The Current - Where do you draw the line on gentle parenting?

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Once hailed as the more empathetic approach to raising children, gentle parenting is now facing pushback from exhausted parents who say the expectations are unrealistic. We're joined by Kayla Huszar, a mother who says gentle parenting “broke” her. Then, child psychiatrist Dr. Ashley Miller explores the potential benefits and drawbacks of gentle parenting and how to find a balanced approach that supports both a child's development and a parent's well-being.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. If you have ever dealt with a small child throwing a tantrum, you know how difficult it is to keep your cool. In a video on TikTok, a young child throws a small chair at her mother and starts hitting her. Hey, no, hands are not for hitting. Hands are not for hitting. I don't like that. That hurts.

You need to keep your hands to yourself and be nice. Are you ready to be nice? No. Her mother stays calm while the toddler screams and smacks her. In another video on TikTok, a toddler leans over and bites his mom's leg. She redirects him, giving him a toy to bite instead. He's silly boy. No, we don't bite mama.

That hurts. If you need something to bite, you've got to ask mama, say, Mama, bite. Yeah. Mama can give you that to bite. Both moms say they're practicing something called gentle parenting, an approach that emphasizes empathy and respect for children's feelings. Gentle parenting has become popular in the last decade, embraced by many millennial parents. Social media is full of strategies and tips from moms like the ones we just heard from who embrace that philosophy. But there is a growing backlash against gentle parenting from parents who say it sets too high.

a standard. Caitlin Murray is a popular influencer who documents the ups and downs of modern parenting. I get really pissed off when no one's listening to me. So if my kids happen to get a little bit nervous when they hear their name at a higher decibel, then good. At least maybe they'll put their frigging shoes on. You know, sometimes you get a light, a little fire under their ass to just keep the day moving along. In a moment, we'll hear from a child psychiatrist on the science behind gentle parenting, what works and what doesn't. But first, I'm joined by Kayla Hussar. She is a mother of two in Alberta, recently published in an article in McLean's magazine with the headline, My Misadventures and Gentle Parenting, Kayla, good morning. Good morning. In this article that you wrote for McLean's,

you describe how you kind of went all in on gentle parenting when you first became a mom. Can you describe, I mean, what did that look like in practice with your son? It looked like in practice a lot of following a script, following a one, two, three step. A lot of the information that was consumed online at that time, which was relatively new practice, seeking out social media or blogs for parenting advice. And a lot of it was quite scripted. A lot of it was quite like if you do these one, two, three steps, you will avoid, diminish, navigate, said meltdown or behavioral upset in the home. Can you just give us an example of how that would have worked? I mean, walk us through the script in a scenario where you would use that script.

So say a child is acting up for some reason. Let's say I gave the blue cup instead of the red cup, the classic, classic example. And what would happen is you would say something like, I can see you're mad that you got the blue cup instead of the red cup. That must feel really aggravating. And that, in theory, should avoid or validate enough that the feeling kind of squashes out. And then if that doesn't work, what's left in the simple one, two, three step is that it doesn't really navigate for those what-if scenarios. What if they start throwing a chair? What if they start back-talking you?

What if they fall down on the floor and start screaming or thrashing around? which is what children do. They are totally behaviorally appropriate at that time. But the one, two, three, or the script, so to speak, doesn't account for all of those scenarios. What was the attraction of this to you? Doing it differently. I think having a bit of a roadmap of doing parenting differently. Now, my childhood was definitely not as abrasive as some of my other peers in the parent-led parenting,

the old school version, if you will, being parented by boomer. I wanted to raise emotionally intelligent and regulated, especially white males, and it kind of fit the bill. Gentle parenting kind of checked all the boxes, right? Validate the feelings. Model empathy. Show and practice and model what a real emotional regulation looks like. The nuances of how gentle parenting was consumed for me online left a lot of that gray zone out. The subtitle of your article in McLean's is no timeouts, no limits, total chaos.

What did the total chaos look like? It looked like when the script or the strategy, the tool to use for parenting, when that didn't work, what then? And how I've described it to some of my clients is either you have the patience of a saint or you become an A.S. whole, right? And so it's like there's no in between. It's either I'm following the script and I'm patient. And I can do this, right? Like, I can validate. I can have empathy. It's something that I'm actually quite good at. But when it doesn't work, there's this hopelessness, this powerlessness in there where I'm trying so desperately not to do it the old school way, but I don't actually know how to do it the new way. You tell a story about what happened in a toy

store, right? What happened there? Yeah. So I was pregnant at the time. My oldest was about four and a half. And I was just trying to get, you know, away from the hot day in the middle of the summer. And he's stunning in the aisle saying, I really want this. I really want this. And I'm doing all the things, right? I'm, I'm, yes, I understand you want this toy. No, we're not going to get it today. Actually, I probably didn't say no. That was a big faux pot at the time. I probably said, we'll come back and get it later. You can come back with dad. There was no. no level of negotiation that was going to work. He wanted the toy. And what ended up happening is I ended up caving. I ended up getting the toy. Because he had a meltdown. Because he had a meltdown.

