I think gentle parenting is largely a fucking scam. While the idea of making big emotions feel safe for kids is laudable, my kids never responded to the stupid scripts and I feel like it's basically another framework in which parents (mothers!) are encouraged to self abnegate for years on end. And no, Dr Becky's "you're a good mom having a hard time" affirmations don't make up for it. I feel like a heretic just for saying that because the vibe is so pervasive, but there it is.
It’s just a nice layer of additional guilt I get to push through when my response to “I FEEL SO SAD” is “no you don’t, put your shoes on.” (He does not feel sad. He IS avoiding putting his shoes on.)
If gentle parenting advises you to angrily throw a pair of shoes out the front door and order your kid to go get them and put them on on outside I am nailing it.
My kid remembers the time I threw his toy trumpet down the stairs and broke it b/c they would not get their shoes on and get in the damn car for whatever fun event I had planned-haha. i really don't remember, we could have been going to the doctor. I feel shame I lost my temper but he actually thinks it is a funny story...and he still loves me...a lot.
I assume it also involves saying in a slightly raised tone of voice "You chose this swimsuit, and you will wear it" and maybe also hiding the other clean swimsuits when your child says that he refuses to wear the rashguard THAT HE CHOSE FROM THE WEBSITE to camp because someone has told him that boys only wear certain colors.
OMG I feel you strongly on the colors. So many repetitions of 'colors are for everyone' but he's finally secure in the fact that pink and purple are his favorite colors. Until the next time another kid questions it, of course. ARRRGH
Mine will happily wear a pink (or bright turquoise, which was the issue today for some reason) rashguard to the beach or public pool, but apparently, not to camp.
Because that is just not a conversation that can happen EVERY SINGLE time they refuse something on the basis of societal gender norms and other snotty kids when they have to go chase their (turquoise sparkly, in our case) crocs bc we have to leave 10 minutes ago! 100% reasonable parenting.
Sure, but societal pressures are real and we don't need our six, seven, eight, whatever old to have the pressure of proving colors don't matter! its ok to let them bend to societal pressures sometimes! we all do! and they don't need to be the ambassador for gender equality and tolerance
I'm letting him choose his own stuff from his pile right now vs me choosing it and laying it out. It's a small thing but working well, even if he wears the same suit day in and day out.
like we don't have to put so much pressure on ourselves for every moment, every conflict to be a "teachable moment". I like to say that everything is changeable. Just because you don't pound the equality drum at every moment does not mean you don't care or aren't teaching your kids well! See what social media has done to us! We feel the need to defend ourselves for not being "on it" constantly. It makes me sad... we are so hard on ourselves-like hopefully no one on this form would assume you WEREN'T having that conversation!
And kids DO learn how to use that to their advantage. Besides, it is not real life that they are sometimes going to have to put their fucking shoes on even if they are sad
I am just so thankful gentle parenting was not around (or just wasn't as pervasive?) when my kids were babies--I would have been totally sucked into it, and it would have made me even more miserable than the ambient attachment parenting already did!
I was a kid who had a birthday 2 days before the cut-off for my kindergarten class, and I was so clearly emotionally not-ready. My elementary school (a very artsy hippie-dippie public school) actually had what they called "Transitional" for kids just like me - kids who had completed kindergarten but would do better...not being in first grade yet. There were very few of us, but we mattered, and that mattered, because it was life-changing for me. I went from having a very difficult and fraught kindergarten year, to being one of those kids who standard school is just kind of "made for" in that I never struggled to meet expectations, I easily approached new material, etc.
So when my first kid - a summer baby - was very hesitant and clingy and emotionally young, I angsted a lot about kindergarten. Then covid hit and I was facing the choice of not only enrolling him in kindergarten, but enrolling him in VIRTUAL kindergarten; it was just such an easy hard no for me. I enrolled him instead in a hippie-dippie private school that managed to stay in-person by transitioning to 100% outdoor learning (in the northeast, so no easy feat). This school had the added benefit of mixed-age, no-official-grades learning, and basically it was the best thing ever for him so now we are stuck paying this tuition until he ages out of their program.
My younger kid - also a summer baby - is the exact opposite. He thrives on high external expectations, especially when they come from someone besides me. He wants to grow up faster, and he loves being given the chance to. He also attends the hippie-dippie private school, which - being progressive and expensive - accommodates all kinds of learning styles, so they meet him where he is in the same way they meet my older kid where he is. Still, when they recommended he move out of the preschool group and into the early elementary group right at 5, I hesitated. My experiences (mine and my first kid's) with "holding back" had been so overwhelmingly positive that I had a hard time trusting that it could be "as good" to move him forward on schedule. But we did it and guess what, he thrived.
So in the end I learned that being super dogmatic and rigid about there being "a best practice" or a right way - it just, yet again, doesn't work that way. Each kid is different. Which is exhausting but also freeing.
I was talking to the director of this hippie-dippie private school once about this very thing and he told me that with his older daughter, they were struggling with some basic behavior issues around age 5. And of course everything in his approach to education is this very progressive, emotionally comprehensive kind of vibe, but they talked to a child psychologist and at her urging tried out a sticker chart. And he was like, "Everything in me does not ideologically believe that the sticker chart is the best option - the external motivation! the quantification! etc! - but you know what? It made things so much happier. This kid responded best to a visual, external tracking mechanism and liked the motivation of the gold stars. And we have to follow what works best for the kid!" That really put me at ease, about the times where my own life clearly indicates that "the most gentle" or "the most progressive" or "the best" practice just does not work for us.
