When I nannied for millennial parents who raised their kids with the “gentle parenting” philosophy, I saw disastrous results. 

The “gentle parenting” model has become a social media buzzword. This technique is built around boundaries, empathy, and understanding. The purpose is to aid your child in navigating the overwhelming emotions they may experience. 

According to an article on “the benefits of gentle parenting” from BetterHelp, an online therapy service, this parenting approach has grown more popular through social media, especially among millennial parents. 

I have worked as a nanny for many years, and a family I worked for held to the principles of gentle parenting and expected me to do the same. 

The parents explained that they did not discipline their kids, but rather used gentle parenting methods for conflicts. 

Immediately, alarms went off in my head when I considered what “not disciplining their children” meant in practice. 

I quickly came to find out that gentle parenting for this family was entirely based on communication. This meant for every negative or positive emotion one of the kids had, I would walk through it with them. 

I became the emotional regulator for three children under age 8. Rather than administering consequences for bad behavior, I found myself trying to reason with a 3 year old having a tantrum after reminding him that throwing blocks at his sister was not kind. 

Ultimately, I walked away from that job with hands-on experience as a part-time gentle parent, and I can confidently say that I do not believe that gentle parenting is the most effective way to raise kids. 

Despite my limited knowledge of parenting, I was able to see the importance of communicating consequences to children as they get older. When a child has done something objectively wrong, simply talking things through is not the most effective way to ensure a change in behavior. In my case, it actually proved to have the opposite effect, as the 3 year old never really altered his habit of throwing things at his sisters when he was upset. 

There may be benefits of transitioning to gentle parenting techniques as kids get older, and communication can be an effective way to parent when kids are capable of rational thinking. 

When applied to toddlers and young children, this tactic neglects to teach kids that actions have consequences, and creates a constant need for someone to process their emotions with them.  

Gentle parenting requires parents to be fully invested in their children all the time in order to walk kids through strong emotions. This is unrealistic because the natural process of growing up involves  kids attending school and spending more time away from their parents.

Obviously, parents cannot expect teachers and caretakers to follow their parenting model that takes a lot of emotional commitment. Gentle parenting is based upon consistency and patience to help navigate changing emotions, which for a 3 year old, can be every two minutes.

When attempted without consistency, gentle parenting produces kids who are poorly behaved. They will lack the ability to emotionally regulate and they will not understand proper consequences to their bad behavior. 

This is a disservice to a child. 

Unfortunately, rejecting gentle parenting can be socially isolating. Parenting methods are always scrutinized, those who do resist the social pressures to gentle parent can be judged as insensitive and unempathetic. 

According to BetterHelp, parents who do reject gentle parenting methods are insensitive to their child’s emotional needs. The old parenting model of discipline and an understanding of consequences has been frowned upon as traumatizing or oppressive on social media. 

The influencer culture of social media has become infatuated with exploring all the ways that our parents raised us “correctly” or “incorrectly.” 

Fundamentally, there are benefits for children to learn emotional processing, but understanding action and consequence is more important for the entirety of a person’s life. Coddling a child will not resolve the ways in which your parents failed in parenting long-term and will produce children far more incapable of living in the real world.