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The first time my toddler threw a tantrum, it caught me off guard. She swiped her bowl of pasta to the ground (something she usually likes) and demanded a "peanut butter sammich" instead.
I froze, wracking my brain for parenting scripts and advice on how to handle this situation. She had eaten a peanut butter sandwich earlier that day, and I wanted to maintain this boundary.
After validating her emotions (twice) and offering two different preferred foods that she swatted from my hands, I felt defeated and perplexed. By this point, my toddler had hummed her sippy cup at the wall and managed to wriggle out of her high chair straps.
"What now?" my husband asked over her anguished shrieks.
"I don't know," I conceded.
The voices of gentle parenting experts — more accurately, the Instagram posts by certain accounts such as Big Little Feelings and Responsive Parenting — ran on loops in my mind.
But what happens when gentle parenting doesn't work? Is it really so bad to offer a bribe or just say no? How will our children learn that pitching a fit won't get them what they want? And, more importantly, what about my experience as a parent? Does it really need to be this hard?
As we waded deeper into toddlerhood, it became clear that gentle parenting — on top of being impractical — was sucking all of the joy out of parenthood. Daily transitions made me anxious. Day care dropoffs, trips to the park, and even walks in the stroller became potential hotbeds.
I officially gave up on gentle parenting when my second daughter was born, leaving me with two kids under two. I simply couldn't afford to spend precious time and energy obsessing over my toddler's emotional wellbeing at my own expense.
Gentle parenting is gentle on kids but hard on parents. It centers the child's emotional experience, mandating that the parent shrink in order to make space for the child's "big emotions." Saying things like "that made mommy sad" is forbidden. And, to make things worse, there's a mob of gentle parenting cult followers on social media just waiting to take you down if (when) you mess up.
In hindsight, I've always been a gentle parenting skeptic. As a pediatric speech-language pathologist, the notion that kids shouldn't know how their behavior affects others (including adults) seems counterintuitive. Recognizing social cues and predicting another's emotional state is something we target in therapy as kids grow older.
I want my daughters to see me as a whole person, and I don't want to resent them for allowing myself to become their emotional (or physical) punching bag. Moreover, I want to enjoy parenthood and offer myself the same compassion that I extend to my kids.
So, I've exchanged gentle parenting for a more lighthearted, trial-and-error approach. I've gotten off social media and stopped obsessing over every parenting interaction. Now, I can bring my daughter to the park or the beach without worrying about how I'll get her back into the car. I no longer dread dinnertime for fear of a high-stakes negotiation.
My new parenting motto is: life is too short to take myself or my kids too seriously. I only have one shot at being a mom, and I don't want to waste it trying to be perfect. Instead, I want to soak in all the joy that I possibly can.