I rock climb with a group of other moms and one of my favorite things about it is how it really, truly teaches you that there is no right way up. No two people have the same body and no two people have the same journey up the wall. I am short and can't reach holds a tall person can, so I find different ways to get my ass up there. It isn't "cheating" if I do a million tiny moves for every one move a tall person makes, and it isn't lazy if a taller person just gorilla-reaches their way up. We are all just working with the body and mind we have, and there is no "fake" way up that wall. If you get up, you did it right for you. It really helps me ground myself to apply that lesson to other areas of my life.
Parenting advice, especially "gentle" parenting content, on social media is the worst. It's designed on purpose to be overly simple, make us feel guilty to get more followers/sell us more things, disconnect from our instincts and our true knowledge of our kids. I was in a deep hole of following a lot of parenting content then something clicked in my brain and I couldn't take it anymore. As a person who does research for a living, I hate the way things we're being presented with no nuance (also no citation agh!). The best decision I've made re: parenting is going to therapy to help me deal with my emotional baggage which helps my kids way more than all the scripts and stuff on Instagram.
What a great topic! To me, having perspective is the closest I can come to having peace of mind. I agree it's really important to acknowledge "how science, morality, and judgment can feed into each other." My first was born in 2000 and my last in 2015. I've heard so many variations of the "right" way to do something, and have later seen so many of them change. I agree with Cara: "each parent is the expert on their individual child." I also think there's some randomness to how things affect kids. Or at least that's been my experience.
Wow! So much of this is so familiar. Thanks for doing this interview, I think it makes for a very much needed buffer against the impressions that I see people get about atttachment and respectful parenting.
tldr; I did most of the things, but probalby, per the books, I did them wrong? I did them because I was selfish and they were easy for me in the not-even-slightly common situations I had.
We did 'attachment parenting' because strollers just looked like so much work to me, (mostly because of all the stuff you can put in them, and then you have all this stuff to track, and things go do, and rules, and aaaahhhhhhhh.) Consequently, I told my parnter I really, really wanted to use a wrap instead, and she said, "Well, as long as that's mostly on you, cool." And it was. We were both grad students and at the time my partner was in a lab and I was doing theory, and we couldn't afford/hadn't signed up nearly early enough for daycare, and so I got to wander around a National Lab for several hours a day getting some work done, and meeting lots of scientists and administrators with the kid, and hanging out with other grad students in the grad student lounge where there was a nice couch in a dark room for naps. And it was so easy, for me, because I just had to have a backpack with some diapers and wipes and maybe a bottle of milk, or maybe make dashes across the lab to find my partner when the kid woke up hungry.
Oh, and don't even get me started on how wonderfeul wraps and public transit are. Whoops, I got started anyway. All 3 kids hated carseats with a passion. I mean hated, like really hated, like screaming from the time we left the house till we got to our destination. And then? Then, we moved to San Francisco, and whoooo!!!!! So much public transit, and you knnow what you ain't gotta have on public transit? You don't have to have a goddamned carseat! (An aside: for folks that want to use strollers, public transit is not very well set up for that, and it totally should be set up better, and it sucks that it's not.) I could hop on with two kids who were walking/toddling and a kid in the wrap, and we were off! Unsettled kid during a ride? I could get up and bounce a little and maybe walk a little, and coo. It was awesome. But again, this worked so well for me because we had tons of public transit and I had a job where I could move my work hours around.
And a brief pause here to point out that I never read a book about wraps, I just saw women with babies in wraps dropping by the coffee shop where I did a lot of work and writing in Boulder. They'd pop in, get a latte or mocha, take the kid out of the wrap to play, or not, and then toodle along. This looked like heaven to me compared to rules and activities and equipemnt and what have you. Having said that, it seems that all the books kind of create this picture of having a kid strapped to your chest in the house all day because it's somehow good for the kid? Yikes! And bleah! And No! Wraps were good for me because I could easily leave the house.
I found out years after we did it that we did self-led-weaning with the kids, and I think that's considered good? (I don't actually know, I hung out with the 'bad' crowd maybe. Co-sleeping was also considered really good.) But anyway, I started it because kinda like the car seat, the kids hated being strapped into a high chair, which led to screaming, and yeah... Anyway? It was easier just to pop the kid into my lap, and from there, well, there's all that food in front of me, and well yeah, they wanted to try it out. We avoided things like steak and nuts until the kids were old enough to not choke on them, and just let them have at it. Added bonus? I never once had to buy or make baby food.
And then, there's gentle/respectful parenting, and for the most part I love that stuff, but again, it's largely because I like the idea of it as a guideline, and because we do it wrong. I think just about anyone that manages to pull it off probably does it wrong in one way or another. For example, there's a respectful parenting blog that I really enjoy, and for years I'd read comments to the posts that amounted to , "well yeah, but how do you handle the kid doing xyz that's destructive or disruptive or whatever without timeouts or anything?" I can't remember if there weren't answers to the comments, or if they were just vague, but finally about two years into this blog, the author mentions that well, when a kid is hitting another kid, that the author, "kept them from doing that anymore." (I'm reading this as hugs, or a timeout.) And yeah, I'm pretty sure the author had been doing that all along, because what else are you going to do?
