The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved, the gentle parenting ethos raises happier children

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

If you're a new parent, you've probably heard the term 'gentle parenting'. It's the latest trend that has taken hold among millennials who reject the authoritative principles under which they themselves were raised. This new, softer approach discourages consequences and punishments for bad behaviour in favour of positive reinforcement and a focus on the feelings and emotions which are driving bad behaviour. Proponents of gentle parenting argue that this approach is the most effective way to raise kids: emotionally-focused parenting raises calmer, happier children with increased self-esteem, emotional regulation, more empathy, and stronger parent-child relationships. Furthermore, research shows that kids who are frequently punished don't end up being better behaved. Gentle parenting's critics argue that this approach relies on emotion as a substitute for authority and does not prepare kids for the real world where actions have consequences. Too much emotional self-awareness in childhood has resulted in high rates of anxiety and depression in young adults who cannot put aside emotions in order to carry out basic daily tasks.  Arguing in favour of the resolution is Sarah Ockwell Smith. Sarah is a well known parenting expert and popular childcare author, who is widely recognized as being the founder of the gentle parenting movement. Arguing against the resolution is Anna Lussenburg, a professional child care and family intervention specialist. The host of this Munk Debates podcast episode is Ricki Gurwitz.   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 15+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. To arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. The gentle parenting ethos raises happier children. Well, if you're a parent of young kids, you've probably heard the turn. term gentle parenting. Many millennials are rejecting the way they were brought up, embracing a softer parenting approach that emphasizes emotional learning in favor of consequences and punishments. So if a child is misbehaving, instead of giving them a time out, a gentle parent would say,

I see that you're angry right now in order to acknowledge their feelings. They would try to calm their child down and use a distraction to divert that bad behavior. Well, proponents of gentle parenting argue that this approach is the most effective way to raise kids. Emotionally focused parenting raises calmer, happier children with increased self-esteem, emotional regulation, greater empathy, and build strong parent-child relationships. Children who are able to understand their feelings and how to process them, will be able to handle uncomfortable social situations outside of the house and into adolescents.

And supporters of this approach argue research shows that kids who are frequently punished don't actually end up being better behaved. While critics of gentle parenting argue that this ethos relies on emotion as a substitute for authority and does not actually prepare kids for the real world where actions have consequences. Too much emotional self-awareness in childhood has resulted in skyrocketing rates of

anxiety and depression in young adults who are unable to put aside their emotions in order to carry out basic daily tasks. On this installment of the Monk Debates podcast, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be resolved, the gentle parenting ethos raises happier children, arguing in favor of the resolution is Sarah Ockwell Smith. Sarah is a well-known parenting expert and popular child care author who is widely recognized as being the founder of the gentle parenting movement. And arguing against the resolution is Anna Lassenberg. She's a professional child care and family intervention specialist.

Sarah, Anna, welcome to the month debates. Well, thank you. Nice to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. Our debate today is a topic that I think a lot of parents will be interested in. Be it resolved, the gentle parenting ethos raises happier children. Sarah, you are arguing in favor of the motion. So I'm going to put two minutes on the clock and we'll have your opening statement first. Thank you.

So I believe that gentle parenting raises happier children. I also believe it raises happier adults, and hopefully we'll get onto that a little bit later. Why do I believe this? Because it is rooted in decades of scientific evidence that a style of parenting that focuses on communication and connection with some boundaries, with some rules in place, is the most favourable approach for children. There are no guarantees with any type of parenting. there are so many different things that impact mental health and the development of personality in children that obviously we can't control for all of that. But I believe treating children with gentle parenting aspects.

So I talk about treating them with empathy, understanding and respect and having some well-defined boundaries is the best way to raise children who are likely to be happier, more respectful, have a better relationship with you. and generally better equipped for life too. Okay, Sarah, thank you for that opening statement. Anna, now it's your turn you're arguing against our resolution today. The gentle parenting ethos raises happier children. Let's hear your opening statement.

