Is positive parenting really caring?

What does it mean to be a good parent? Sorry, this article will not answer this question. At a time when society requires darons to play this role they have chosen (you wanted them, you guess!), this lack of response is unbearable. The only thing that is recorded now is that we must raise our children with kindness and without violence. At Madmoizelle we adhere 100% to these precepts, but we regret the confusion they sometimes cause.

Positive parenting today seems to boil down solely to its excesses, and this misinterpretation hurts parents who are wrong-headed and exhausted. In passing, he makes fun of a current that had everything to allow families to thrive.

But why such an interpretation and such a polarization?

Ordinary educational violence in our society

There is consensus in France on the intolerable nature of child abuse, as well as its consequences on the development of child victims. Provided that this violence is gratuitous. Since the early 2000s, many parenting associations and specialists have warned of a more insidious phenomenon of abuse: ordinary educational violence, commonly called VEO.

According to Héloïse Junier, a psychologist specializing in early childhood development, this violence is often perpetrated for the purpose of establishing parental authority:

It is for this reason that they are called educational. They can be physical and/or psychological, but they can also manifest themselves in the form of very strong verbal humiliations and threats.

– You are not beautiful when you cry! – If you don’t finish the soup, the ogre will come and eat you! – What are you stupid, my word! “: Many small violent sentences that parents sometimes have difficulty perceiving as such. The childhood foundation, which fights for the protection of childhood and respect for the fundamental rights of the youngest, has recently published an observatory on this ordinary educational violence to evaluate parents’ knowledge on the subject. Clémence Lisembard, the foundation’s operations manager, notes that they still have difficulty identifying what constitutes violent behavior and what does not:

We wanted to question parents to find out where they are in terms of knowledge of child development and ordinary educational violence (…) and the results are very eloquent: if they are sufficiently aware of physical violence, psychological violence, they are really lost.

Benevolent parenting, the reference educational practice

Beyond certain practices that clearly fall under the yoke of child abuse and are likely to disappoint you, there is no comprehensive list of VEOs. Héloïse Junier especially insists on the intensity and frequency of this violence. A point of view shared by Clémence Lisembard:

When it comes to defining an EEO, these are subjective questions that cannot be answered in general terms. There is a question of intention behind it and above all there is a question of intensity and recurrence. We Can’t Tell Parents: Here’s What You Can and Can’t Do!

If there is no exhaustive list that brings together these ordinary educational violence, there are instead reference practices that allow the child to flourish within his family.

Since 2006, the Council of Europe has recommended that parents practice so-called “benevolent” upbringing, also known as positive parenting. This benevolent or non-violent education involves satisfying the emotional and material needs of the child, guaranteeing his physical and mental safety, encouraging his autonomy, considering him as a person and proscribing all violence, even for educational purposes… limits when necessary , as Héloïse Junier reminds us:

The cornerstone of nonviolent education is also listening to the needs of the child if it is absolutely necessary for the parent to maintain a stable and secure environment. Parenthood is beneficial when the parent transmits values, prohibitions, promotes respect for the environment without violating the child and allows a warm, spontaneous and authentic relationship with the child.

When hyperbenevolence takes over positive parenting

Understanding the stakes of respectful parenting, but lost as to what parental violence is or is not, more and more parents are terrified of inadvertently violating their child. If the two professionals interviewed are careful not to tell us what is allowed or not, the wonderful world of the Internet will take care of it for them. Through advice, coaching, and workshops, Darons learn to raise their little loved ones in an increasingly respectful and fulfilling environment, sometimes to the extreme.

We don’t punish, coddle, frustrate, explain and don’t impose bedtimes or medications because the child knows better than anyone what he needs. This ultra-permissive interpretation appropriates the title of “positive parenting” or “benevolent parenting” and vastly discredits a reasonable and gratuitous mode of education that simply allows parents and children to live together in mutual respect. Which unjustly tarnish the image of an educational current that is not yet permissive or particularly demanding, contrary to what is now conveyed by certain media.

Caroline Goldman, doctor of child psychology and author of the now famous Go to your roomdeplores the widespread confusion from parents who above all want to do well:

50% of the parents who consult me ​​are inhabited by isolated problems of educational limits (…) When asked where did they get this idea of ​​not punishing, and not scolding their child who had just made a mistake, all of you answer: I read that it was very harmful and that the child could be traumatized.

Avoiding childhood trauma especially resonates with parents who were themselves raised by an agile and easily bullied generation who didn’t bother with such considerations. In addition to the fear of repeating abuse in spite of themselves, there is pressure from society, which now designates parents as the sole guarantors of their offspring’s well-being and future success. The prospect of sailing by sight and making mistakes is terribly anxiety-provoking.

The mental health of families in the face of a permissive upbringing

When no competent professional can offer miracle formulas, hyperpositive parenting actors dispense harsh precepts and general truths to ensure children’s development, often in the context of expensive supports. Caroline Goldman quotes Claudius Halmos denounce a lucrative business, where parental guilt is exacerbated to be better exploited later:

Parental guilt is a market, it plays on a feeling that just needs to be awakened in order to sell parenting books and courses. »

At the risk of hurting families considerably and driving them straight to burnout. This is what deplores Léonie Cance, psychologist and creator of an account. instagram who denounces the abuses of positive parenting and advocates a return to respectful but uninhibited parenting:

It’s tragic, because 99% of parents who question are good parents. These talks cause them to lose what little self-confidence and parenting they may have had. This has a very negative impact on their mental health, as studies on parental burn-out have shown.

Which parenting method to adopt? The one that makes you feel good

Although capitals, these educational problems are ridiculed by the media. We now oppose, as parenting methods of reference, a caricature of benevolent upbringing to a return to authoritarian parenting, although neither is ever mentioned. We grant you, a nice controversy that opposes it The cure continues Has bogeyman sells much better than the following laconic statement: early childhood professionals don’t all agree with each other, but everyone has interesting ideas to draw inspiration from based on their own desires and temperament. However, it is this sentence written by us and devoid of any marketing interest that should attract the attention of parents.

All the professionals we interviewed are unanimous: French parents currently lack realistic and appropriate support and global access to multiple resources. Cédric Rostein, podcaster and creator of the Instagram account Papatriarchat, confirms to us that far from the supervised environments of Instagram, real parents in real life often lack the means to respond to current injunctions:

We put childhood and parenthood in the dock, but we don’t question society. We explained that there shouldn’t be screens, screams, violence, humiliation, beatings. This is very important, but we didn’t ask ourselves what the child’s reception conditions were. Parental leave is very poorly paid and paternity leave barely exists.

Contrary to the precepts delivered on the set of Instagram accounts, these accompaniments and resources would not have the purpose of dictating his conduct to the parent. Above all, it would be about supporting him in his daily life and encouraging him to adopt a respectful and authentic parenting. Made of imperfections and trials and errors, but above all of freedom.

Photo credit image of one: Getty Images