I didn’t know about gentle parenting until my son was over a year old. I always thought I could be a better parent to older children than younger ones. My wife is less kind than me, so I sometimes think that maybe I’m just a pushover.
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I didn’t know the term gentle parenting until my son was over a year old. As an older millennial, I had no interest in parenting TikTok, and Instagram’s algorithm was more likely to show me videos of trendy restaurants than offer parenting advice.
When my kids started watching Cocomelon and Blippi, I started doomscrolling the reels to drown out the annoying “Wheels On The Bus” playing on a loop. Eventually, algorithms became popular, and finally my first gentle parenting meme appeared.
There are plenty of wannabe comedians who make not-so-funny videos featuring the phrase “gentle parenting.” The most common variation was to drag our parents’ generation into some kind of abusive parenting strategy, and then the new parents would hold onto their children. I found these reels to be both humorous and informative, so I had to Google this phrase.
This gentle parenting turned out to be a pretty big problem, much bigger than my sleep-deprived brain could handle.
I eventually boiled this concept down to meaning allowing our little dictator to rule with an iron fist. Of course, there is a broader purpose than simply complying with infants’ requests, which is to help infants learn the consequences of their actions while validating their own emotions.
But isn’t that just parenting?
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I was raised with a different parenting style
My parents are typical boomer archetypes, hippie-turned-yuppie, granola-loving neoliberal Clinton Democrats. My mother shopped at a health food store. They sold fruit leather instead of fruit roll-ups. I was sent to my room once or twice, but they never fired me. No one ever hit me, but I did get spanked with an open palm.
Before I became a parent, I spent time with my friends’ kids over long weekends at barbecues, brunches, birthdays, and even a few times at local bars. Some of those children are already teenagers. I always thought I could be a better parent to older children than younger ones. I prefer routine to chaos, reason and logic to the whims of a hungry tantrum, and conversation to high-energy, shabby housing.
I always heard that having children of your own is different. After all, my tolerance for whining, cranky, misbehaving toddlers is much higher when they’re my own. My first reaction is not to yell, but to ask why they’re angry. As a first-time parent who has watched other parents struggle to control their children, it seemed to me that the easiest way to soothe a child was to ask them what the problem was. I’m not trying to be a nice parent, I just want to please people.
And even if logic and reason don’t work, bribery sure does, right?
Sometimes I yell, but not often
My wife is not so kind. My son recently had a scrape on his arm. Even after showing us different options decorated with puppies, planets, and Elmo, he didn’t want us to wear bandages. I called it a sticker, which he loved, and even had him put a Band-Aid on his knee. Nothing worked. I convinced my wife that fruit juice ice cream was just as good as ice cream, so I suggested bribing her with the promise. I was going to negotiate with him.
“You just have to let him do it sometimes,” his wife said, employing a common tactic also known as “not negotiating with terrorists.”
After dinner, when I went to wipe his hands, I jumped in to wipe his scraped arm. “No, no, no,” he cried. “Ouch, it hurts,” I squeezed it tightly and wiped it clean before applying the antibacterial cream. As I applied the bandage, I tried to explain that this was part of growing up. I wanted to comfort him. I didn’t like hearing him cry. He cried anyway.
I raised my voice. I even cried. But very rarely. I wear glasses, but I have severe astigmatism and dioptric power, so I can barely see without them. Despite these facts, nothing could prevent my toddler from knocking my glasses off my face, sometimes on purpose. Even though we talked about why he shouldn’t touch my glasses, he ended up breaking two of them.
A few months ago, when my second pair had already been glued together multiple times, he heard quite a few choice words when he slapped them off my face. That was the first real expression of anger I showed him. Then I locked him in his crib while I waited for the glue to dry. He sobbed throughout and tried to negotiate early release.
The crib timeout was his first real punishment. He stopped hitting my glasses. At least he stopped for a while. And a few weeks ago, when we were at my parents’ house, he hit me directly in the face with the bridge of the frame. The already broken glass broke again, spilling shards onto the floor. I yelled at him. I screamed so loud that my dad could hear me in the basement. My mother heard my screams from the bedroom. My wife could hear me from the shower. My son was surprised and even scared.
I had to get on all fours and move my hands on the floor until I found the piece. Since we were transitioning from a crib to a toddler bed, I didn’t have a place to spend time with my son while I waited for the glue to dry. Instead, I blindly gathered up his toys scattered around the living room, put them in a Rubbermaid container, and put them in the closet.
He was angry with me all that day. Then when we got home he didn’t want me to sit on the couch and when I went to read to him before bed he insisted my wife read to him instead. I didn’t feel well. The next morning, when he was still holding a grudge, my 3-year-old self worried that he would hate me for the rest of his life.
I’m not intentionally trying to be kind to my parents. And I want to set limits for my child. Because he knows he needs limits. His consumption of fruit snacks alone proves that. But I also know that I don’t want a long distance relationship with him. I want him to trust me and understand why I’m putting limits on him.
Perhaps at 3 years old it will be too complicated to understand. But I’m still going to try.