Okay, well, let me start by saying, look, I understand why people are attracted to a gentle parenting ethos or, you know, belief. It looks appealing. Parents are just looking for what they think is a, you know, kind of warm, a style in a harsh world. But let's be clear, we're going to debate the merits of gentle parenting. And I notice that, you know, that Sarah mentions a number of things, and I'm going to go back to a bit to her book, where she mentions a traditional parenting is having a whole whack of behaviors like screaming, hitting kids, parents losing their temper and that's kind of thing. And I want to be clear before we start that we're not looking, those are not markers of what I

call regular parenting. So when I debate things, I'm not going to use those as a juxtaposition. But one of the biggest differences between gentle parenting and what I call regular parenting is that gentle parenting puts a big emphasis on the emotionally focused aspect of parenting. All parents want to help children with their feelings. That's perfectly normal. But I argue that not every feeling is worth paying attention to. And your job as a parent is to sort of lead the family. Parents, you know, need to have, obviously give their children love, cuddles, boundaries,

you know, encouragement, all those things. but they also need to really lead their kids. And, you know, every parent wants to help a child if they've been bullied or dealing with an emotional blow of one kind or another. But you can't allow their each and every emotion to basically determine what you can and can do during your day. When you stop bleeding, when you allow children's emotions to determine what you can do, you create a vacuum in this leadership position. And what happens when there's a vacuum, something is going to fill it. And children do that. And then when they feel it, they become uncomfortable because nobody's really leading the family.

Everybody's looking to them and their emotions and nobody's really leading the family. And children feel happiest when they can watch, mimic and follow you and be part of your activity, but not the focus of it. That's where they get their sense of belonging, their stability, their ability to sort of reach out and figure out the world. It's that strong stability at the beginning. And gentle parenting puts the child at the center of family life. and that can create, in my view, some pitfalls. It makes it far too easy, in my view, to drop the leadership ball. And the result is that children can come to believe that the sort of world revolves around them and everybody's too concerned with their every emotion. And that's hard when they go into the adult world because, you know, the adult world probably won't afford them the same courtesy. Okay, thank you, Anna, for that opening statement. Sarah, now is your turn for rebuttal. So at this point, you can take issue with anything that Anna said in her opening statement.

Okay. So where do I start? Let's go with the idea that gentle parenting centers the child above everybody else. For me, yes, the child is centred, but so are the adults. So are other family members too. It's really important whether you're talking about a family or whether you're talking about work bodies that everybody's needs and feelings are considered. one of the common myths that I hear about gentle parenting is that it's quite toxic because it makes

parents feel bad, it makes them very stressed, it makes them feel like a failure. And I think the people that talk about this don't really understand what gentle parenting is. So we talk about parents being good enough. Parents make mistakes. Everyone screws up. Heck, I have four adult children now, but I screw up every day. I make all sorts of mistakes. I curse, I yell. I want to tear my hair up sometimes. But mistakes are really good because mistakes on watching how we handle them and deal with them. They help children to learn. When I do mess up as a parent, the key thing in gentle parenting is I say, I slipped up. What happened there? It's all the stuff we carry with us as parents and it's not fair that we put it all out onto our children. So we apologize to them. We say that we were sorry.

We make things right, but we're not permissive. So we don't say, oh, Tarley, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, carry on destroying whatever it is you're doing, you'll say, I've told you you can't do that. I have to take this away from you, stop it, or I'll need to take you to another room. But then afterwards, you can say, hey, what you're doing is wrong and you need to stop, but you didn't deserve me talking to you like that, and I'm sorry. That's how we teach children, not lead them, teach them. We teach by role modelling. The best teachers, if you think about your high school teacher, they weren't people who spoke about

good leadership and being strong and everything like that. They were people who inspired you because they were kind. They had humility. They inspired you. They had a sense of humour. You wanted to be like them. So in gentle parenting, we talk about role models and teaching. And when I talk about discipline, we use the Latin word disciplina or disciplesus or stemming from the Latin word disseer, which means simply to teach. And you can teach children without overpowering them, without hurting them, without shaming them, without excluding them, and without controlling them, which a lot of parenting today does. The main style in parenting today is authoritarian. So authoritarian parenting is very much the adult in control. It's do as I say, not do as I do,

having expectations of the capabilities of children that we know neurologically they are not capable of doing. Most parents, most studies say that the way we are raised in children today is still predominantly authoritarian. And look at the results the authoritarian parenting has given us. In the UK, one in four children, children, not just adults, has a diagnosable mental health condition. In adults, that's even down to one in three, depending on the condition you're looking at. It's not working. It's causing all sorts of mental health conditions if we want to improve the mental health of adults and children. and indeed to make the world a kind of place.

