Is Gentle Parenting Screwing Up My Kids?

A firsthand look at the limits of conscious parenting (and my patience)

I can’t control my kids any more than I can control the weather or the waves.
But I still try.
And when that doesn’t work, I kneel. I breathe. I count. I mirror. I hold space.
And sometimes I wonder—am I acting as a container… or just letting everything spill?

The bigger my boys get, the less I can control them. For someone addicted to control, this is very confronting—and as someone mothering 24/7/365, I’m constantly confronted.

It’s not like they’re hanging from the chandeliers (it’s not like we have chandeliers), but when they start to act out, I quickly feel outnumbered and overwhelmed.

Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

Like that time, they ran circles around me at the grocery store. They were laughing and teasing me by grabbing candy after I’d said no. Or yesterday, when my littlest mocked me. He purposefully dumped out his brother’s playing cards and refused to clean them up. So I told him he had until ten—but before I could even say “one,” he’d started to countdown for me, loudly and snidely.

There are times when I feel completely unheard unless I yell, which is my absolute last desired response since I grew up in a house of explosive anger.

I start by making my requests quietly and calmly, to no avail. So then I turn the volume up and pretty soon my voice is booming and my bottom jaw is jutting forward and what started as a gentle choice becomes a command.

It’s a surprisingly short distance between gentle and aggressive.

You’d think that would scare them into obedience (it scares me), but they don’t hop to attention. They yell back. So I return to my knees, making eye contact, mirroring, acknowledging.

A teacher I greatly respect recently wrote that gentle parenting is ruining our kids. She thinks kids are being given too much power and too much freedom.

Am I doing them a disservice by sitting in their feelings with them no matter how erratic or violent? I wade right into the whirlpool of their swirling emotions with all my clothes on. Should I be offering a lifeboat instead of jumping in and allowing myself to be tumbled too?

I do offer lifejackets when we’re offshore and safe. I give them breathing practices and mindfulness tools, but I thought I needed to wait until the waves settled first.

Photo by Chris Munnik

So without a raft for any of us, I have to let my body go limp so they can cling onto me until we reach calmer waters. Never mind the sand scraping my eyes or the salt water filling my lungs.

We step away from the group setting or sit down in the parking lot, the asphalt burning my legs. I hold their arms as they try to hit me. “I won’t let you hit me.” I hold my tongue as they say something hurtful. We have time-ins. Together.

The popular punishments of my youth involved isolation or banishment. There’s a reason I remember the wallpaper of my old bedroom better than any movie I had watched 20 times. But did that really teach me anything? Was sitting crouched over a tiny desk writing standards an effective way to teach regulation? Line after line of declarations, like: “I will not yell,” “I will not lie.”

I would write “I” twenty times and then “will,” and then “not.” It was never a complete sentence. Of course, I calmed down and got under control. But was it the statements reprogramming my brain and behavior? Or was it the quiet room and the focused attention that settled me down? And by default of my distance, what settled my parents down too?

When a family member recently accused me of not having rules for my kids, I balked. “Of course we have rules, but we also give choices,” I retorted.

“But too many choices can be overwhelming for little kids,” they said, doubling down.

Is it overwhelming or empowering for a three-year-old to pick what they’re wearing that day? Is it overwhelming or empowering to encourage my son to kick rocks and squeeze his fists and scream, “I’m frustrated!”?

Did I feel safe or suffocated when I was yanked by my arm and told what to do or to say? What to feel? “Stop crying.” “Stop laughing.” “You’re out of control.”

“Get it together.” I’ve been saying that a lot lately to one of my boys.

Get it together.

How can he get himself back together if his sensitivities leave him exposed and raw like a person without skin? How can he contain himself if he’s a puddle of emotions seeping into and sucking out of every pore of his environment?

One thing that’s been helping him “get it together” lately is to give him squeezes on his shoulders and arms. Gentle massages to remind him of his physical boundaries. You are here. I am there. They are there. You are here.

It reminds me too. Where I end, and he begins.

And of course, the funny thing is, while those moments of big feelings feel like imminent death to my nervous system—like the whole family is about to drown, they really are just moments.

Because it’s in the calm and loving moments that truly fill our day that I relish their tenacity and edges.

This morning my littlest helped me clean my spilled tea without my asking him to. When I thanked him, he said, “That’s incredible, Mama!”—marveling at his own benevolence.

I didn’t control that. I didn’t plan that. And isn’t that what made it so beautiful?

I can’t control my kids any more than I can control the weather or the waves. But I can choose my responses. And if I choose one I regret, I can choose to forgive myself.

I can remember how they save candy for each other. How they say “thank you” without being prompted. I can remember that the whirlpool is just one part of the ocean.

And we’re all just learning to swim.