Why Teachers Hate 'Gentle Parenting'

Unpopular Opinion - I know.   But it's true! I haven't meant a single PreK or Elementary Teacher who would tell me they LOVE Gentle Parenting.  But let's be real - teachers don’t hate 'gentle parenting' because they want harsh discipline. They hate what it can turn into when boundaries disappear: kids who  can't regulate their emotions, make many demands, and derail learning for the rest of the class.

I’m Flora McCormick, a licensed therapist and parenting coach, and I’m pulling together what I’ve seen for 20 plus years with what educators tell me off the record. We talk about why children are supposed to test limits, how cause and effect drives child behavior, and how our responses can accidentally train more screaming, more negotiation, and less frustration tolerance. 

You’ll also hear concrete “red flag” patterns that often signal gentle parenting has slid into permissive parenting, like hour-long bedtime support, constant emotional processing that crowds out follow-through, escalating picky eating without a medical cause, and disrespect toward adults and other kids.

What is a better alternative? Sustainable Parenting - a version of Positive Discipline which focuses on strategies that holds kindness and firmness at the same time. 

And trust me - I'm only sharing this harsh truth because I was the parenting making the mistakes of overly-gentle parenting.  And I share about that in this episode. 

If you want a calmer home, smoother transitions, and a child who can handle “no” and recover, you’ll leave with a clear direction and next steps, including resources if coaching isn’t an option right now.

Books I recommend on Kind & Firm Parenting: 

Positive Discipline (ages 2-12): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/825309/positive-discipline-2nd-edition-by-jane-nelsen-edd/

Parenting a Child Who Has Intense Emotions (ages 5-18): https://a.co/d/04cHYbWrv

Raising Mentally Strong Kids (ages 5-18): https://a.co/d/01rZ9F7G

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Transcript

Why Teachers Hate Gentle Parenting

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Today, I want to pull back the curtain on an issue that many parents may not realize, which is that there's trends of upticks in social media around gentle parenting, but I can promise you, every preschool teacher and elementary teacher that I talk to hates gentle parenting. They do not like the results they're seeing in children, and it's because they love children, not that they want to just control them in some sort of dogmatic, authoritarian way. They want to have children that are succeeding in school and they regularly see the pattern of how gentle parenting trends are leading kids down roads that are not helping them to thrive in school. I'm gonna tell you why today.

The Sustainable Parenting Middle Path

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Hey friend, welcome back to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast, where we bridge the gap between overly gentle parenting and overly harsh discipline so that you finally have the joy and ease you've been missing. I'm your host, Flora McCormick, licensed therapist, parenting coach, and I'm so glad you're here. Also be sure you subscribe to the podcast so that you regularly get the downloads each week and don't miss a single tool and strategy to be parenting with more kindness and firmness at the same time so parenting finally feels sustainable.

Kids Test Boundaries By Design

SPEAKER_01 1:27

If you're new here, I want to back up and just give you a little bit of context about why I'm sharing this perspective. So I am a licensed therapist. I've been practicing working with kids directly as a therapist and also worked with parents in parent coaching since the early 2000s. I have done this work for 20 plus years. I am a mom of two kids myself. I am a licensed therapist in the state of Montana. And I am sharing this context with you because in this work that I do, I regularly have seen children struggling, not because they just innately have ADHD or depression or anxiety, but that their parents are not holding kind and firm boundaries. And they are thinking the child just doesn't have regulation skills or doesn't have the ability to manage frustration. They don't have the tolerance for not getting their way. And it's not the child's fault. A child, let me tell you, is testing because that's their job. I remember seeing on a website for a hospital once around their pediatric content. A child's job is to test rules and boundaries to see what happens when they do. When your child is testing out, screaming, demanding, bossing you around to go up and get this thing for them and hold them. That is the child doing their job. They're supposed to test rules and boundaries to see what happens when they do. They learn through cause and effect in the world.

Cause And Effect Shapes Behavior

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Back it up to physicality for a moment. Their body didn't just learn to crawl from being convinced. They wiggled a little bit and felt movement forward, and the body was like, hey, let's do a little bit more about that. And then they wiggled a little more and they got farther, and that convinced them to keep trying that approach. And that's how they learn cause and effect. Same behaviorally. If they scream and you came running, then they learn, oh, scream is what gets mommy to come over. If instead you replace that, let's imagine this is a one-year-old screaming to get you to do something for them. You replace it instead with sign language, an ability for even a nonverbal child to communicate what they're needing from you, like pointing at something and using the please symbol. Then you respond to that, they learn cause and effect. That's how to effectively communicate with mom. So their behavior is so largely tied to our way of responding to it. Hear that again. Their behavior is so largely tied to how we respond to it, cause and effect. If it works, they do more of it. If it doesn't work, they do less of it. And if we want our children to be thriving in this world, we can't just be passive observers that are only validating feelings. And that's what I see happening a lot in gentle parenting. That's what teachers hate seeing a lot in gentle parenting patterns. So parents see a child get upset, and there's so much garbage out there about how our emotions need to be put on this pedestal above all else. And don't get me wrong, I'm a therapist. Of course, I think emotions need to be honored and valued. The child treasured for their right to be angry, disappointed, sad, mad, all of it. I mean, listen to all of my episodes. I have so many episodes about how the first foundational approach is to connect before you correct. I am not a monster. I am not suggesting you be cold. There is so much in the evidence-based material out there, and I've done the research. I'm not just a trad mom who is spouting off things that I've decided are the truth, even though I have no background. I have attended up to 20 hours every single year of training in this field, specialized all in understanding behavior, understanding children's development, understanding strategies in parenting and teaching that guide behavior to change, so that I can show up here and tell you the truth, that your response to their behavior is the largest way you get to impact that behavior. We need to, you know, give them the cup. We need to pick them up. We need to do the thing they're demanding. We need to talk it through with them for 40 minutes. We are showing that that like just emotional blow-up is what gets them things in the world. We don't want to do that. We want to validate feelings. Yes, connection before correction, but the correction's just been thrown out the window in much of gentle parenting. Friend, that's what your teacher wants you to know.

