What to Know
No matter which parenting style you use the most when raising your kids, you probably feel like you’re getting it wrong in some way. If you subscribe to gentle parenting, you might worry you aren’t being strict enough. If you are an authoritative parent, there might be the gnawing concern that you are being too hard on your kids. Can any of us really get it right? According to most parents, me included, not really. At least, when it comes to my own insecurities as someone who practices gentle parenting.
So when one mom shared on Instagram that she totally switched up from gentle parenting after feeling its long-term negative effects on her kids, I felt even more unsure about my parenting style than ever before. According to the mom, Jaclyn, gentle parenting can lead to the anxiety you’re probably trying to avoid in kids, while also making your kids insecure, which is literally the opposite of what gentle parents want for their children.
And hey, maybe your kids won’t turn out exactly like Jaclyn’s. But her candidness in what she got wrong and what she wants to do to change that might make you think twice about gentle parenting as a whole.
She is basically a cautionary tale for gentle parenting too much.
Jaclyn wrote in the caption of her Instagram Reel that she spent 10 years gentle parenting two kids, and she realized she needed to correct her own behavior. She noted that one of her kids became a people-pleaser in the 10 years she practiced gentle parenting, while the other acted entitled, and as though “everything is up for debate.” Instead of raising the self-aware and sensitive (but not to a fault) kids she might have hoped to, Jaclyn was met with “emotionally dysregulated” or “withdrawn” kids.
“I had tried SO hard to do everything right,” she wrote. “To do things different from what I had growing up. Here’s what I realized. I wasn’t actually doing gentle parenting…I had slipped into permissive parenting without realizing it.” Oops. Is she me and am I her? Honestly, I’m probably not the first parent to consider that.
I practice gentle parenting because I grew up with negligent parents.
In order to right the wrongs of the generation before me, my idea of positive parenting is validating feelings, having open communication, and explaining why boundaries exist and what they are, among other things. Apparently, per Jaclyn, I got it all wrong. Go figure, right? Maybe I can learn a thing or two from her own misguided adventures in parenting and not knowing the right move.
She switched to authoritative parenting.
Jaclyn wrote in her caption that, in order to rectify her course, she switched to authoritative parenting to give her kids high warmth, but also high structure. That means she gives her kids clear boundaries, but also consequences. Instead of worrying that punishments or consequences might negatively affect her children in the future, she leans i to helping her kids learn by way of proper consequences.
Under another video that Jaclyn made about what she sees as gentle parenting, other parents asked for her help in setting them on their own paths to stronger parenting to benefit their kids long-term. One parent commented that Jaclyn is talking about permissive rather than gentle parenting. But, Jaclyn commented back, that’s part of her point.
“Many families want to do gentle parenting but aren’t sure how to do it (it likely wasn’t modeled for them growing up and they want to do things so much different from their own childhoods),” Jaclyn wrote. “That they end up with permissive boundaries because they feel guilty shame, or just aren’t sure how to navigate boundaries, validation, etc.”
