Niamh Shackleton
In a world of 'gentle parenting', a mom has voiced her regrets over doing it.
Long gone are the days when you'd get a smacked bottom for misbehaving as 'gentle parenting' is a technique that's become increasingly more popular with those raising children now in comparison to those who may have raised their kids 20 years ago.
Per Parents.com, this style of parenting is 'a means of parenting without shame, blame, or punishment'.
It goes on to explain: "It is centered on partnership as both parents and children have a say in this collaborative style. Gentle parenting is as it sounds; it is a softer, gentler approach to parenting, and parents and caregivers that practice gentle parenting do so by guiding their children with consistent, compassionate boundaries—not a firm hand."
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It's largely Millennial parents (those aged 28 to 43) that are carrying out this technique, says Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, with 74 percent practicing gentle parenting. While it seems to be the go-to way to raise your kids these days, one mom regrets doing gentle parenting with her own children.
In a candid Instagram post, Jaclyn Williams spoke of the downsides there are to raising your children this way having raised two of her own and is now having to 'undo it'.
"I had tried SO hard to do everything right... to do things different from what I had growing up," she said.
However, one of her children has become very anxious, is insecure with their abilities, is supposedly 'entitled' and 'emotionally dysregulated', while her second is a people-pleaser, suppresses their true feelings, absorbs everyone's emotions, and has become withdrawn.
Going on to share what she's come to realize, Jaclyn said: "I wasn’t actually doing gentle parenting… I had slipped into permissive parenting without realizing it."
Jaclyn explained what she deemed as 'gentle' was: "Validating for 20 minutes; over-processing; explaining too many boundaries; making everything negotiable; compromising too much."
She has since shifted her style to be 'authoritative' which is made up of high warmth and high structure. Jaclyn says the results have been 'faster than [she] expected' but also noted that there wasn't a change overnight.
Sharing what she's seen change, she shared: "Soon I saw: less anxiety over decisions, more confidence trying new things, less negotiating/entitlement, better regulation."
Jaclyn's reel has since been viewed over eight million times, sparking the mom-of-two to respond to her clip becoming viral.
"I just wanted to be honest with you. To share my story. My mistakes. What I learned," she said.