Why would we raise children to toughen them up for the tough world? When we can raise them that they can deal with it better and maybe change it a little bit. So sorry, that was really long, wasn't it? I'll pause over to Anna now. Okay, thank you, Sarah. Anna, you have your opportunity now to either respond to Sarah's opening statement or what she has just said in her rebuttal. Well, look, Sarah, what comes across,

here is you keep coming back to this sort of traditional or authoritarian style. I don't think there's anybody as a parenting expert out there that's suggesting that at the moment that, you know, that hitting their kids or doing anything like that is a good way of. I don't mean, or shaming or controlling or being a strong leader. Not your step or time out or exclusions or punishments. Exactly though, but you're putting strong leadership as something. You're making strong leadership, something negative, and you keep coming back to that. Where we really differ, more than anything else, is this emotionally focused aspect, because I would argue that in what you want to call regular parenting, that not every, there's a differentiation between

wants and needs, so that we respond to needs, but we don't always respond to wants. What we're really doing is we're teaching kids right from wrong and how to do that. You're arguing time in, I'm arguing time out. And in fact, you know, ignoring a child is very, even for short periods, is extremely effective. And actually, it's very natural. Children want your attentions. And so when you deny it a little bit, what you're doing is you're explaining to them what is acceptable and what isn't in our society. You're basically laying the foundation of how to behave.

I mean, let's look at it this way. It's a process of socialization. If I came, let's say we were going to have tea together and I came over to have a tea with you and you open the door and I slapped you across the face, you would probably close the door and you would isolate me. You would not want to have tea with me because my behaviour is such that you don't want to have anything to do with me. So when you argue that somehow ordinary parenting, let's call it regular parenting, is somehow over-controlling. All you're saying as a parent is if you behave nicely, then you're somebody I'd like to have around. It's

It's normal to feel that you want to be with somebody when they're pleasant. When they're not pleasant, when they're constantly demanding or being whiny or difficult, it's not so much fun. And you only need to do it for a short period. Nobody's talking about, you know, horrible, harsh discipline. This is not horrible, harsh discipline. And interestingly enough, you know, I've been to a lot of people in the sort of gentle parenting world will mention somebody like Gene Lidloff and the continuing concept and the Cana tribe

in South America. and say, well, they do it that way. Well, I can tell you there's a lot of research and a lot of things that back up other ways. And I've actually personally experienced, I've gone to East Africa and been with the indigenous tribes in East Africa, and I can tell you that children go around in large groups.

And, you know, those groups can span for sort of two and a half, three years old right the way through to 10, 11, 12. And how they organize themselves is if the smaller children misbehave or indeed even the bigger ones, they will ignore them for short periods of time. It doesn't do anyone any harm. The kids get the message loud and clear that what is a socially acceptable behavior.

And that's how they handle things. So whereas you might find a lot of research on one angle, I'm sure I can back it up with a lot of research about the time and energy to do it on the other angle. Children may not have from a prefrontal cortex angle, they may not be completely mature, but that doesn't mean they don't have abilities. And I think we underestimate children.

Children know when they've done something wrong. They're aware of it. And I think the more attention you give to that negative behavior, the more you're going to get. So Sarah, let me pick up on kind of something that both of you talked about, which is ignoring a child when they've done something wrong. This is obviously tangible consequence to bad behavior. There's other such consequences like a timeout that some people find very,

effective. Why do you think that these are consequences that we should not be using as parents? So there were two reasons. So let's go with the consequences, first of all. There are three main stars of consequences. We have a natural consequence. That's when something happens that parents have no control over. So if a child puts your paperback book into the toilet and flashes it, that book's gone. It's not salvageable. And ultimately, natural consequences, sorry, is how we learn best. whatever age we are. Then we have logical consequences, which is where, say, I don't know, if the child keeps throwing a ball inside and it's going to break something, so you take the ball away, there's a logical link between what they've done and your action. And we also have illogical

consequences where a child is being, I don't know, very disobedient or whatever, for whatever reason, and you say, we're not going to play with your friend this afternoon. So there's no logical link between their behaviour and your punishment because then it is a punishment. So consequences are great, all four natural consequences and logical consequences, but the problem is children have to have a developed sense of logic. They need to have hypothetical thinking skills, abstract thinking skills, logical thinking skills. They need to know why you're doing something. So let's say time out of the naughty step, if you're putting a three-year-old into time out or the naughty step, for it to be effective, at not just masking the behavior, but actually helping to understand and change it,

they have to logically understand what they've done, how the other person feels, why they've been put there, why what they did was wrong, and what they need to do better next time. If they can't do those things, it's a really ineffective form of discipline. It's a sticking plaster approach, a band-aid approach. And we know in psychology, my background is psychology. We know that those abstract hypothetical, logical, concrete thinking skills start to really develop from the age of about seven. So if they're under seven, we don't recommend logical consequences because if it does work and it does work, but it works temporarily through a process of classical conditioning.