'Pleases' and 'thank yous' and other manners based things that are frowned upon in respectful parenting? I don't know how other people get that to work, but yeah we told the kids they needed to do those things. We also told them that they could decide to skip it, but then they wouldn't get invited back to the nice places because people wouldn't like their behavior and wouldn't want to invite them back, (see? we did the bad thing! we totally told them their behaviors affected other people's feelings, because they do, and then there's consequences like the college of architecture won't allow you into the next college of architecture career day that you blundered into and were subsequently invited back to the speakers' room for nibbles...)
I guess the better way to put it is that I thought gentle/respectful parenting was about letting kids make their own decisions, but again that was a selfish summary that I made up about the whole subject because I really, really wanted the kids to be independent, because I thought it was good for them, and I knew it would be a whole lot easier for me. Because independent kids is what I was shooting for, if I don't help them understand what there decisions can cause (pleases and thank yous as an example) then it's not going to work out well for them or me. And of course I couldn't be there for them all the time, (and oh boy did they not want or need me there all the time), or they wouldn't figure out how to make mistakes and recover from them, and how to deal with people in the wide, wide world.
So anyway. I think parents should do what they need to do to get things to work the way they want them to work with their very specific kids in their very specific situation because what else could possibly work. But also, I wish there were way more books about respectful/gentle/attachment parenting that were written more realistically so I could quit having conversations about parenting where I describe how we're parenting using resepctful or attahcment concepts or whatever and get the raised eyebrow response, "How Do You Ever Make That Work?"
We do it wrong, that's how we do it, we do it so, so wrong :)
This is actually such a nerve for me and something I talk about to my families every day in my job as a pediatrician. First of all, most of what we tell you is NOT evidence based, it is folk lore, "common" knowledge, what we were taught, our own experience, blah blah.
There are a million ways to parent and there is NOT a "right" way short of not being abusive. The only people it really matters for in choosing what you do is YOUR family. Try to block out the haters.
And there is no such thing as parenting expert IMHO. How old do your kids have to be before you are an "expert"? Are you 80 and your kids are all grown and successful? How far into their lives are we responsible for? How many kids do you have to have had? How much variety in ages, genders, health or behavioral issues before you are an "expert"? I call BULLSHIT.
Now, I say all this...but I also have to constantly remind myself of these principles. Yes, it is ok that we did not take my 18 yo on 40 college tours so he could find his perfect match...we pretty much said, OSU sounds good! in state and closer to home? apply there. i mean I would have supported taking him to look other places if he was interested but I am not going to make things harder for myself. And yes, my 11 yo has a smart phone and is far more advanced/addicted than she should be. She is the youngest of 4.....it gets harder and harder to hold to those principles....But I think back to my sister who is the youngest and watched HOURS of TV, way more than I was allowed. She is a beautiful, successful, wonderful mom and social worker. ]
And I think it helps kids learn how to navigate the world and relationships to see their parents have emotions and lose it and how we handle apologizing and repairing damage. We are humans, not robots.
AND I think the idea that we have so much control in how our children turn out is also BS. I mean, I tell my families, your kid comes out who they are and you can gently mold along the edges but you cannot make them someone different than who they are. You cannot "gentle parent" a rambunctious child into being docile. And the opposite. I think if you apply the principal to yourself, it becomes really clear...would you want your parents to try to make you into someone different???
If we let go of the control we think we have over how children turn out, we have some room to breathe and reduce our guilt and angst. Again, this is a talk I have continually with myself....
Thanks for this. I also have a late-summer kid (September, and our school cutoff is 10/1) whom I sent to kindergarten at what I call "the right time" and most people in the district would call "early." I asked his preK teacher for her honest opinion and she looked at me like I had three heads and told me to send him to K. He thrived this year and learned so much, not just academically but really made friends and navigated those relationships well. My experience is limited to my one kid, but it really was a good lesson in how sometimes the "research" is not applicable to your individual kid, even when you're a research nut.
He was one of two September babies in the classroom, and both did great. I mentioned that he was young for the class during a parent-teacher conference and the teacher said that after the first month of school, she had forgotten that he was - it was reassuring to hear, both that he was keeping up and that it was not a constant concern of hers.
My youngest was born 09/02. The cut off in our state is 08/31. Our school allowed her to attend anyway with the understanding that she had to do three years of preschool because State law would not let her move forward. She is neurodivergent and I credit those three years as one of the reasons why she is doing so well today.
mostly, AMEN to the interview. I don't think the evidence on cosleeping being so terrible dangerous is really that clear...the biggest risk is actually tobacco smoke exposure and SIDS but I don't have the research at my finger tips. Also, suffocation deaths get lumped into the SIDS data as does deaths that happen on a surface that is not a bed. Co sleeping is the biological norm...it just is. It is ridiculous that what we think is normal is two adults sleeping together and all the kids, lonely, in their own beds. BUT, whatever works for you. If your kids sleep well on their own, lucky you. But co sleeping has been villianized b/c we can't do nuance in this country. it is the same as the idea that if you let one drop of alcohol pass your lips when you are pregnant, your kid is done for. Like don't have a fifth of vodka per night but most likely a half a glass of wine 2-3 times in your pregnancy is not going to hurt.
My husband and I come from VERY different backgrounds - him from what I would assume was the ORIGINAL gentle parenting fam in the early 90s and me from the OPPOSITE of gentle parenting in the late 80s. We always joke that if we can somehow hit a happy medium between "oh your big big feelings that you don't want to put on your socks are so amazing and valid and let's talk about them while hugging and find a solution" and "stop crying about your broken arm - you're making a scene" we will be doing JUST FINE!
