Gentle Parenting 101

Gentle parenting is a popular parenting ideology, focusing on empathy and respect and doing away with punishment and yelling. What we’ve learned from our mom friends and social media, though, is two things—gentle parenting can mean different things to different people, and it can be very hard to implement when a toddler is trying your patience (which, depending on your toddler, could be quite frequently…). We spoke to Dr. Mona Delahooke, author of Brain-Body Parenting: How to Stop Managing Behaviors and start Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology before becoming a mom herself, and has spent her career creating new ideas building on the concepts around gentle parenting.