What happens is they learn very quickly. If I do something, mommy or daddy doesn't like it, I get put here. I don't like it. If I'm quiet and I stand here, I get let out. but the problem there is you have not done anything to resolve why they're behaving in that way. A lot of the time they behave that way because they're a child and that's how children behave. It's just brain development. They don't have the ability to control their impulses like we do as adults. But sometimes they behave poorly because there's something going on for them. So maybe they're struggling.

Like a common time I work with parents is when a new siblings arrived. And the older child's really struggling. they're feeling this sense of grief and detachment in the relationship and their behaviour is really disruptive. If we're putting that child in time out and ignoring them, what we're teaching them is, I don't like you when you behave like this. I don't care what your big feelings are underlying your behaviour. I don't want you near me unless you are calm, compliant and obedient. And as parents, I have four kids, I know how lovely it would be to have completely compliant, obedient children all the time. Wouldn't that be amazing? But the problem is when we make them calm, quiet, and quiet is the key word here, what we're doing is slowly little by little teaching them, I am not a safe space for you to be your authentic self. I am not a safe space for you to share your big feelings. I am not a safe person to come to and ask for help. There is a reason why so many parents of teenagers struggle because you can't make a teenager compliant. You can't sit them in time out.

You say, go to your room and they come back out again. But when you're not big enough that you literally can't physically pick them up or put them there or when they're not scared of you or your strength, what do you do? And everything starts to unravel because what we really need in the teen years is we need trust, connection, understanding. We need them to be their safe space. Let me just ask you, if a child is misbehaving in a way where it's not something, something like you mentioned before, oh, they're playing with this ball and you don't want them

to play with it and they're not listening so you take away the ball. Let's say there's not something as obvious as that to discipline them with. How do you discipline them if they are, let's say they're kicking their sibling and you need to get them out of the room or make them understand that that's not okay. What would you do? To be honest, we're probably to do something fairly similar to Anna, initially. So I have a three-pronged approach. The first is what you do in the moment. I call it emergency discipline. The key thing in emergency discipline is safety. So if they're hurting somebody, I am going to do what I need to do to keep them and the other person safe. I'm going to say, stop. I will not let you do that. I'm going to go over and I'm going to pick them up and move

them if I can. I'm going to try and separate them. I need to keep them safe, me safe, other people safe, object safe, animals safe. Safety trumps everything. And I always say when I'm speaking about gentle parenting, it's no point being gentle if your child is really in danger or put somebody else we do safety, then we do the gentleness. So safety first. That's probably doesn't differ from Anna. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to check you with myself because as you say, I'm the role model. So if I want my children to be calm and kind and respectful, I have to embody that. What I don't want to do is yell at them or lose my temper because I'm fighting their chaos with my own chaos, but I want to keep them calm with my own calm.

So we've got to always think about ourselves. A lot of this involves, you know, what am I bringing to the table? As an adult, do I need to set my own boundaries and do less so that I have more headspace? Do I need more help? Do I need to, you know, whatever, I need to be the role model. The third prong is the why and why is key. Why is my child doing this? And you're doing this all in the moment, are you?

Because it's, I keep them safe. I take a breath and think, be calm, Sarah. They're not doing this deliberately to wind you up, be the adult. And then I just think, why are they doing this? Obviously not when I'm moving them that way, but it takes a split second to think why. When everybody has calmed down a bit and I'm trying, and I've kept them safe, Maybe I'm sitting with them. Maybe I'm sitting in the next room. I'm thinking about what causes, what were their triggers? What can I do to make things better? Do I need to teach them how to do it better? Do I need to think what needs do they have that aren't being met? What's really interesting is I have a six-month-old puppy, who's a rescue dog. I also have an eight-year-old rescue dog. And there's been a monumental shift in the dog training community in the last couple of years. We're moving away from behaviorism where we're just, you know, don't give them attention when they're naughty, blah, blah, blah. And what we do is we find out what the

dogs need and we meet their needs and we try and prevent things from happening in the first place. So if there are always problems when we go to a certain play park, a certain time, maybe we go at a different time. Yes, but you're allowing by doing that, you're allowing their behaviour to dictate what it is, you're doing. And the bottom line is, you're absolutely not. You're absolutely not. They're literally their brain development. That's right. Yeah, you go on about brain development. And you're almost parenting here by psychological study.

