Gentle Parenting? What?!

We have many parents, guardians and carers ask us about discipline techniques, behavioural management styles and how to put in place consequences when raising kids, especially kids with trauma histories.

We get a lot of raised eyebrows, eyerolls or blank stares when we talk about trauma informed care or concepts like gentle parenting. I mean, really, are we going to just hug, smile and mollycoddle a kid who is kicking their sibling, teasing the dog or throwing a rock through a window? When you’ve been raised with concepts like ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’, ‘children should be seen and not heard’, ‘two years in the army will do ‘em good’ or ‘a good smack on the bum didn’t hurt me’, then it may be a natural to then want to eyeroll at someone when they suggest using less punitive and more respectful parenting approaches to ‘get a child to behave’!

The great thing about logical fallacies – the idea that ‘it happened to me and I’m fine, so everyone else will be fine too’ – gets disproven all the time. ‘I smoked all the time and I haven’t got lung cancer’. ‘I drove around without a seatbelt and didn’t die’. ‘I was smacked and I turned out ok’. These are the exception, not the rule! Some people who smoke, do get lung cancer. Some people who drive around in cars without seatbelts did end up having fatal crashes. Some people who suffered physical and harsh discipline as children went on to be aggressive, violent, abusive people. And there’s plenty of research on that last one (all of them actually) to prove it.

Ok, so you ask, what can I do, if I can’t use what was used on me as a kid? Well, Gentle Parenting is a great foundational way to start thinking about (or re-thinking) your parenting style. A great place to start is L.R. Knost, an award winning author of many gentle parenting books, and founder and director of the children's rights advocacy and family consulting group, Little Hearts/Gentle Parenting Resources, and Editor-in-Chief of Holistic Parenting Magazine. One of my favourite lines from this author is ‘We have to break the cycle of hurting children to raise children’.

Another favourite is “Discipline is helping a child solve a problem. Punishment is making a child suffer for having a problem. To raise problem solvers, focus on solutions, not retribution.”

There are so many great ways of parenting now available to us. We don’t have to just accept the way we were raised as being the ‘right’ or ‘only’ way of parenting. Take the good bits, leave behind the not so great bits. Be open minded to parenting differently. Because all kids are different. Every foster child I’ve ever met and had the privilege to work is different. And we need all types of parents to care for children in care. So if you haven’t already, and you feel gentle parenting or trauma informed parenting aligns with how you wish to parent, then do the quiz and start your journey to become a carer today!