Yeah. And people were staring. And it wasn't like escalated like you could have heard him all the way across the store. But it could have been. Like I definitely think that it had the bit of the roadmap that if I had stood firm, and the no, especially if I'd gotten the things that I wanted, and we ended up at the checkout anyway, absolutely. I probably would have been football carrying him out of there, except at that point, I don't think I would have felt confident to football carry him out of there.

You said something really interesting in telling that story. You started saying that you told him no, and then you stopped yourself, and you said no was a faux pa. What is that about? Because one of the criticisms around gentle parenting is that it just becomes permissive parenting. You're not saying know. Yeah. And at this time, so this would have been in 2019. So the landscape of what we consume in terms of online parenting information was at the time relative. And so there was a lot of Instagram posts, a lot of Facebook influencers, mom, I think they would have been called mommy bloggers at that time. They were saying things like no is a bad word. No is something you don't say because there was this stat that came out, and I'm not going to quote it directly,

but there was a significant number of nose that came out of a research article where children hear a significant amount of nose, and then people kind of freaked out, right? They were like, oh, my God, I can't say no this many times to my child. And so basically it just became a real full pop. Like you had to rephrase everything. So what you would want to say is, no, we're not going swimming today. And how you would reframe that is, you know what, bud, that's a real problem. really great idea, why don't we go on the weekend? And that takes an incredible amount of mental

capacity. What did you think you were doing in following that script? Oh, I thought, I thought I was modeling what empathy and emotional regulation and emotional intelligence looked like. And in fact, it was more like masking. It was more like, I'm just needing to say, the right thing to avoid a behavior, to avoid a meltdown. I wasn't dealing with behaviors. Where did that come from? I was trying to avoid them. One of the things you write in the piece is I'd always tried to be the perfect model of the

enlightened, progressive, gentle parents. So where did that come from, do you think? Oh, you know, I don't think it came from one particular place. I think it came from everything that parents are told at that time, right? Breastfeeding is not good, but formula feeding is not good. bed sharing was definitely not okay at that point in terms of being socially acceptable but also don't leave your kid alone to cry in the crib right so it was very everything was okay but nothing was okay time how much of that was about i mean parenting is hard i say this as a parent it's the

hardest thing i've ever done it's amazing it's the most rewarding thing but it is the hardest thing i have ever done how much of that was what you were talking about this fear of of of getting it wrong because everybody would tell you, and social media is worse perhaps for that, would tell you what you should be doing, right? Yeah. And so pretty much I would gather this information, and not even on purpose sometimes. You know, the algorithm just knows what you need. And I would see a post and I would be like, oh, my gosh, this sounds so great in theory.

I did not handle that meltdown good yesterday. This might be a better way. And then you would try to do that better way. Sometimes it would work. And work as a you'd feel good after. or not like it diffused a situation necessarily. But getting it right, oh, I followed the script. Oh, I got it right.

When did you realize that this wasn't working for you? You tell a number of stories in this piece, but one of them is about something that happened at a pool. So we were actually still at home, and we were getting ready to go to the pool. Right. And it was the first time we'd gone to the pool post-COVID lockdowns and he was really excited and that excitement came out as aggression and he threw a metal

combination lock kind of at me and things have been getting progressively more intense I want to say up until that moment I mean the pandemic is definitely a factor in that and I said out loud if you throw that at me again we're not going and he did and we went and That's when I knew that it wasn't working because I had no authority in my own home. I was either making excuses for all the behaviors or it's because of this. It's because of this. We should be more gentle because, you know, we're home and it's the pandemic and it's horrible. It really served nobody in the end.