Thank you so much for this. I have two summer babies and we have no idea what to do with them. My husband and I are also summer babies - I was redshirted he was not. I was super bored; he felt he was too immature. So wtf knows what to do? Nice to have some affirmation that my kids will likely be fine no matter what we do
Jul 11, 2023·edited Jul 13, 2023Liked by Claire Zulkey
In the past five or so years I have come to realize just how bias parenting "experts", dare I say, the whole mental health profession is.
I had the privilege of working with one of THE most fabulous preschool teachers this past year. Her class was one of the best run preschool classes in which I have worked. She herself is a Type-A personality and very self-disciplined, so she ran a very tight ship. Some might think that this kind of person would not be well suited for preschool, however, there was so much joy in that classroom and the kids absolutely loved her. I believe a main component she was very effective in communicating and reinforcing behavioral expectations, and therefore, the kids knew their boundaries and could behave accordingly (well as much as a preschooler can.) She is very direct with everyone, including the kids, and because of this, she received a lot of criticism, most notedly, from the State Board of Education. People find her "tone" off-putting and seemingly hurtful, especially against certain children of color. Consequently, people were so caught up in her so called "tone" that they did not see how she also nurtured the students and encouraged their creativity, independence, and love of learning. I have to note that the teacher is Black and is the daughter of immigrant parents. What I saw as the nurturing voice of a strong immigrant mom, others saw as being mean. What I saw as her working overtime constantly code switching to effectively communicate with certain students, others saw as showing favoritism and borderline abuse. Judging from the kids, nothing could be farther from the truth.
"Punishment by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn was life changing for me, as with (much to the dismay of my American friends) "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" By Amy Chua. I am also a great believer in the principles of Attachment Theory for parenting, education, and therapy. However, the applications of these principle is what is lost in the general discussion. The case studies cited in these books always reek of whitewashing or and toxic positivity (yes, even Amy Chua's "You're all a bunch of spoiled, spineless wussies" rants.) It is rare that experts give permission consider family culture, whether it is the greater societal's or your own family, when it comes to raising your kids. I guess what I am saying is that take everything with a grain of salt. These books are guidelines, not recipes. We are all working so hard to address the deficits of our own upbringings (because that's why we turn to parenting experts in the first place, right?) that we forget that we are forming relationships with our children, which is based on the authentic you, and not some script written by an expert who does not know you. The best parenting mantras I learned: "Ask yourself, are you parenting or projecting?" and "figure out how to meet your child's need within the parameters of your family. Make adjustments as warranted." The former has been especially helpful as I navigate the Tween/Teen years.
I have been sweating over the redshirt thing for the last month. I know it is pointless. My son just turned 12. It's too late to think about it, but I can't stop wondering if he would be stronger and more confident in all the ways that are suddenly important in middle school if we had held him back. He was so verbal and excited about going to school and I was so excited to not be stressed about money constantly with a younger child still in daycare. Ugh. I think I will just blame this decision on America and move on, because 7th grade starts on Monday! (covers eyes)
Oh I should say that I have a September birthday and am pretty sure my 25 yo mom lied to get me into kindergarten. I LOVED school and was great at it, so good job, Mom. Also, I hate it when people say "yes, but he is a boy." Even if that is true. I hate it.
I’m an early July birthday and my sister is late July and we weren’t red shirted (this wasn’t really a thing in the ‘70’s). We both did great and it was the right decision. Two of my best friends in high school also had a late July and mid-August birthdays and also were great. My wife’s birthday is Halloween and so she was really younger and that was probably not the right choice for her (my anecdotal experience as a kid was that the younger kids with later fall birthdays struggled the most socially). I’m sure your son will be fine. I was happy we had a March baby, which made it so we didn’t need to think about it. If he’d been bit. In summer we probably would have really wanted to put him in early because who wants an extra year of child care?! That’s a lot of money!
Man was this what I really needed to read and I guess the next impossible thing I implement will be dessert with dinner. My brother-in-law supported each other through no longer pre-rinsing the dishes, time for the hubs to step up.
M is an august baby and I totally sent her to K a few weeks after turning 5. She was SO READY and I also was tired of paying for daycare, ha! But seriously, she was emotionally socially and academically ready. Back in the 90s my parents held my brother back. He wasn’t young for the school year he just wasn’t ready for school and now he’s functioning adult (even if he still loves to annoy me like we’re teens).
I stress about “gentle parenting” so much. Much more than I should. I think I ended up being a “permissive” parent because I think most things aren’t worth the fight. Ugh! Been trying to course correct.
But I also know last week M had very big feelings and I found her on the floor crying after bedtime and we had an entire convo about her feelings and in that moment I felt like a good mom because I know I would have never been able to have the same convo with my mom at that age.
I hate the “time outs are abuse” crowds for sure. It’s not abuse. Sometimes you just need some space and a little cry and then you can talk it out.
I think gentle parenting is largely a fucking scam. While the idea of making big emotions feel safe for kids is laudable, my kids never responded to the stupid scripts and I feel like it's basically another framework in which parents (mothers!) are encouraged to self abnegate for years on end. And no, Dr Becky's "you're a good mom having a hard time" affirmations don't make up for it. I feel like a heretic just for saying that because the vibe is so pervasive, but there it is.
