Is ‘Gentle Parenting’ Biblical?
“If gentle parenting were just a mood board for solving parenting difficulties in nonconfrontational ways, I’d have nothing to say against it. But when you dig more deeply…you find at least two that stand opposed to the Bible’s teaching about parenting.” - TGC
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More and more, it seems that the psychological community is assuming some very wrong assumptions about, ironically, the human condition--what they say makes a lot of sense if people are basically good, but if they're not, what they're doing is trading temporary peace for creating a long-term "monster" who is not aware of his sin. You can do a short term study (long term longitudinal studies are expensive and difficult after all) that "proves" that this approach "works great", but the elephant in the room is "what happens in the long term?".
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Through the years I have watched parents who were far too permissive and parents who were far too harsh (Eph 6:4). Both have had some bad results. Although there are exceptions, what works out the best is when parents graciously hold firm about what is important and have firm expectations for their children without being overly harsh. Some parents would benefit from learning some gentle parenting techniques and other parents would benefit from learning how to enforce rules a bit more.
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