And he learned, you say in the piece, he learned how to wear you down in some ways. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he learned that everything was a negotiation. Your husband was not practicing gentle parenting, right? He ended up becoming disciplinary as a strange ring. But that's what you say he became, right? Yeah. And it was kind of, if I'm upholding this very Instagram version of gentle parenting,

he had to come in and be the disciplinarian when things got out of control. When I no longer had authority, well, somebody had to. What did you just call it an Instagram version of parenting? I don't even know. I can't even remember what I said. No, but what does that? What does that mean? You said that. What does that mean? Okay. Okay. It means that what is out there on Instagram is very different than what people in practice had intended gentle parenting to be. And people as in not everyday civilians, I mean the people who did the research, the people who understand and study parenting philosophies. There is some research to suggest that, gentle parenting was kind of birthed out of what is called attachment theory. And attachment theory is quite solid in what

I've read anyway. And it's become this morphed very prescriptive version. If you're only getting that information, that parenting strategies, that parenting information on Instagram, it looks very different than if

you read a real book about it. And I ask you this because you have a few different roles here. I mean, you're a mom, which you're also a social worker and you're a therapist who works with parents. So what do you tell them in your practice about gentle parenting? What do you hear back from them about their experience with this? They're tired. They're tired. They're exhausted. They're exhausted from upholding this. Always patient, always regulated, never raises their voice, but they do raise their voice. And so they feel lots of shame around that. Not guilt. They feel shame.

And there is this unconscious and unintentional narrative that comes out of this Instagram parenting information that it's never good enough. And they're exhausted and they're anxious and they're burnt out. And what do you say to them? I say to them stop consuming parenting information online or at least reduce it because they already have a pretty good idea of how they don't want it to look based on how they were parented or other adults that felt unsafe or unhealthy or neglectful in their lives, they do know how they want it to look. I do a lot of values work with people.

If efficiency is one of your values, gentle parenting is probably not going to work because you're going to be constantly coming up against this roadblock in how to do it or how to feel good about it. Have you followed your own advice? I mean, what does your parenting style look like now? My parenting style looks more authoritative. So authoritarian is coined the old school, you know, the way that maybe boomer's parented. Gentle parenting is what it is. And I strive for somewhere in the middle where sometimes, sometimes I have time for 45 minute. Let's feel the feelings. Let's go through the motions. I think it's important for every human being to complete their stress cycles. And sometimes it's like, no, actually, we got to go. Like, I got to get to work.

There's, there's limits in, in this life. And there are things that we have to do. Sometimes we don't want to do it. Is it healthy to always be shoving our emotions down and dealing with them later? No. But is that a skill in resiliency and distress tolerance? Yes. And do you use the word no in your house now? I do. And do you feel, I mean, this kind of broke you, you said. It like it was a exhausting. How are you doing now, now that no is not a banned word? Way better. And my kids are actually way better because they understand that no is reserved for the times when I really meet it. It's not overused and it's not underused. But no, you cannot have ice cream for supper.

Absolutely not. You can ask if the answer is going to be no. I'm really glad to talk to you about this. This is, it's fascinating. I think a lot of people will find something in the story that you have told about your own experience. Thank you very much. Thank you. Kaila Hazar is a social worker and therapist and the author of a McLean's article, My Misadventures in Gentle Parenting. Welcome to the Little Parenting. In the late 90s, a groundbreaking all-female music festival emerged, led by Canadian artist Sarah McLaughlin. Promoter said, you can't put two women on the same bill. People won't come. And it put a huge

fire under my butt to prove them wrong. representation for women in rock music wasn't there. And worse, you're being pitted against each other. Lilith became a free train. Catch the documentary that chronicles a pivotal moment in music culture. Watch Lilith Fair, building a mystery for free on CBC Gem. Dr. Ashley Miller is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. She's in Vancouver. Dr. Miller, good morning to you. Good morning, Matt. It sounds like a familiar story, how gentle parents. Oh, absolutely. I hear the very same kind of story every day, and I just have so much

compassion for your guest. As you understand it, what is the goal of gentle parenting? I think the goal is to avoid more punishment or shame-based parenting and to help kids develop more emotional regulation and emotional intelligence. How does that? lead to parents feeling like this is impossible? It might look interesting on Instagram, as she said, but in the real world, this is not something, and not a standard that parents can live up to. Well, as you mentioned, I think the misinterpretation of what gentle parenting is meant to be is one of the factors. So if you read about what gentle parenting entails, it does actually include setting boundaries in the definition. But what parents may focus

on is validating and naming feelings, expressing empathy, avoiding certain words or phrases, and then it becomes very one-sided. So I think it's a bit of a misinterpretation of gentle parenting and being to all or nothing about how you practice it, taking models from Instagram instead of common sense. What evidence is there around the effectiveness of parenting in this way. The term authoritative parenting that was described before, which is sort of that middle ground where you have warmth but also structure and support, that style of parenting does have research to show improved outcomes for kids, so less negative behaviors, better self-efficacy, better social competence, even academic success and emotion regulation. But you notice it's warmth with structure and support. It's not just warmth. The structure and support, so limits, its consequences, parents being in charge, those are all important components of authoritative parenting and what make it different from permissive parenting. What do you make of that idea of no being a bad word?