100%. Same old story. You're selfish for having wants/preferences/needs.
It’s just a nice layer of additional guilt I get to push through when my response to “I FEEL SO SAD” is “no you don’t, put your shoes on.” (He does not feel sad. He IS avoiding putting his shoes on.)
If gentle parenting advises you to angrily throw a pair of shoes out the front door and order your kid to go get them and put them on on outside I am nailing it.
That was me, yesterday. Crocs bounce! I already knew that, of course. I have two children. This is not my first rodeo.
This made me laugh. News you can use!
My kid remembers the time I threw his toy trumpet down the stairs and broke it b/c they would not get their shoes on and get in the damn car for whatever fun event I had planned-haha. i really don't remember, we could have been going to the doctor. I feel shame I lost my temper but he actually thinks it is a funny story...and he still loves me...a lot.
I assume it also involves saying in a slightly raised tone of voice "You chose this swimsuit, and you will wear it" and maybe also hiding the other clean swimsuits when your child says that he refuses to wear the rashguard THAT HE CHOSE FROM THE WEBSITE to camp because someone has told him that boys only wear certain colors.
OMG I feel you strongly on the colors. So many repetitions of 'colors are for everyone' but he's finally secure in the fact that pink and purple are his favorite colors. Until the next time another kid questions it, of course. ARRRGH
Mine will happily wear a pink (or bright turquoise, which was the issue today for some reason) rashguard to the beach or public pool, but apparently, not to camp.
(Please note that there's an ongoing conversation happening about the color/gender issue, it just wasn't happening this morning.)
Because that is just not a conversation that can happen EVERY SINGLE time they refuse something on the basis of societal gender norms and other snotty kids when they have to go chase their (turquoise sparkly, in our case) crocs bc we have to leave 10 minutes ago! 100% reasonable parenting.
Sure, but societal pressures are real and we don't need our six, seven, eight, whatever old to have the pressure of proving colors don't matter! its ok to let them bend to societal pressures sometimes! we all do! and they don't need to be the ambassador for gender equality and tolerance
I'm letting him choose his own stuff from his pile right now vs me choosing it and laying it out. It's a small thing but working well, even if he wears the same suit day in and day out.
like we don't have to put so much pressure on ourselves for every moment, every conflict to be a "teachable moment". I like to say that everything is changeable. Just because you don't pound the equality drum at every moment does not mean you don't care or aren't teaching your kids well! See what social media has done to us! We feel the need to defend ourselves for not being "on it" constantly. It makes me sad... we are so hard on ourselves-like hopefully no one on this form would assume you WEREN'T having that conversation!
And kids DO learn how to use that to their advantage. Besides, it is not real life that they are sometimes going to have to put their fucking shoes on even if they are sad
I am just so thankful gentle parenting was not around (or just wasn't as pervasive?) when my kids were babies--I would have been totally sucked into it, and it would have made me even more miserable than the ambient attachment parenting already did!
Thank you so much for this one!
I was a kid who had a birthday 2 days before the cut-off for my kindergarten class, and I was so clearly emotionally not-ready. My elementary school (a very artsy hippie-dippie public school) actually had what they called "Transitional" for kids just like me - kids who had completed kindergarten but would do better...not being in first grade yet. There were very few of us, but we mattered, and that mattered, because it was life-changing for me. I went from having a very difficult and fraught kindergarten year, to being one of those kids who standard school is just kind of "made for" in that I never struggled to meet expectations, I easily approached new material, etc.
So when my first kid - a summer baby - was very hesitant and clingy and emotionally young, I angsted a lot about kindergarten. Then covid hit and I was facing the choice of not only enrolling him in kindergarten, but enrolling him in VIRTUAL kindergarten; it was just such an easy hard no for me. I enrolled him instead in a hippie-dippie private school that managed to stay in-person by transitioning to 100% outdoor learning (in the northeast, so no easy feat). This school had the added benefit of mixed-age, no-official-grades learning, and basically it was the best thing ever for him so now we are stuck paying this tuition until he ages out of their program.
My younger kid - also a summer baby - is the exact opposite. He thrives on high external expectations, especially when they come from someone besides me. He wants to grow up faster, and he loves being given the chance to. He also attends the hippie-dippie private school, which - being progressive and expensive - accommodates all kinds of learning styles, so they meet him where he is in the same way they meet my older kid where he is. Still, when they recommended he move out of the preschool group and into the early elementary group right at 5, I hesitated. My experiences (mine and my first kid's) with "holding back" had been so overwhelmingly positive that I had a hard time trusting that it could be "as good" to move him forward on schedule. But we did it and guess what, he thrived.
So in the end I learned that being super dogmatic and rigid about there being "a best practice" or a right way - it just, yet again, doesn't work that way. Each kid is different. Which is exhausting but also freeing.
I was talking to the director of this hippie-dippie private school once about this very thing and he told me that with his older daughter, they were struggling with some basic behavior issues around age 5. And of course everything in his approach to education is this very progressive, emotionally comprehensive kind of vibe, but they talked to a child psychologist and at her urging tried out a sticker chart. And he was like, "Everything in me does not ideologically believe that the sticker chart is the best option - the external motivation! the quantification! etc! - but you know what? It made things so much happier. This kid responded best to a visual, external tracking mechanism and liked the motivation of the gold stars. And we have to follow what works best for the kid!" That really put me at ease, about the times where my own life clearly indicates that "the most gentle" or "the most progressive" or "the best" practice just does not work for us.