I mean, I would, you know, I mean, to be quite honest, you say this is backed up by a lot of science. I would disagree with that entirely. You are arguing that you've got, first of all, let's look at this from a practical standpoint. This is really, this method is reserved for people of a certain socioeconomic status. Oh, my goodness. You try telling this to. you try telling this method, expecting people to do this method, is a single parent with three kids and two jobs. Do you know what's really interesting?

Hang on, let me finish. It's completely impractical as a way of behaving. Because what you're doing, for instance, I noticed in your book, you gave a classic example of a child. You said with regards to picky eating, and I read your book, you said that you should never deny your child food. Now, okay, and as an example with somebody that was having a picky-eating problem, you suggested that you either provide a meal at another time, cook something different. It was reasonably simple. No, provide a very rich. Or toast and cereal.

Now, my question to you is, you know, what if you wake up, are just going to bed at midnight? Because you send very specifically in your book, you must never deny your child food. Now, I don't deny children food either. But I just simply say to children, it's very simple, very calm, very nice, not over-controlling. I simply say we have three meals today. We would be delighted for you to join us during one of those meals. But if you choose not to, nobody's going to force you to eat. But if you choose not to, you'll have to wait to the next meal.

That's logical consequences. That's dealing and allowing hunger. Hunger to naturally. So I think that, Anna, what Sarah's saying is that a lot of the parenting methods that you ascribed to are fine for children over the age of seven who can make those logical connections. Well, I would disagree with that. You are arguing that that is not the case, that people younger... No, I would argue. I would argue there's a lot of research that backs me up as well. You're looking at concepts and saying that they can't argue with concepts. Well, first of all,

you're saying empathy. Children don't have the ability to really understand empathy. Well, there's research out there that suggests... that, you know, children anywhere between the ages of three and eight months can show empathy. So, you know, and you can, sorry? Birth, birth, empathy defects from birth. Yes, even birth. But the point is that they can show a distinct preference for somebody that treats somebody else nicely. And those are difficult concepts to come to terms with.

I mean, I would argue, even there's a lovely test with compochin monkeys where they are able to determine social inequality, where they both get, cucumber for a task and then one gets a grape and they're upset and so they can determine fairness so there are lots of things that children can determine and i think you're selling children short in their ability to cope they may not be really mature but they may hang on they may not be particularly mature but they are the prefrontal cortex is still there of course okay but so i'm just going to give sarah a chance to yes absolutely yeah i were just going to pick up on the idea of fairness and the concepts of equality and equity. So for me, Anna seems like she's saying that

you should treat them with equality. You should sort of treat them like you do as adults, which is effective, you know, adults have logic, adults have empathy. This is what I would do with an adult. Whereas I'm saying, treat them with equity. When equity is slightly different, it means taking into consideration other people's environments and other people's sort of internal state of mind. So in a scenario with an adult, if you're cooking three meals a day, I would not be cooking anything else for my husband. You know, he is a 50-odd-year-old man who understands that there's dinner here. And if he doesn't like it, he can cook something else. But my child, who has completely different level of understanding, they don't understand time or the concept of

time when they're little. They don't understand that they can only eat when we dictate because the clocks says or we've cooked rather than when their tummy is telling them. them that they're hungry. And actually slightly off topic, we know that obesity is a major issue because when we eat according to the clock and when meals are there and we ignore our own satiety and hunger signals, but that I would treat a child differently and think, do you know what, they can't tell the time. They can't remember that dinner is at six o'clock and they must eat them. Therefore, I would make an exception for a child because they have a completely different level of brain development than I would an adult. I wouldn't cook them a whole other meal.

I'm not some sort of weird parenting martyr. I would say, do you want a bowl of cereal or do you want a piece of toast that will take me 30 seconds to do? It will be cheap because in the cost of living. What if you're out? I would pack a banana in my bag. Okay. So it's like it's not hard to put a banana in a bag. No, it's not hard to put a banana.

But the bottom line is you are constantly in this then. Let's see the banana is 10 minutes before dinner. I'm constantly thinking about my children being in a pair of. All children should, every adult who has children should be constantly planning and thinking. All parenting is hard. You know, authoritarian parenting is not easy. I'm not talking about authoritarian parenting. I'm talking about regular parenting when you don't revolve your life around the children.