Well, I just, I wrote that down when she was speaking, faux pas, just as you mentioned. And it's that social pressure, that idea that anything should be off limits. The most important things is that parents feel empowered to be in charge. They're the leaders of the dance. So if parents feel totally disempowered that they can't say certain words for fear of social judgment or it's somehow wrong, they really have their hands tied. And that's not a great position to parent from. Tell me more about that. There was a study that was done recently on gentle parenting.

And the authors concluded the pressures to fulfill exacting parenting standards coupled with information overload on social media about the right or wrong ways to care for children has left many parents questioning their moment-to-moment interactions with their family. Yeah, exactly. And that self-doubt as a parent, which we all have, we all have. But the higher that level of self-doubt, the lower the level we feel empowered, that actually has an impact. So I don't want to make parents even more worried. Oh, now I have to worry about my own self-doubt and my own worry. But the truth is, it's probably more important to just kind of pick what you're doing and do it. Of course not if the things that were done to you are. We're extremely harmful. You don't want to replicate those. But parenting is live action. It's improv. It's trial and error. So when you're trying to keep a script in mind really heavily, it's hard to be in the moment with your child. And just being present, not doing or saying the perfect thing, that's what the research shows actually matters the most. Showing up, being present, not fully present, not fully attentive as best you can most of the time when you can that's what matters in your practice do your patients talk about that do they talk about that pressure that they're under and the and the script that

they're meant to follow i think what what parents talk about sometimes is this feeling of i'm not allowed to show myself to my kids i have to suck it up if i'm upset or angry and sort of like your your caller mentioned put on a mask and kids read are nonverbal so it's not what we say it's how we actually feel. So if I'm really angry and I try to put on a sugar sweet voice, that's going to be weird to my kid. It's actually more important to take a moment, to take stock of my own feeling, try to regulate myself, take a step out if I need to, you know, let my child know I'll be back in a moment and mommy just needs a breather, calm myself and then come back. And then if I can actually, you know, listen to my child's emotion or validate, great, but I'm doing it from a

place that's congruent where I feel calmer inside. Is it because of social media and the influence of everything now that it feels like modern parenthood is so hard on parents? I mean, as I said, parenting has been hard. It's been hard through time. But it feels like the pressure is different now. I think there's a lot of factors. Definitely the more social judgment.

I mean, parents have always been afraid of tantrums in the grocery store, but now the social media world makes you feel so much more vulnerable and you're exposed to so many other ideas of what could or should be done. I think just being under stress in general for parents, I mean, you read the Surgeon General's report from last year and the degree of stress for parents is not just in the U.S., but in Canada everywhere, I think. Part of that is environmental factors, economic factors, and just having less community support and feeling less maybe like we can turn to each other, just like loneliness in general. Parents, especially through COVID, were extremely isolated. And the more parents get support from each other and when needed

from a professional, that really helps kids too. What would you say to parents? To your point, the Surgeon General in this report saying that modern parenting is so stressful, it can impact the mental and physical health of parents. What would you say to parents just finally who are trying to figure this out? They want to take care of themselves, but they also want to take care of their kids and raise their kids in the best possible way. What would you say to them? Yeah.

Well, my first message is actually to everyone who's not a parent or whose kids have grown up. You know, parents need our support, never judgment in the grocery store, just, you know, child care. if we can do it for others. But for parents themselves, I think, finding a group of parents who can be emotionally supportive, whether that's online or ideally in person, parents who can trade off daycare, child care, and getting the help if needed for one's own mental health or other challenges, co-parent disputes, couples, issues, those things really help. And it's, it's open. to put yourself first. That's a major message. You said something interesting earlier as well,

which is trust your own instincts in some ways. And don't let that script kind of overwrite who you actually are. The vast majority of parents have good instincts. Even parents who've had really negative childhood experiences have good instincts. So I have a really wise mentor who used to say, you know, just read the book of yourself as a parent. Learn about yourself. Learn about your kid. That's the instruction manual. Ashley Miller, really glad to talk to you. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for having me met. Dr. Ashley Miller is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. She was in Vancouver. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you

soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.