Gentle Shepherd Parenting: A Tale of Three Markers

Sometimes Gentle Parenting Sucks.

It’s much easier to just think in terms of punitive or permissive. You know, when you’re dealing with stuff like when you tell your little preschooler to pick up the three markers on the floor and he falls down as if all the energy was sucked right out of his bones and swears that he can’t do it, he can’t do it, it will kill him if he has to pick up those three horrid fifty pound markers and walk an impossible five miles to the container that the markers go into.

The authoritarian/punitive parent just pops him, right then and there. That’ll teach him to have an emotional reaction to your command. Little tyrant. Who does he think he is, daring to have any other feeling rather than joyful obedience?  Sheesh. 

And so the problem is ”solved”: three markers cleaned up, and quickly, too.   

The permissive parent picks up the markers. It would be too much work to get the kid to do it, and besides, it’s just three markers. Like three markers really means anything. Probably shouldn’t have asked the wee little tyke to pick them up in the first place. 

And so the problem is ”solved”: three markers cleaned up, and quickly, too. 

But the gentle shepherd realizes that while both approaches solve the immediate problem, they tend to create more problems, deeper problems, than there were before.  So the gentle shepherd parent “solves the problem” in a way that the punitive and permissive parent both don’t care for, mainly because the gentle shepherd’s approach takes a little more initial work, and also because gentle shepherding tends to go against most of our instinctual responses.   

In fact, it not always being easy is an important hallmark of gentle shepherding.  The parent who is a gentle shepherd is first and foremost characterized by being more mature than the three year old.  There is nothing easy about that.  Trust me. 

This means the parent will do something like repeat the request to pick up the markers, often getting eye contact while doing it. If the child still lays there, miraculously drained of the energy that two minutes ago had him bouncing off the couches, the gentle shepherd will ask the child if he needs some help. That’s often all that needs to be said, because once the child realizes that one way or another, he will be picking up those markers, he’s usually quick to get the job done. But if not, the parent then works with the child, hand on their hand if necessary, and gets the three markers into their bin.

Gentle shepherds make sure the job gets done, but they do it in a way that clearly communicates to the child that a.) their feelings are okay, and that b.) instant obedience is nice but not necessary—as in, if you don’t want to obey, I can understand that, but at the same time, c.) obedience is not optional.  That’s why the gentle parent will volunteer to come alongside the child and help the child obey until he reaches a place where he can do it on his own.

 Learning to follow a parent’s guidance is good for a kid, but the gentle parent is careful about the things they ask. It’s not age-appropriate to ask a three year old to clean a disastrous bedroom. The three year old’s brain literally cannot handle a request of that magnitude. It is age-appropriate, however, to ask a three year old to clean up the three markers he was using by putting them in the marker bin.

The gentle parent knows that it’s never appropriate to seek to control another person’s feelings.  Babies will cry, not to manipulate parents but because they just cry. Parents are there for comforting them. This is not rocket science. Holding your baby will not spoil him. But it will probably help him have a higher IQ. [Here is where I moan and wail over not learning about the joy of using wraps until my fifth child]. 

It’s not appropriate to expect your child to always be in a bubbling joyful mood.  Do you want someone to whack you every time you express anything but smiling cheerfulness?  But it’s also never appropriate to let a kid get away with the kind of angry outbursts that hurt those around them.

Perhaps your five year old may throw a royal fit and blast the entire room with his raging.  It’s important for the gentle parent to remember that it’s okay for your child to be angry, but it’s not okay to scream until everyone’s ears have burst—and it’s never okay to call other people names. Be angry but do not sin. Meaning, most importantly, you can’t scream at your child to stop screaming.  (That just teaches that only the biggest person in the room is allowed to scream angrily at others).  You also can’t stand by helplessly allowing your child to be hurtful to everyone else in the room.  But we can help our kids learn how to handle their feelings in healthy and appropriate ways.