I rock climb with a group of other moms and one of my favorite things about it is how it really, truly teaches you that there is no right way up. No two people have the same body and no two people have the same journey up the wall. I am short and can't reach holds a tall person can, so I find different ways to get my ass up there. It isn't "cheating" if I do a million tiny moves for every one move a tall person makes, and it isn't lazy if a taller person just gorilla-reaches their way up. We are all just working with the body and mind we have, and there is no "fake" way up that wall. If you get up, you did it right for you. It really helps me ground myself to apply that lesson to other areas of my life.
This is genius life lessons here.
Parenting advice, especially "gentle" parenting content, on social media is the worst. It's designed on purpose to be overly simple, make us feel guilty to get more followers/sell us more things, disconnect from our instincts and our true knowledge of our kids. I was in a deep hole of following a lot of parenting content then something clicked in my brain and I couldn't take it anymore. As a person who does research for a living, I hate the way things we're being presented with no nuance (also no citation agh!). The best decision I've made re: parenting is going to therapy to help me deal with my emotional baggage which helps my kids way more than all the scripts and stuff on Instagram.
What a great topic! To me, having perspective is the closest I can come to having peace of mind. I agree it's really important to acknowledge "how science, morality, and judgment can feed into each other." My first was born in 2000 and my last in 2015. I've heard so many variations of the "right" way to do something, and have later seen so many of them change. I agree with Cara: "each parent is the expert on their individual child." I also think there's some randomness to how things affect kids. Or at least that's been my experience.
100%. The worst is when you are new at your job as a parent and your child is new at their job as a human and none of you know what you are doing.
Wow! So much of this is so familiar. Thanks for doing this interview, I think it makes for a very much needed buffer against the impressions that I see people get about atttachment and respectful parenting.
tldr; I did most of the things, but probalby, per the books, I did them wrong? I did them because I was selfish and they were easy for me in the not-even-slightly common situations I had.
We did 'attachment parenting' because strollers just looked like so much work to me, (mostly because of all the stuff you can put in them, and then you have all this stuff to track, and things go do, and rules, and aaaahhhhhhhh.) Consequently, I told my parnter I really, really wanted to use a wrap instead, and she said, "Well, as long as that's mostly on you, cool." And it was. We were both grad students and at the time my partner was in a lab and I was doing theory, and we couldn't afford/hadn't signed up nearly early enough for daycare, and so I got to wander around a National Lab for several hours a day getting some work done, and meeting lots of scientists and administrators with the kid, and hanging out with other grad students in the grad student lounge where there was a nice couch in a dark room for naps. And it was so easy, for me, because I just had to have a backpack with some diapers and wipes and maybe a bottle of milk, or maybe make dashes across the lab to find my partner when the kid woke up hungry.
Oh, and don't even get me started on how wonderfeul wraps and public transit are. Whoops, I got started anyway. All 3 kids hated carseats with a passion. I mean hated, like really hated, like screaming from the time we left the house till we got to our destination. And then? Then, we moved to San Francisco, and whoooo!!!!! So much public transit, and you knnow what you ain't gotta have on public transit? You don't have to have a goddamned carseat! (An aside: for folks that want to use strollers, public transit is not very well set up for that, and it totally should be set up better, and it sucks that it's not.) I could hop on with two kids who were walking/toddling and a kid in the wrap, and we were off! Unsettled kid during a ride? I could get up and bounce a little and maybe walk a little, and coo. It was awesome. But again, this worked so well for me because we had tons of public transit and I had a job where I could move my work hours around.
And a brief pause here to point out that I never read a book about wraps, I just saw women with babies in wraps dropping by the coffee shop where I did a lot of work and writing in Boulder. They'd pop in, get a latte or mocha, take the kid out of the wrap to play, or not, and then toodle along. This looked like heaven to me compared to rules and activities and equipemnt and what have you. Having said that, it seems that all the books kind of create this picture of having a kid strapped to your chest in the house all day because it's somehow good for the kid? Yikes! And bleah! And No! Wraps were good for me because I could easily leave the house.
I found out years after we did it that we did self-led-weaning with the kids, and I think that's considered good? (I don't actually know, I hung out with the 'bad' crowd maybe. Co-sleeping was also considered really good.) But anyway, I started it because kinda like the car seat, the kids hated being strapped into a high chair, which led to screaming, and yeah... Anyway? It was easier just to pop the kid into my lap, and from there, well, there's all that food in front of me, and well yeah, they wanted to try it out. We avoided things like steak and nuts until the kids were old enough to not choke on them, and just let them have at it. Added bonus? I never once had to buy or make baby food.
And then, there's gentle/respectful parenting, and for the most part I love that stuff, but again, it's largely because I like the idea of it as a guideline, and because we do it wrong. I think just about anyone that manages to pull it off probably does it wrong in one way or another. For example, there's a respectful parenting blog that I really enjoy, and for years I'd read comments to the posts that amounted to , "well yeah, but how do you handle the kid doing xyz that's destructive or disruptive or whatever without timeouts or anything?" I can't remember if there weren't answers to the comments, or if they were just vague, but finally about two years into this blog, the author mentions that well, when a kid is hitting another kid, that the author, "kept them from doing that anymore." (I'm reading this as hugs, or a timeout.) And yeah, I'm pretty sure the author had been doing that all along, because what else are you going to do?
