Re: Parenting gently as Christians
My dh doesn’t read any parenting books even when I’ve suggested it or handed them to him. If I specifically ask him to read a short excerpt he will. How many of your dh’s have read parenting books? My dh also has unrealistic age-related expectations about what kids should be able to do at certain ages and isn’t willing to listen to ideas that that something isn’t an age-appropriate expectation even if they are very scientific. He is not as gentle of a parent as I am.
While I do read parenting books, some parenting books are also truly awful and would make you a worse parent to follow their advice, so while I’m not a wing-it kind of person, I can understand people not wanting to read them especially because they contradict each other.
To me gentle parenting is about putting yourself in the child’s shoes. For example almost all of my five-year-old’s behaviors that are difficult are anxiety. If I can see that she is yelling because she is feeling worried, I can respond with compassion and also realize that I need to do the kinds of things that calm worried people down (ie not isolating, shaming, yelling, or spanking- all of those things make anxiety worse, not that any of those things are good to do to anyone). I also remind my dh of this when he gets frustrated with her. People who aren’t acting in pro-social ways have feelings that are causing that and addressing those feelings helps so much (while also teaching better ways to handle those emotions and teaching them that you can’t hit, etc, even if you have those feelings). Kids can be helped not to use anti-social coping mechanisms if they have better coping mechanisms but it is a long process that in between sometimes looks like a child using the anti-social coping mechanism and then being helped to use a pro-social coping mechanism. So those are my random musings- hope they make sense.
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Erin
born of water and of the Spirit 4/96
married 5/02
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Jan 2, 2024
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