A gentle parent notices when a child has difficulty with his feelings, and works to guide that child into more appropriate expressions of his emotions. This will give your children an edge on most American adults. But you might be like most American adults, which means you’ll have to first learn what healthy and appropriate emotional responses look like.  Ouch. 

Gentle shepherds give kids structure in the areas where structure is needed, and freedom in the areas where freedom is needed. Boundaries keep kids feeling secure and loved. Regular wake-up times and bed-times are a positive thing for kids.  Some of us struggle with that more than others, in either direction.  But just as sheep must be guided to good pastures and clean streams, so must our children.  Boundaries are meant to nurture life.  But, also important, boundaries were never meant to be a prison cell. 

A gentle shepherd knows that lambs need places to run and buck and kick and dance. Sometimes, or maybe even more than sometimes, that means that living rooms get turned into massive couch-cushion forts, bedrooms get transformed into Dog Hotel, flour gets all over the place from a well-intentioned concoction of sugar cookie dough, and kitchen tables get covered with sagging paper plates barely able to hold their heavy load of glue-laden noodles and beans.

Gentle shepherds let it happen, but they are also not the family slave. In fact, they mention that to their kids sometimes, since it usually gets a chuckle. When play time is over, gentle parents help organize the clean-up-a-thon. Gentle parents notice that after a certain amount of time, the imaginary world of Dog Hotel begins to sour and it becomes obvious that Dog Hotel has gone to the dogs. That’s when it’s time to get the house put back in order, and, truly, it’s amazing what can be done with a good strong, “Five Minute Clean!” and a set timer.  In fact, this gentle shepherd thinks that a Timer is an essential parenting tool.  It is for her, anyway. 

Gentle shepherds note the phenomemon of massive amounts of energy available for play, but the mysterious disappearance of those energy reserves when it’s time for every day cleaning, so they operate accordingly. This Gentle Shepherd’s chore system pays “Mom Dollars,” redeemable at the Mom Store which opens every Friday. There you can purchase Tic-Tac’s and Fruit Leathers and chapsticks and other various treasures. But only if you earned Mom Dollars. Which you can earn daily by completing your chore list before 5pm. How else do you think the laundry would get folded and put away around here?

Gentle shepherds are fully human, and they know it. This is why sometimes they turn on Sponge Bob and watch it with the kids, instead of working on helping all the kids become proficient at string instruments or learn Latin. Gentle shepherds can like Sponge Bob. It’s okay. At least, I hope it’s okay. 

Gentle shepherds work hard to grow in grace, to model the fruits of the Spirit to their children, and yet they also get that they’re not perfect yet (so they don’t expect their kids to be, either). They have a Gentle Shepherd who walks alongside them, and that’s how they are learning to shepherd gently those He’s put in their care. They appreciate grace when they screw up. They don’t expect to be perfect. And they know how to apologize to their kids.

Gentle shepherds know that sometimes their unique personal urge might be to react to problems by getting either punitive or permissive, and they know that either of those reactions will grow nothing but long-term negative results (even if they appear to make the “problem” go away in the short term). Gentle shepherds try to head off those urges in proactive ways and they work hard to clean up those parts of them that aren’t helpful for growing kids up to be happy healthy adults. Many bad habits are not all that big of a deal. So you chew your fingernails, big whoop. But bad habits that hurt kids are a big deal.

Parenting can be really hard. It requires growing up, being more mature than the kids, and that’s sometimes easier said than done. Okay, it’s generally always easier said than done. Gentle shepherds often need a lot of Gentle Shepherding themselves.

Sometimes gentle shepherds write posts about being gentle shepherds, because they need to remind themselves about why gently shepherding kids is a good thing.  And I think that’s also why they are so thankful for the way that the Holy Spirit comes alongside them and helps them obey Him.  Like, say, when a certain parent is on the last day of Christmas Vacation and the warmest it’s been outside the whole time is minus 15F and and indoor projects are strewn every which way while we’ve all been cooped up together and the last thing she feels like doing is speaking kindly to a three year old who can’t even manage to pick up his three stinkin’ markers!