9 recent events that pushed me to my gentle parenting limit
Guest starring: my three-year-old son
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When he thought that 6 am, on the morning of an airport run, was the perfect time to tear the house apart searching for his favourite Ninja Turtle.
The ongoing bickering with his older sister, two chemical elements in constant flux; drawn together and repelling each other in predictable fashion, inseparable, but with an inevitable countdown to eruption, a volcano unable to remain dormant. “Zero days since our last explosion.”
When he decided, one evening around 10 pm, whilst we were all attempting to sleep in a single hotel room, that he wanted to sleep with what we up North call “the big light” on, for the first time in his life, then kneeling on the bed and screaming for an hour when we wouldn’t comply.
His new favourite activity: running at me, full pelt, smashing his face—and whatever superhero he’s carrying—into my groin. We weren’t planning on him having any younger brothers, but he’s making sure to protect his turf, just in case.
Learning how to spell NO and repeatedly telling us “N-O means NO” (this one is kinda cute, granted.)
When we asked him to go to the toilet before bedtime, he steadfastly refused, spent 30 minutes shouting at us, saying he didn’t need to go, that he didn’t even want to try, and then fell asleep between us in the hotel bed, where we remained for about six hours before waking up to that wet, warm feeling and tell-tale acrid aroma.
When we were preparing for a 16-hour overnight sleeper train journey, spending the entire day attempting to entice a brown guest out of his bum whilst still within easy access of a pristine bathroom, to no avail, and mere minutes after sitting down on the train being informed: “I need to go poo RIGHT NOW.”
The many times I’ve had him scream “you’re a bad dad” in my face whilst I attempt to carry out the bare minimum requirements of parenting—having him wear suitable clothes for current weather conditions, brushing his teeth twice a day for what we’ll all agree is two minutes, or a regular wash of his crevices.
When he picked up a juice carton at the airport, asked for a straw, and reacted with pure disgust that his father would DARE pierce the carton for him, rendering the entire drink ruined, unwanted, disgraced.
In his defence, there have been times over the last few weeks when I haven’t been at my best. And let’s not even get started on the other kid. I’m sure if Bodhi had a newsletter of his own, he’d have an equally devastating list. Talk about punching down, eh? But I’ve got the keyboard here, so you’re saved from what would be yet another update about the same eight episodes of Sonic Prime.
The relentlessness of parenting small children takes on another dimension over Christmas. They’re overstimulated, high on an endless supply of sugary treats from extended family, and especially resistant to coercing after the 25th, when the threat of an ever-watching white-bearded gentleman—no, not the one up there, the other one, who lives in North Pole—no longer holds power. “He knows when you’ve been bad or good” comes off as a toothless when it’s almost 12 months to fruition—an eon in toddler terms.
We’ve all got our limits. And I’m not proud to say that I hit mine, many times over, since I wrote to you last. I try to keep my own feelings in check, even if my children are struggling to do the same; Kipling’s famous lines coming to mind, keeping my head “when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.” If that isn’t exactly how it feels raising kids. My own difficult relationship with anger means I’ve had to learn how and when to use it, applying it sparingly, a parenting proportional response, a hammer hidden behind glass, for use in times of emergency. So I’ll take advice wherever I can find it. And an insightful book is never far from hand.
I’m currently working my way through How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen, as good a gentle parenting handbook as you’ll find. In its opening chapter, it advises parents to “acknowledge feelings with words.” This isn’t new news. But it’s easy to overlook when the pot of emotions begins to bubble and overflow.
You are giving your child a crucial vocabulary of feelings that he can resort to in times of need. When he can wail, "I AM FRUSTRATED!" instead of biting, kicking, and hitting, you will feel the thrill of triumph!
Gentle parenting, that somewhat ill-defined term that encompasses more of an attitude than a particular set of beliefs, has become the dominant parenting model among the parents I know. The New Yorker defined it as “centering on acknowledging a child’s feelings and the motivations behind challenging behavior, as opposed to correcting the behavior itself.” Whether or not you subscribe to its methodology—it’s core tenets of respect, understanding, empathy, and boundaries— you’re probably more gentle than your own parent was. Times have changed, and dads have (mostly) changed with them.
