The profound lie at the heart of gentle parenting

“We’ll never tell him no because then he’ll just say it back to us.”

Thus was I introduced to the modern theory of parenting called “gentle parenting”. When a new mom said this to me circa 2005, long before I became a parent, I was gobsmacked. She said it with both sincerity and a clear sense of “et voila, parenting is solved”. Sadly, parenting remains unsolved. Let’s leave aside the stunning supposition that the child will never discover the word “no” from well, anywhere, and focus on the heart of the matter.

Just as there will always be a market for nutritional supplements, there will always be a market for new packages of beliefs that promise to remove the gut-wrenching conflict from parenting. Because, just like the idea that eating an herb will make you slim is too powerful for many to resist, the siren song of “actually, you don’t have to be hard on your kids when they’re naughty” is so powerful that even the Bible includes a famous admonition against gentle parenting in the book of Proverbs:

He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.

To be clear, I’m not quoting the Bible as justification for a position, but only as evidence of the ancientness of the debate. Which of course probably goes back to the dawn of man. But I do love the phrasing because it implies that sparing the rod is taking the easy way out that leads to ruin — the central theme of ancient wisdom such as Proverbs. Do the easy, alluring thing and suffer for it. Or take the harder path and reap the rewards down the line. Your choice.

The core of gentle parenting, as I understand it, is that parents are unavoidably models of behavior for their kids and so if we yell at or hit our kids to discipline them, we’re unavoidably teaching them that yelling and hitting are ok, fine, good, desirable, etc. And we don’t want to teach them this. Conclusion: we must always be “nice” to our children lest by our own example we teach them to be “not nice”.

I agree that we model behavior for our kids. I agree we want them to be nice, not mean or violent. But I strongly disagree with the apparently prima facie true conclusion in the middle.

Well, children can, in fact, understand this distinction, pretty young.

In language, a child

This is phrased as “how can I hit my kid to teach them not to hit?“. Yes, I get that conflict and I feel it, but a moment’s thought provides the solution.

You do your child a disservice, here. Your child is not an idiot. The semantics of “that kid took my sand shovel so I punched him in the chest” and “you were naughty so you go over the knee and get smacked on your tushy” are not even close to mistakable for each other. That is, your kid can tell the difference. Imputing goals to behavior is core to the human learning toolkit.

This is the same fallacious reasoning as the “can’t tell them no” example. Children are not, in fact, thoughtless mimics.

Gentle parenting is a composite of a desire and a justification. The desire is to avoid the conflict with one’s child — and oneself — that is a necessary piece of parenting, and what makes it truly hard. The justification is that punishing one’s child is both unnecessary and unethical. You can have your cake and eat it too!

Here’s an example. We have a rule that our son needs to push his sleeves up when eating, so that they don’t get covered in food (because they will). He hates this rule and always tries to avoid it. We’ve explained the rule a hundred times, but he simply doesn’t care—he doesn’t do the laundry. Depending on his level of tiredness, there will be varying degrees of compliance with this rule ranging from, a sheepish “oops I forgot again” to an obstinate refusal that sometimes escalates to the point of forcible sleeve adjustment, shirt removal, or removal from the table. We do not enjoy any aspect of this. But the rule has a reason, there’s no good reason not to follow it.

“No, you can’t have a rootbeer float for breakfast.” “Well, this is what we’re having for supper.” “No, we don’t need another one of those.” “I don’t care if he’s allowed to do that, you’re not.” “No, we’re not buying that, it’s too expensive.” “No, it’s too late for sugar, sorry.” “Don’t pick that up, it’s garbage.” “We don’t eat in the living room.” “That goes in the trash.” “Eat over your plate.” “Eat over your plate.” “Eat over your plate.”

Parenting is conflict. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

Like language, what counts as good behavior varies by place and time. Rainforest dwellers have no need to look for cars before crossing the road, and my son has no need to avoid various kinds of spiders.

Parental authority is essential.

Parental authority is a model for the authority of nature — if you fall out of this tree I will break your leg — and the authority of society — if you throw that brick through that window I will arrest you and hit you with a nightstick in the process. External authority is an immense fact of life, and it’s not often a pleasant experience. Parents are the first case of it, and unlike most other authorities, usually have the child’s best interests in mind when laying down the law.

Why does it work? Because we want it to be true. So when someone makes a convincing argument that it is true, we’re biased toward believing them, because we want to believe them.

