sometimes that may mean you lost it too. You can always repair.

Rupture + repair = connection.

 I do a lot of repairs in my home. It teaches me and my kids that we make mistakes, that we are all working on something, that we can continue to try and fail, and try again. And most importantly, it means that the ones we love are always worth trying again for – that is what love is all about.

So, let’s stop asking parents to be gentle in a system that doesn’t truly support them. Let’s stop blaming parents for not being calm when no one taught them how. Let’s start giving tools that respect both the child and the adult’s nervous system. And let’s give some space for parents to reparent themselves while they are parenting their own children. It isn’t easy. But if our kids are worth all that we attempt to do, remember, so are you. That’s not soft. And what’s how we raise kids who trust themselves, and us and know their self-worth, because we know ours too.

References:

Gottman, J., & Declaire, J. (1997). Raising an emotionally intelligent child. Simon & Schuster.

Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2017). The boy who was raised as a dog: And other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook. Basic Books.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, self-regulation. W.W. Norton.

Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2012). The Whole-Brain Child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child’s developing mind. Delacorte Press.