What's Your Opinion of "Gentle Parenting"?

Remember when parents sternly warned, “Don’t take candy from strangers”?

Today’s trendiest parents cheerfully advise, “Do take life-changing child-rearing advice from strangers.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, social media platforms have been inundated with the buzzword “gentle parenting.”

Yes, self-identifying survivors of toxic parenting are now putting their two cents worth in about how to do a more empathetic job of parenting with their own (and, by extension, your) offspring.

(“Go ahead and put that two cents in your mouth, Liam. I don’t know where it’s been, but there’s no sense in traumatizing you.”)

TikTok alone hosts 183,000 videos about gentle parenting, so it’s a highly competitive game for influencers seeking eyeballs. (“Watch me! Watch me! My parents were the absolute worst! I had to chop down my own giant redwood tree for spankings! I’m still grounded, even in case of the Rapture…”)

Parents who are physically abusive or emotionally distant certainly exist, but many observers are leery of this not-exactly-new and hard-to-pin-down phenomenon of “gentle parenting.”

Many aspects of gentle parenting run counter to generations of tradition. You can’t even accuse your kids of throwing a “tantrum” now. Instead, you acknowledge their “big feelings” (and hope that in a few years they don’t make the nightly news for their “mostly peaceful big feelings”).

No more saying, “Don’t hit your sibling.” Now the little darlings must be cajoled to “use gentle hands.” I hope these guardrails are enough to make them grow up as contributing members of society. (“I’m using my gentle shiv, Ma, but it’s not earning me much street cred here on Cell Block B. Bake me a file in a cake…quick!”)

Yelling to stop your child from crying is a big no-no. Take the youngster away from the situation. (“I’m not going to holler at you for kicking the headrest of the passenger in front of you. I’ve got a parachute and there’s the emergency exit. Geronimooooo…”)

When your children become emotional, you’re supposed to get down on their level. (“Validate their concerns!”) Believe it or not, some mothers and fathers are reluctant to treat avant-garde little chefs (“bake the turkey at zero degrees for 300 hours”) as peers.

It’s a tad dishonest to act chill about your child’s every infraction or meltdown when every molecule of your being is screaming, “What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks were you thinking by dragging the trampoline onto the roof???”

Since threats and bribes are verboten in “gentle parenting,” mom and dad no longer get to play “good cop/bad cop.” It’s more like, “Let’s defund the police -- and spend the savings on funnel cake, video games and ponies.”

Granted, there are times when the ol’ Bob (“Joy of Painting”) Ross voice can keep the peace. (“Sure, the friends you invited to a kegger without my knowledge trashed the whole house, but just a dab of magenta should…”)

On the other hand, getting too chummy with your kids can actually produce trust issues. (“I can fully understand why you drilled a peephole into the girls’ locker room, Beau. Wait, you’re not wearing a wire, are you?”)

Do you really want your kids’ mentality rubbing off on you? (“You’re right, Emma. This is the worst day of my life, too. That *^%$# intern grabbed the last powdered doughnut. No, I’m not turning this car around. I’m driving it straight off the cliff! Goodbye, cruel world!”)

©2025 Danny Tyree. Danny is a lifelong resident of Marshall County, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of three books available through Amazon. He welcomes email at [email protected].