'Pleases' and 'thank yous' and other manners based things that are frowned upon in respectful parenting? I don't know how other people get that to work, but yeah we told the kids they needed to do those things. We also told them that they could decide to skip it, but then they wouldn't get invited back to the nice places because people wouldn't like their behavior and wouldn't want to invite them back, (see? we did the bad thing! we totally told them their behaviors affected other people's feelings, because they do, and then there's consequences like the college of architecture won't allow you into the next college of architecture career day that you blundered into and were subsequently invited back to the speakers' room for nibbles...)
I guess the better way to put it is that I thought gentle/respectful parenting was about letting kids make their own decisions, but again that was a selfish summary that I made up about the whole subject because I really, really wanted the kids to be independent, because I thought it was good for them, and I knew it would be a whole lot easier for me. Because independent kids is what I was shooting for, if I don't help them understand what there decisions can cause (pleases and thank yous as an example) then it's not going to work out well for them or me. And of course I couldn't be there for them all the time, (and oh boy did they not want or need me there all the time), or they wouldn't figure out how to make mistakes and recover from them, and how to deal with people in the wide, wide world.
So anyway. I think parents should do what they need to do to get things to work the way they want them to work with their very specific kids in their very specific situation because what else could possibly work. But also, I wish there were way more books about respectful/gentle/attachment parenting that were written more realistically so I could quit having conversations about parenting where I describe how we're parenting using resepctful or attahcment concepts or whatever and get the raised eyebrow response, "How Do You Ever Make That Work?"
We do it wrong, that's how we do it, we do it so, so wrong :)
This is actually such a nerve for me and something I talk about to my families every day in my job as a pediatrician. First of all, most of what we tell you is NOT evidence based, it is folk lore, "common" knowledge, what we were taught, our own experience, blah blah.
There are a million ways to parent and there is NOT a "right" way short of not being abusive. The only people it really matters for in choosing what you do is YOUR family. Try to block out the haters.
And there is no such thing as parenting expert IMHO. How old do your kids have to be before you are an "expert"? Are you 80 and your kids are all grown and successful? How far into their lives are we responsible for? How many kids do you have to have had? How much variety in ages, genders, health or behavioral issues before you are an "expert"? I call BULLSHIT.
Now, I say all this...but I also have to constantly remind myself of these principles. Yes, it is ok that we did not take my 18 yo on 40 college tours so he could find his perfect match...we pretty much said, OSU sounds good! in state and closer to home? apply there. i mean I would have supported taking him to look other places if he was interested but I am not going to make things harder for myself. And yes, my 11 yo has a smart phone and is far more advanced/addicted than she should be. She is the youngest of 4.....it gets harder and harder to hold to those principles....But I think back to my sister who is the youngest and watched HOURS of TV, way more than I was allowed. She is a beautiful, successful, wonderful mom and social worker. ]
And I think it helps kids learn how to navigate the world and relationships to see their parents have emotions and lose it and how we handle apologizing and repairing damage. We are humans, not robots.
AND I think the idea that we have so much control in how our children turn out is also BS. I mean, I tell my families, your kid comes out who they are and you can gently mold along the edges but you cannot make them someone different than who they are. You cannot "gentle parent" a rambunctious child into being docile. And the opposite. I think if you apply the principal to yourself, it becomes really clear...would you want your parents to try to make you into someone different???
If we let go of the control we think we have over how children turn out, we have some room to breathe and reduce our guilt and angst. Again, this is a talk I have continually with myself....
Thanks for this. I also have a late-summer kid (September, and our school cutoff is 10/1) whom I sent to kindergarten at what I call "the right time" and most people in the district would call "early." I asked his preK teacher for her honest opinion and she looked at me like I had three heads and told me to send him to K. He thrived this year and learned so much, not just academically but really made friends and navigated those relationships well. My experience is limited to my one kid, but it really was a good lesson in how sometimes the "research" is not applicable to your individual kid, even when you're a research nut.
The way I see it, SOMEBODY in the class has to be young.
He was one of two September babies in the classroom, and both did great. I mentioned that he was young for the class during a parent-teacher conference and the teacher said that after the first month of school, she had forgotten that he was - it was reassuring to hear, both that he was keeping up and that it was not a constant concern of hers.
My youngest was born 09/02. The cut off in our state is 08/31. Our school allowed her to attend anyway with the understanding that she had to do three years of preschool because State law would not let her move forward. She is neurodivergent and I credit those three years as one of the reasons why she is doing so well today.
mostly, AMEN to the interview. I don't think the evidence on cosleeping being so terrible dangerous is really that clear...the biggest risk is actually tobacco smoke exposure and SIDS but I don't have the research at my finger tips. Also, suffocation deaths get lumped into the SIDS data as does deaths that happen on a surface that is not a bed. Co sleeping is the biological norm...it just is. It is ridiculous that what we think is normal is two adults sleeping together and all the kids, lonely, in their own beds. BUT, whatever works for you. If your kids sleep well on their own, lucky you. But co sleeping has been villianized b/c we can't do nuance in this country. it is the same as the idea that if you let one drop of alcohol pass your lips when you are pregnant, your kid is done for. Like don't have a fifth of vodka per night but most likely a half a glass of wine 2-3 times in your pregnancy is not going to hurt.