The children are, yes, of course you can take a snack. Nobody's arguing that you can't take a snack. But there are times when it is not appropriate for you to provide food. Okay, okay, okay. I'm going to just step in here first. Second, I think we've covered the food aspect sufficiently. I wanted to ask you, Anna, about the parent-child relationship, because something that gentle parenting really tries to emphasize a strong parent-child relationship that

fosters trust, that eventually will lead to a better, you know, teenager-parent relationship that prevents the child from, let's say, getting into trouble because they know that. they have a safe space to come back to. Sarah, am I describing that correctly? And I would just really quickly add, gentle parenting, if you look at Balmeryn's typology, which is permissive, authoritative and gentler parenting, gentle parenting is just authoritative parenting. And if you look at the research, I know I keep banging on about research, but I feel it's important as well as instincts to know that every single piece of research I've ever read that talks about the outcome in the teenagers and adult years supports authoritative or what I call gentle parenting. You're trying to parent by

psychological study here. And the bottom line is, you know, I'm trying to undo years of trauma that we've lost psychology, but it's a soft science. Real science is reproducible. It has solid definitions. Soft science do not. These studies that you're quoting,

many of them do not have their definitions are all over the place. Hey, monk listeners, you can now vote on who you think won this debate and all our other podcast debates by becoming a free monk member. Do this right now by going to triple W monk debates.com and punching in your email.

You get a say on all the big debates that we're covering at the monk debates from the war in Gaza to whether TikTok should be banned to the benefits of DEI in the workplace. Again, go to monkdebates.com and register your email now to get voting on these important debates. So Anna, I want to bring us back to the question that I was asking before, which is about the parent-child relationship. would you say that a strong parent-child relationship should be an objective for parenting? Should this be a top priority for a parent? Absolutely.

And I think you get that strong parent-child relationship and the trust from when you do things, you start off right from the word go with strong, effective, loving. You can be totally loving and cuddly leadership. But you need to be the leader because when you stop, doing things and revolve it around your child's every emotion. And we're not differentiating here between wants and needs. There's a huge difference. What's the difference? Well, let me finish. There's a huge difference between your child getting their finger caught in the door. That's a need. You're going to give love and cuddles and soothe and a band-aid and lots of emotional support

and a child wanting a cookie before dinner. That's not a legitimate thing. We have, you know, human beings have 70,000 odd thoughts. I wouldn't be giving a child a cooking for dinner. 70,000, well, the child might be arguing for the cooking. Yes, I know, but if you then have to stop dinner because you have to be with your charm because they're having a meltdown. And in meanwhile, your dinner burns while you're having to deal with their emotions, I'm saying you're not leading.

And that's what I'm saying here. Okay. Anna, if a child was having a tantrum, what would you tell a parent to do in response to that? Well, the least attention you can give it as better. So ignoring the time. And not make sure that you're not in a position where they're going to destroy things. If you have to gently restrain them, you have to gently restrain them. But if you don't do that from the word go, you'll find that children will have a temperate dandum, they'll get over it.

I think what the issue I have with gentle parenting is this, you know, there's this over hyper focus on children's emotions, as though bad emotions, as though dealing with a problem, is something that every parent has to interject themselves into helping with. And the bottom line is, when you interject yourself into a problem between, with a child dealing with, let's say an uncomfortable feeling, they're angry upset about something. They don't get a toy or whatever it is. You can say, I'm sorry you don't get that toy, but that's the way it is,

and they will calm down. If you become the method by which they calm down, if you sit with them, if you cuddle them, if you give them, Lots of attention for that negative behavior. You're simply going to get more of it. And you become the, no, you become the method by which they calm down. There's ignoring them completely. They're saying, if you let me know when you feel better.

You're obviously feeling angry. That's fine. Let me know when you feel better. Sarah, I'm going to ask you the same question. How would I deal with a tantrum? Yes. So the first thing, always safety. If I'm cooking dinner and I got the gas on,

I'm not going to be going and just leaving the gas. I'm going to be, can I keep everybody safe? Can I turn the gas off? Can I move the child so that they're not going to get hurt or break something? Actually, do I have the time and the capacity to deal with this right now? So if I was on an aeroplane, I would be looking at thinking, what can I do to distract them? Can I give them my phone? Get them to watch Bluey, you know, do something. Because we're on an aeroplane and there's not much I can do. So distraction, when I need to, when there's a scenario that I can't drop everything, I'm going to be have my phone, look, there's something to watch. If I do have the time and the capacity and the safety to respond, I'm going to take a breath and I'm going to remind myself, I am the adult. They are not doing this deliberately to wind me up. They're struggling and they need me to be calm because if I'm not calm, they're not going to be calm either. I'd find somewhere quiet, if I've got the time this is, we calm down. I'm not going to give in to them. I'm not being commissive. I'm not going to say, of course I'll buy you that toy. You have anything you want. Have a bag of cookies. I'm still going to have that boundary. I'm still going to

