Mom Who Is 'A Product Of Gentle Parenting' Shares How It Shaped Her Life
It's a gift that keeps on giving.
Tint Media | Shutterstock Every family functions with its own internal set of guidelines. Some parenting styles are more strict, and others are more lenient. Of all approaches to raising kids, gentle parenting is often misrepresented and misunderstood.
A mom who is a ‘product of gentle parenting’ shared how it shaped her life, impacting her own parenting style.
Audi Ferrin revealed the ways being raised with gentle parenting has affected her development into the person she is today.
The 32-year-old mom of three said, “Now that I am the parent, I’m just now realizing how good of a job my parents did.”
She described herself as “Pretty normal [and] mentally healthy,” noting, “I have a healthy view of myself. My inner voice is kind.”
“I feel very lucky and fortunate that my parents made a real huge effort to be kind and respectful to us and really take their job as our parents seriously,” she said. “They loved us; they were there to guide us.”
As a parent, Ferrin looks back on her own childhood to reflect on how her parents reacted in different situations.
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“My mom says she always put 110% into raising us so she could sit back and enjoy the rest of her life watching us live out ours,” she said.
Gentle parenting is often confused with permissive parenting, which can be described as lax parenting or not setting boundaries.
In reality, gentle parenting utilizes firm limits and boundaries in conjunction with empathizing with kids’ more difficult emotions.
Gentle parenting relies on three pillars: connection, communication, and consistency.
Gentle parents acknowledge their children as individuals and respond to their needs, holding space for big emotions when they come.
Ferrin shared her thoughts on the confusion between gentle parenting and lax parenting in response to a commenter saying, “I feel like gentle parenting should be renamed to emotionally aware parenting.”
“In school, I studied marriage and family therapy,” she explained. “My emphasis was Family Studies.”
“Gentle parenting was never a term in any of our classes for that major,” she continued. “That just goes to show that 10 years ago, no one was talking about gentle parenting.”
“Gentle parenting should not be confused with lax parenting,” she said.
“When I think of the way that I was raised, they just respected us and taught us how to respect them,” Ferrin continued. “That just carried into the way that they disciplined us, the way that they taught us principles and life lessons.”
“They did everything in a very respectful way,” she said. “That’s not to say they weren’t strict. They were really, really, really strict… But they did it all with respect.”
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She shared an example of her parents’ approach to parenting, telling a story about showing up late for curfew to find her dad waiting for her, as he did every night when she went out with friends.
“He would not yell at me,” Ferrin said. “He would just say, ‘I’m really disappointed, and hopefully we can talk about this tomorrow.”
“In that moment, where I’m an hour late, I ‘disobeyed’ his strict rule; even then, he treated me with respect, and even then, he wanted to talk about it,” she explained.
“That’s the one word that I would give my parents’ parenting style, is just, ‘Respect,” she said.
The way Ferrin was raised provided her with a stable sense of self, which has given her a strong foundation to consider how she wants to raise her kids.
It could be said that gentle parenting is conscious parenting, or a response to reactive parenting. By being in touch with their own feelings, parents can model a high level of emotional intelligence to their kids and show up for them as needed.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.