Real talk ; Parenting can be the hardest job you ever have. Sometimes as parents, it can be overwhelming and hard in figuring out how you are supposed to be calm and collected when your child has trouble regulating his emotions.

If you yell at your child today, does that mean you are a bad parent? Have you failed parenting totally? If your child made a mistake today and you take away her screen time, does that mean you are punishing her? Does being strict means you are not doing gentle parenting?

Many people think that gentle parenting means letting your child get away with anything. No rules or boundaries and routines. Some might even think that gentle parenting means the parent are soft,they never get angry or hit their child at all.

But that is not true. Parents who adopt gentle parenting can have rules and boundaries in their household but at the same time they put in much more effort (physically and emotionally) to be more conscious in their way of reacting to their children, how they take care of both their needs and the children’s.

Parenting is hard. Gentle parenting ?Even harder.

Reality check: There is no such thing as a perfect parent. No matter how many parenting books you read, attend talks by experts, you are bound to make mistakes. Because that’s the nature of humans!

But the beauty of making mistakes is that you acknowledge and try to ammend it as best as you can.

Sarah Ockwell-Smith, a parenting expert and writer of “the gentle parenting book” summarised that there are four key principles in gentle parenting:

1)empathy

2)respect

3)understanding

4)boundaries

Empathy:

Your child is pushing your button this morning? Instead of you labelling him as “naughty” or “bad”, why not try to understand why he is behaving that way. Finding the cause or trigger of your child’s misbehaviour is a form of emphaty.

Respect:

The first stage of education is observe! Young children might not be able to easily understand instruction. But they observe, look and watch people around them (especially parents) – that is how they learn. Respect is a two-way street. If we want our children to be respectful individuals, we need to model polite behaviour first and discuss why it is important.

Understand :

Acknowledge that the child is still growing and his brain ‘s pre-frontal cortex is not fully developed yet thus he might make wrong choices or react unaccordingly. This part of the brain is only fully developed by the age of 25! So when you feel that your 5 years old is purposely misbehaving, sympathise with him and try to understand that he is just having difficulties expressing his feelings.

Boundaries:

Discipline is vital in parenting. In gentle parenting, discipline aims to:

1. guide/teach the child respectfully and with understanding

2. Take into consideration their age, brain development

Which means, if a child for example hits another child, does that mean we ignore this bad behaviour?

Nope! We need to teach them that we don’t hit because hitting hurts.

Do we punish them? Would a 2 years old who had hit his friend understand that hitting hurts when you “punish” him by giving him a time-out?

Nope!

So choose your boundaries wisely with the neurological capabilities of your child in mind.

So back to my question, if I yell at my child today, does it mean I have failed?

Of course not! Acknowledge that you are not doing it on purpose, identify your triggers and let go of the guilt!! Make peace with your heart. Forgive yourself and start again. And again. And again. And when you are feeling better, try to adopt the 4 principles that Sarah Ockwell shared! You will certainly fell in love with gentle parenting!