But there comes a point where—in all honesty—your children are being complete shits, and gentle or no, there’s little more that can be done about it. “It’s like trying to deal with a drunk person,” my wife and I will telepathically communicate to each other, knowing that once a particular tantrum has taken hold, there’s no use trying to reason with them. It’s often necessary to let this particular firework burn out, and come crashing down to earth.
“Gentle” is subjective. I’m sure my kids would have used a very different word for my parenting over the last few weeks. But gentle parenting doesn’t mean being a pushover. It can just as easily be defined by what it isn’t—a world away from the authoritative parenting approach many of us grew up under. Even the simple acknowledgement of a child’s emotions is a stark contrast to old-school attitudes of “deal with it,” “boys don’t cry,” and “because dad said so.” In teaching our children to understand the spectrum of emotions they’re experiencing, and learning how to feel them without becoming overwhelmed by their presence, we equip them with the tools they need to succeed in life.
Maybe it’s where I’m at in my own journey, but this advice seems useful not just for our children, but as a mirror to hold up against our own worst impulses, and our interactions with those closest to us. I will be the first to hold my hand up and admit to forcing conversations towards a “problem-solving” space when a simple acknowledgement of current feelings would be more beneficial. What if we practised what we’re preaching? A key part of any mindfulness practice is cultivating a sense of stillness where one can notice emotions arising and name them, robbing them of their power. Meditators will talk about the “feeling tone” to pleasant and unpleasant emotions, using meditation as a sandbox to understand how feelings like stress, fear, and anger arise in the body, and discovering the tools to jimmy open a small window between recognising a negative emotion and taking action on it. If we turn the tools of gentle parenting upon ourselves, we might “learn to expand our window of tolerance,” a phrase Jack Kornfield recently shared with Shane Parrish in their discussion on finding inner calm.
This is a small snapshot of the last few weeks of my parenting odyssey. I’m sure you have a list of your own: the length and content may be different, but the song remains the same. We never step in the same river twice; we’re never the same parent for more than a month. We try to keep our shit together, to provide a better example than we inherited. The wheel rotates, we figure it out as we spin, and carry on doing our damned best.
3 things to read this week
“How the UK has Become a Hostile Place to have Children” in The Observer. Short, direct and powerful. This editorial goes into painful detail about the difficulties facing families in the UK—the cost of living crisis, a decline in maternity services, a reduction in benefits and support for those with young children, rising rent prices and a lack of affordable childcare. “The government’s neglect of children and families has profound repercussions not only for the kind of society we are today, but for what we will become in the future.”
“The Quiet Profundity of Everyday Awe” by Dacher Keltner in The Atlantic. We’re a few weeks into January, and many well-set intentions will have already fallen by the wayside. If you’re looking to do more of something this year, why not find more awe in your life? “A brief dose of awe can reduce stress, decrease inflammation, and benefit the cardiovascular system. Luckily, we don’t need to wait until we stumble upon it; we can seek it out. Awe is all around us. We just need to know where to look for it.”
“How ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Helps to Heal Generational Trauma” by Laura Zornosa in The New York Times. The genre-bending opus from The Daniels topped many end-of-year lists—including my own—for its audaciousness and exploration of intergenerational trauma. It was a lightning bolt to every parent, old and new, reminding us: if you’re not doing the work to break the cycle, then you’re passing it on, whether you’re aware of it or not.
Good Dadvice
One thing to watch with the kids this week
Spent the last 12 months listening to Encanto non-stop? Gritted your teeth on hearing We Don’t Need To Talk About Bruno for the millionth time? You are now ready to graduate to the Encanto Live Special on Disney+. Delightful to see Rosa Diaz go from strength to strength since she left the police force.
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Branding by Selman Design. Survey by Sprig. Good to be back in your inbox. Big “first day back at school” vibes this week, and all the things that I marked as “January problems” before Christmas don’t seem to have progressed at all during the weeks I’ve been ignoring them. Congratulations to my brother-in-law Jules on becoming a new father this week! Follow The New Fatherhood on Twitter and Instagram. Send me links, comments, questions, and feedback. Or just reply to this email.
Excellent post. I subscribe to this style of parenting myself so it's nice to read about how other people handle it.
wow, brother!
what a wild ride with the kiddo, and also in staying with your own edge. breathing into it. learning from it. well done--even if in some moments it didn't feel like it.
Z is nearly a year now, louder and more mobile than ever, and i read your post like, oh shit that's right around the corner.