The distinction between justification as explanation and justification for consensus. My wife and I explain our actions and decisions to our son. We don’t seek his consent on most things. That’s the nature of being a child, sorry.

This is the apparent contradiction at the heart of gentle parenting:

Part of being an adult is facing uncomfortable truths, and this is one.

In gentle parenting. See? Parenting is solved. You’re welcome.

Well, I’m here to talk about the downsides.

This, my friends, is a trade-off.

I am constantly correcting my son. To say thank you. To wash his hands better.

Ok, so yes, I agree, this is a major downside. But in reality, everything has downsides, so we’re left with combinations of tradeoffs, not pulling some Platonic ideal off the shelf.

I’ve seen children hitting their beleaguered parents in public and while I deeply feel for them, part of me is of course saying “you chose this road”. But these parents were lied to.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t solve the problem, it just trades one problem for another. And my position is, the second problem is worse.

The essence of the conflict is autonomy.

But kids are aspiring adults and want their freedom, intensely. Thus, conflict.

We have many rules, and some seem arbitrary to him, but are not. For instance I just said to him “if you want to go outside put on outside clothes” so he went to his room and started doing it. This is because we have a rule that cozy clothes are for inside and outside clothes are for outside, because wearing cozy clothes outside destroys them. He’s not really aligned with this goal since he neither does laundry nor pays for his clothes. But he understands it, and because of our discipline environment, obeys it. We think this curtailment of his freedom is thus just.

This just moves the problem. It doesn’t solve the problem. Because the problem cannot be solved. Because the core immutable fact is that: children want things that we know

Degrees like: put on your shoes.

The lie is that they’re equals; the lie is that they’re free.

Lying to your kids is very, very bad, and a thousand times worse than spanking them. You will be thrust into a situation where this will be tested and seen to be a lie.

They feel you to be a protective, loving force, and the betrayal with which they look at you is. The guilt of an unjust scolding cuts like a knife.

Makes the parents miserable, and that has a real cost in quality of life.

At core, as hard as it is to agree with the Bible, I believe these parents are doing a grave disservice to their children.

I see parents kneeling down and attempting to reason with kids who are way, way too small.

Now, before you misunderstand me, I don’t believe in “because I said so” parenting. When my wife and I tell our son why he can’t do something, we always have a reason, and we explain it to him. When we don’t have a good reason, he gets to do it.

And sometimes the little nipper wins and convinces us, which I think is awesome.

Underyling this is the same thing that underlies all power: a credible threat of violence.

But we’re not debating with him and

There’s a line to walk here where we want him to be resourceful.

This is the lie.

Humans have an innate ability to acquire language, but the particular language is obviously acquired from the environment. Likewise, humans have an innate ability to acquire culture, but the particular culture is also acquired from the environment, and culture circumscribes behavior.

Bertrand Russell’s rule that if a child is cruel, do it back to them immediately. I adopted this and believe it works to build empathy and wariness of how people may respond to your actions.

“I love my child so I’d never hit her”

This is the misunderstanding of what parental love means. Parental love means doing things that aren’t just inconvenient but are truly painful because you think it’s right for the child. Gentle parenting is just the latest branding of adults being weak.

The core epistemological problem with parenting is every child is genetically unique. I’m guessing adults blessed with more child exposure than I have are going to find patterns. But experiments are only useful if they’re replicable, and nothing with a child is replicable.

One of my best friends, having tried this on her sons and regretted it, strongly advised me against.

We’re trading one difficult truth — kids aren’t equal to adults in either capabilities or rights — for the lie that they are.

Anecdata, but I’ve now seen this playing out for 20 years.

Anecdote of Rachel at the playground and the other mom astonished that Elliot listened.

Fallacy #1 spanking is tantamount to child abuse

I know people who’ve experienced both, and it isn’t. That isn’t to say that you couldn’t construe a continuum between them, but usually there’s no mistaking them because the parent feels horrible in the former.

Fallacy #2 spanking is vestigial physical violence in a civilization that has become better than that

The lie is to the kids.

Sometimes: we need our kids to listen to us.

The lie is to ourselves.

The bigger, worse lie is to our kids.

Footnotes:

the paradox of plenty

like goldfish.

plentiful sugar.

When drives that evolved in scarcity meet plenty, it often goes not great.

Elliot, re: Oma on 9/29/24: “When’s she gonna die? She’s pretty old.”

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