Signs Gentle Parenting Became Permissive

SPEAKER_01 6:41

So, what does this really look like with your child? If you have a child who cannot tolerate not getting their way, then you have a gentle parenting problem. If you have a child who is not able to manage their emotions, meaning you feel like you have to talk it through with them and talk them off the ledge every single time, and that takes like 20 minutes to an hour, you have a gentle parenting problem. If you have been laying next to your child for up to an hour or more for them to fall asleep, you have a gentle parenting problem. If your child is, quote, unable to eat most foods and does not have a diagnosed food or tongue tie or challenge there, you have a gentle parenting problem. If you have a child that is disrespectful to adults and other children and flippantly does things that they know are hurtful to others, you have a gentle parenting problem. And friend, the teachers in your life would love for you to get help with that so that they are not in this classroom of 20 to 35 students ruining the agenda for every other child. And that's the problem. These children that are being raised in gentle parenting homes think that their feelings trump everything else and that they can just have a giant tantrum to get what they want. Again, back to cause and effect. It is working at home. But in the classroom, it can't work. They cannot negotiate with a terrorist like you've been doing at home when there are all these other needs of the children in their classroom. It's just not fair, friends. It is not fair for you to get sucked into this gentle parenting world and be training your child to think that an adult is going to just always center everything around their feelings and then plop them in a classroom where a teacher cannot accommodate that. And honestly, they shouldn't because the world is not going to. A roommate's not going to, a boss isn't going to, their future wife isn't going to. I mean, I always think of my favorite conversation with one of my friends who was talking about how, you know, she loves her kids though so much and she just wants to, you know, love on them. And so it's hard to be like harsh and hold boundaries sometimes. And I was like, yeah, but honey, you're divorced, right? Think about the things that caused you to divorce your husband. Do you see any of those qualities being true in your children? And she was like, oh God, yes. Like, I didn't like his entitlement, his my ex's, you know, thought that my world should revolve around him and that he just gets to play and do all the fun and not contribute. And then it was this aha that, like, oh my God, I'm totally enabling my sons, two sons that she has, to be the same future men in the world. And that was the aha that got her attention to say, I have a gentle parenting problem.

When Home Habits Crash Into School

SPEAKER_01 9:55

So, friend, this is a PSA alarm to you that if you have any fears that your child is going to struggle in school, or you begin to get reports that they are struggling in school, you might have a gentle parenting problem. And I know it's hard. It's personal reflection, looking at what we might be doing wrong. It takes incredible vulnerability and openness and graciousness. And friend, let me tell you, I'm saying this because I've been there. I was sitting with my five-year-old, being just a total terror in the world and running me into the ground with his tantrums and meltdowns and demands. And it took my father-in-law saying, This is not working, and basically almost like shaking me by the shoulders in an emotional way, not literal physical. But he like really got my attention one day and was like, Flora, I know you're a therapist and you specialize in this, but this is not working. And he was right. I was leaning way too hard into the overly gentle versions of advice that was out there and doing a great job on validating feelings, which is important, but a really bad job on holding clear boundaries. And my child was suffering for it. I was suffering for it. My marriage, for goodness sakes, was suffering for it because we were constantly fighting over him wanting me to be more firm and me still believing somehow he needed to be more soft and nothing was working. But, friend, when I found that golden gem of how you can be kind and firm in the same way, it changed everything.

Kind And Firm With Positive Discipline

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Largely impacted by the amazing wisdom of positive discipline, which was created by two therapists who and largely accepted in the Montessori community. So very focused on how to equip your child to be self-competent and confident while also being very emotionally informed. So, friend, I invite you today to make a decision to reflect. Oh, is this my moment? Is Flora the one shaking me by the shoulders, kind of getting my attention to go, wait a minute, maybe what I'm doing isn't working? And can I have the courage to reflect on that and to notice it and name it and get support to make a

Coaching Support Resources And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 12:17

change? Parent coaching is a very simple way to do so, friend. And typically I see dynamic changes in the calm of the household and the cooperation and the kids being able to regulate better within three to eight sessions. And if getting parent coaching is not in the mix for you right now for a variety of reasons, time or finances, I'm going to leave my favorite books referenced in this week's episode description or the show notes. There are many resources that can help you make this change, and I'm gonna give you my top favorite resources for different age groups of what resource could be helping you change these patterns. All right, friend. And next week, please join me as I'm going to be sharing my top three strategies to help you have a successful school year in your family life. You may be buying the backpacks, the pens, but have you done the work to set your family system up for a more enjoyable bedtime, mealtimes, and transitions into the morning and places you gotta go. That's what I'm gonna help you with in the next episode. See you then.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Listeners, if you need parenting advice, talk to my mom. Sustainable parenting with Flora McCormick, and you can't do it.