say no. I'm sorry you can't have that, but I'll follow that with, hey, it's really tricky, isn't it, when we can't have what we want? I know that you're upset and I know that that hurts. How can I help you to calm down? I'm not giving them the cookie. I'm not giving them the toy. What I'm doing is seeing that they're big feelings that at that age, if I leave them in time out or unless by themselves because I'm not giving them attention, that doesn't help them to process those emotions. It doesn't help them to calm down. Let me interject here. You're in, you're introducing the idea that this is a big feeling that they can't have a cookie before dinner. This is a big, tremendous feeling that you have to

help them through instead of making them. If they're not, you just mentioned the way you just mentioned the cookie. But I was answering a question about a tantrum and that's presumably a child crying and foot stamping and let's just pause here for a second. I think the main difference between you, Sarah, and you Anna, is the emphasis on emotions. And emo diversity, I call it. Well, not many people call it. All feelings are okay. We'll support them with their feelings when we can, when we have the capacity to. And in order to do that, we have to do a lot of work on ourselves. We have to make sure that we're not bringing with us all the childish heart and trauma that we went through as children when we were raised,

because all of us were, to be left to our devices. So Sarah, I want to ask you about a criticism I also often hear about gentle parenting. That emphasis on emotions is not always healthy in that it leads children in young adulthood to dwell on feelings instead of being able to sometimes push them aside as needed. You're talking about emotional resilience. Yes, to be resilient because in the real world, you have to push feelings aside in order to get tasks done. And so we're seeing young people today who are unable to move past their feelings, their emotions, you know, they talk often about trauma and it really acts as an obstacle in their

ability to achieve other goals. So what is your response to that criticism? So yeah, there is, and I know there's an author who's written recently, there's a book about the fact that we focus too much on mental health in adolescence and therefore we are creating this mental health. Abigail Shriars book, Bad Therapy. Abigail Shares, yeah. Yeah. So that isn't at all what I'm talking about. I'm not dwelling on roakness or whatever people label it as. I'm not dwelling on talking through every single feeling. I'm acknowledging feelings. And what I'm doing is I'm trying to do my best to be calm and acknowledge and deal with my own feelings. So all the stuff that I brought with me because I was

raised in the way that Anna recommends. And what I'm doing is I'm trying to work. through to help my children to be resilient. I'm working on their confidence. I'm working on their ability to say no to other people when it doesn't feel good of what's being asked of them. I'm working through ways that they can deal with things when they're feeling big emotions so that they have this toolbox with them so that when they're older, actually their capability to deal with stress is much higher. We also know quite interesting there's research by a researcher called Luby that looks at the amygdala area, part of the brain that's responsible for being able to deal with stress and stuff like this. And we know that the area of the brain that helps

with resilience and mental health resilience is grown by nurturance in the younger years. So the more nurturing and supportive we are, the more we build their confidence, the more they can store and go off into the world when they're older. But I'm not over-focusing and over-analising every single thing at all. And ultimately, I leave it when they're older. I leave it to my children. If they want to talk to me about how they feel, they'll come and talk to me. If they don't, I'm not going to bring it up and say, so, darling, sit and tell me how you're feeling today.

I'm not trying to be like Sigmund Freud Part 2 with them. It's up to them. Well, I think whatever you want to look at it here, there is this distinct thing, as you mentioned, this hyper-focus on emotions that I think, you know, not all emotions, not all thoughts that we have. and we have up to sort of 70,000 that go through our head every day, a fraction of those that are conscious. If you just allow thoughts just to come in like a cloud on a windy day and shoot through, you don't get attached to them. What you're teaching children in regular parenting, all the way I deal with it, is that you're teaching children not to get attached to all their feelings. For instance, we have thoughts.