My husband and I come from VERY different backgrounds - him from what I would assume was the ORIGINAL gentle parenting fam in the early 90s and me from the OPPOSITE of gentle parenting in the late 80s. We always joke that if we can somehow hit a happy medium between "oh your big big feelings that you don't want to put on your socks are so amazing and valid and let's talk about them while hugging and find a solution" and "stop crying about your broken arm - you're making a scene" we will be doing JUST FINE!
Thank you so much for this. I have two summer babies and we have no idea what to do with them. My husband and I are also summer babies - I was redshirted he was not. I was super bored; he felt he was too immature. So wtf knows what to do? Nice to have some affirmation that my kids will likely be fine no matter what we do
In the past five or so years I have come to realize just how bias parenting "experts", dare I say, the whole mental health profession is.
I had the privilege of working with one of THE most fabulous preschool teachers this past year. Her class was one of the best run preschool classes in which I have worked. She herself is a Type-A personality and very self-disciplined, so she ran a very tight ship. Some might think that this kind of person would not be well suited for preschool, however, there was so much joy in that classroom and the kids absolutely loved her. I believe a main component she was very effective in communicating and reinforcing behavioral expectations, and therefore, the kids knew their boundaries and could behave accordingly (well as much as a preschooler can.) She is very direct with everyone, including the kids, and because of this, she received a lot of criticism, most notedly, from the State Board of Education. People find her "tone" off-putting and seemingly hurtful, especially against certain children of color. Consequently, people were so caught up in her so called "tone" that they did not see how she also nurtured the students and encouraged their creativity, independence, and love of learning. I have to note that the teacher is Black and is the daughter of immigrant parents. What I saw as the nurturing voice of a strong immigrant mom, others saw as being mean. What I saw as her working overtime constantly code switching to effectively communicate with certain students, others saw as showing favoritism and borderline abuse. Judging from the kids, nothing could be farther from the truth.
"Punishment by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn was life changing for me, as with (much to the dismay of my American friends) "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" By Amy Chua. I am also a great believer in the principles of Attachment Theory for parenting, education, and therapy. However, the applications of these principle is what is lost in the general discussion. The case studies cited in these books always reek of whitewashing or and toxic positivity (yes, even Amy Chua's "You're all a bunch of spoiled, spineless wussies" rants.) It is rare that experts give permission consider family culture, whether it is the greater societal's or your own family, when it comes to raising your kids. I guess what I am saying is that take everything with a grain of salt. These books are guidelines, not recipes. We are all working so hard to address the deficits of our own upbringings (because that's why we turn to parenting experts in the first place, right?) that we forget that we are forming relationships with our children, which is based on the authentic you, and not some script written by an expert who does not know you. The best parenting mantras I learned: "Ask yourself, are you parenting or projecting?" and "figure out how to meet your child's need within the parameters of your family. Make adjustments as warranted." The former has been especially helpful as I navigate the Tween/Teen years.
I have been sweating over the redshirt thing for the last month. I know it is pointless. My son just turned 12. It's too late to think about it, but I can't stop wondering if he would be stronger and more confident in all the ways that are suddenly important in middle school if we had held him back. He was so verbal and excited about going to school and I was so excited to not be stressed about money constantly with a younger child still in daycare. Ugh. I think I will just blame this decision on America and move on, because 7th grade starts on Monday! (covers eyes)
Oh I should say that I have a September birthday and am pretty sure my 25 yo mom lied to get me into kindergarten. I LOVED school and was great at it, so good job, Mom. Also, I hate it when people say "yes, but he is a boy." Even if that is true. I hate it.
If it helps I have never once thought you should have kept your kids back and I am an expert on these matters as you know.
Anyway the world needs spunky li'l guys in addition to bigger grown guys.
It's more the Big Feelings, but perhaps those are unavoidable! And thank you!
I’m an early July birthday and my sister is late July and we weren’t red shirted (this wasn’t really a thing in the ‘70’s). We both did great and it was the right decision. Two of my best friends in high school also had a late July and mid-August birthdays and also were great. My wife’s birthday is Halloween and so she was really younger and that was probably not the right choice for her (my anecdotal experience as a kid was that the younger kids with later fall birthdays struggled the most socially). I’m sure your son will be fine. I was happy we had a March baby, which made it so we didn’t need to think about it. If he’d been bit. In summer we probably would have really wanted to put him in early because who wants an extra year of child care?! That’s a lot of money!
Man was this what I really needed to read and I guess the next impossible thing I implement will be dessert with dinner. My brother-in-law supported each other through no longer pre-rinsing the dishes, time for the hubs to step up.
M is an august baby and I totally sent her to K a few weeks after turning 5. She was SO READY and I also was tired of paying for daycare, ha! But seriously, she was emotionally socially and academically ready. Back in the 90s my parents held my brother back. He wasn’t young for the school year he just wasn’t ready for school and now he’s functioning adult (even if he still loves to annoy me like we’re teens).
I stress about “gentle parenting” so much. Much more than I should. I think I ended up being a “permissive” parent because I think most things aren’t worth the fight. Ugh! Been trying to course correct.
But I also know last week M had very big feelings and I found her on the floor crying after bedtime and we had an entire convo about her feelings and in that moment I felt like a good mom because I know I would have never been able to have the same convo with my mom at that age.
I hate the “time outs are abuse” crowds for sure. It’s not abuse. Sometimes you just need some space and a little cry and then you can talk it out.