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Grandparenting

gentle parenting

(7 Posts)
Tigerlilyx61 Sun 27-Sept-26 12:15:37

My daughter and her husband have 2 children who are 6 and 9. The live 2500 miles away so I rarely see them in person. I do try and stay connected via facetime. I recently went to visit her and am having a difficult time processing my feelings after the visit. They are using gentle parenting which is fine but the problem is there are very few consequeces for negative behaviour and my daughter has a difficult time setting boundaries. She has verbalized this. I was only there for 5 days but the behaviour started almost immediately. They started hissing at me (like they were cats) if I asked them anything, threw suff at both my husband and myself, spoke to me like they were the parent i.e. GRANDMAAAA if I did or said something they didn't like, pushed themselves in between me and their mom as we were sitting in chairs talking. One morning she was helping her 6 uear old son put his rain boots on to go to preschool. He was sitting on the floor and he picked one of the boots up and threw it behind him and then looked at this mom as if to say "watcha gonna do about it?". The 9 year old daughter was sitting at the island in the kitchen reading while her mom was cooking dinner. I was sitting beside her and she was having a hard time sounding an occasional word out so I casually leaned over to see what the word was so I could help her and she snatched the book up so I couldn't see it. I am all for gentle parenting-heck I think I did it. I didn't spank and I tried to make consequences approppriaye for the offense but I NEVER would allow my kids to treat adults like this let alone their grandparents. Is anyone else having this problem? From what I hear it is a pretty common phenomenon.

ginny Sun 27-Sept-26 12:19:03

Well , there is gentle parenting and no parenting at all. I guess you know which this is.

Cossy Sun 27-Sept-26 12:21:05

I so agree, gentle parenting I’m all for, allowing children to be unruly, rude and badly behaved, isn’t, imo, gentle parenting.

Shel1951 Sun 27-Sept-26 12:30:36

Tbh I would call that lazy parenting,not gentle

Luckygirl3 Sun 27-Sept-26 12:30:38

Gentle parenting can be interpreted in many different ways and clearly the extremes (as with the extremes of anything at all) are undesirable.

It need not mean failing to set boundaries, which are the necessary structures within which a child can feel safe to learn and grow - and become a sociable human being.

Sane gentle parenting can be summed up as trying to put oneself in the mind of a child with all their lack of experience and puzzlement about the world, and their developing emotional regulation abilities.

So - you have a rule, say - you are not rude to people. A gentle parent will model this behaviour by not being rude themselves and when a child fails at this they will ask themselves why the child has failed - what made them do this? They can then address that whilst at the same time holding fast to the principle that the action was wrong.

Say a child has a temper tantrum at being asked to do something they do not want to do. You can get annoyed at them and punish them for it, or you can ask yourself why it is hard for them ... "I know it feels annoying that you have to do this as you really wanted to watch TV and are fed up about it, but you must do it because ......."

Children need those boundaries - gentle parenting supports those whilst also recognizing that they might be hard for the child.

Usedtobeblonde Sun 27-Sept-26 13:32:21

I know someone in the extended family who did this.
By the time the children were more than toddlers, three boys, no one in the family would babysit for them or have them to their house alone.
The marriage broke up eventually,don’t know why and the boys went to live with their Father so I lost contact and never asked about them.

Calendargirl Sun 27-Sept-26 13:37:30

Sounds like you are in the USA?

6 year old going to ‘pre school’?