I teach them to understand them. Hang on a minute. I acknowledge feelings, but some feelings are more. legitimate as it were than others. Let's say, I like my neighbor's car. I hypothetically, she's got a really, really nice car. I could have a thought one day that passes through my head to say, God, I'm jealous of that car. I'm really jealous of that car. I want that car. Then another thought that might come through that says, I want to bang my neighbor over the head and steal her car. Now, I'm not going to do any of those things. And quite frankly, if somebody sat down and

acknowledge to me that my feeling of jealousy. I mean, we used to have, we honestly, you're really balanced. Yeah, but jealousy. If you tell me, you want to bash them over your head, I'd be, I think you need to go and see a psychiatrist. Yeah, but the point is this, but you, if you attach yourself to that emotion, it makes it worse. I'll give you another example if you don't. I'm really jealous. Never mind. If you're going, if, no, it's not that you can acknowledge it, but you don't dwell on it. And I think this is the difference. We don't dwell on. feelings. Okay, we've come to the end of the debate. Our time is almost up. So I'm going to put two minutes on the clock. Anna, you're going to go first in closing statements. Just as a reminder,

you're arguing against, not that you need a reminder, but you're arguing against the resolution today. Be it resolved. Gentle parenting ethos raises happier children. Look, I think there have been some misunderstandings here in this debate between what Sarah really believes and what I really but the bottom line is this. Gentle parenting is a child-centric style. She's even argued that herself. And although though that's nice, it doesn't work in practice. And all parents want to raise happy kids.

I mean, that's what we're here for to raise happy kids. But when we stop leaning, when we let their behavior dictate what we do, when we spend lots of time analyzing it, trying to figure out why they're doing it and why. We need to know that. But we don't, it's, it's, this unhealthy preoccupation with this, which I believe leaves kids later on to spend undue amounts of time analyzing their feelings. And that makes it very hard for them to get on in the world generally.

You know, children, the trouble is you have to be a strong leader because children don't understand what the world is about. At three or five or eight, they can't lead a family. And whether or not you realize it, gentle parenting, I'm happy if it worked for Sarah, but you've got to understand that gentle parenting has gone out into a larger audience and it has it has morphed it has maybe some of the things have become permissive and i would argue that's why gentle parenting doesn't work because essentially it there are so many pitfalls that allow you to stop leading and to create children that think the world revolves around them and i would argue as a as a final point that gentle parents while it sounds lovely, is really still an overly complex, academic, economically exclusionary, and even a boutique way of bringing out children. Okay, thank you, Anna, for your closing statement. Sarah, we're going to give you the last word in this debate.

You're arguing in favor of the resolution. The gentle parenting ethos raises happier children. Thank you. So simply, gentle parenting is the sweet spot in the middle between authoritative, authoritarian parenting and permissive parenting. We don't parent through fear and control. We don't leave children to do what they want. There is a sweet spot in the middle where we teach and guide them. We're not strong leaders. We teach and we guide. We inspire. We have boundaries. We have rules. We have limits. We say no. We value emo diversity, not dwelling on emotions. We understand that everybody has

emotions and they're not bad. They're good. They're just starve, but we support children with them, as we would support our best friend or our partner with them. And I think, you know, all of this together, no parenting start is easy. And I absolutely also agree with Anna that if you see gentle parenting on TikTok mostly or in St. Chase's media articles, it's probably not gentle parenting. I never meant to start a movement. I meant to just sell my own workshops and it grew from there. But I think the one thing I'm going to just end with, it's not exclusive.

You can do it regardless of how much money you were, whether you work, whether you don't work, whether you have 10 children, whether you have one child, whether you have a partner, whether you don't, whether you are an LGBT plus family, whether you're not, whatever race you are, we will all bring different things to the table with. We'll all have different hurdles, but it works for everybody because, in a nutshell, and this is all I want to finish by saying, gentle parenting is simply, forget everything else, forget the research, treating children in the way that you wish you have been treated as a child. We are all our own. experts. We know when something feels good. We know when something doesn't. Treat your kids in the way that you wish you've been treated when you're a child. You really won't go far wrong. Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, Anna. As a new parent myself, I find this conversation in different viewpoints fascinating. And I know it was a hard debate to engage in. I know that this is something very personal to you both. So on behalf of the Monk debates, thank you so much for participating. Thank you for having a Thank you.

Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Anna and Sarah. You've given us a lot to think about. Have your say on who you think won the debate by going to our website, www.w.w.munkdebates.com. All you need to do is become a free member and you can cast your vote.

If you have feedback or reflections on what you have just heard or from any of our other podcasts, please send us an email at podcast at monkdebates.com. Thank you for helping us bring back the art of public debate and dialogues one conversation at a time. I'm Ricky Gerwitz. The Monk Debates are a project of the Oriya and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundation. The Monk Debates podcast is produced by Ricky Gerowitz and Daniel Kitts.

Karen Lynch is the editor. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And if you like us, feel free to leave a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.