(Photo: The Webb Gang in the SIRIUS XM studios, NYC)
Look at some of the parenting social media right now, and you will find a war that would make a Navy SEAL think twice!
In one corner, gentle parenting.
On the other, a growing backlash from parents who tried it and ended up with kids who run the house.
Here is what both sides are missing.
Gentle parenting should not mean no boundaries.
Somewhere along the way, “validate their feelings” got twisted into “never let them be uncomfortable,” and that is where it broke.
A kid who is never allowed to struggle, never told no, never left to sit in the discomfort of a hard moment, does not grow up gentle. They grow up fragile and unprepared for the real world.
In Puddle Jumpers, I write about a Mars biosphere experiment where scientists grew trees in a perfectly controlled environment with no wind.
The trees grew tall and then collapsed under their own weight. All these smart people and they couldn’t figure out why, until they did…
The trees needed the stress of the wind to grow strong roots that would hold them up.
Your kid is that tree. Warmth is the sunlight. Boundaries and doing things (sometimes just packing their own lunch) are the wind. They need both.
The answer to the gentle parenting debate is not to pick a side. It is to refuse the false choice. You can be warm and firm. You can validate the feeling and still hold the line.
You can love your kid fiercely and still let them fail, struggle, and hear the word no. Read that twice because it’s SO important.
That is not a contradiction. That is the whole job as a parent.
Be the steady base they return to. Then let them face the wind, because that is the only thing that ever built a strong root system.
Raise kids who are kind and tough. Gentle and resilient. Loved and capable.
Raise Puddle Jumpers.
On Amazon now.
