A few years ago, The Cut ran an article titled The Rise of the Accidentally Permissive Parent, and it is still being shared in various parenting groups. The author, Elizabeth Passarella, begins by talking about her friend Hannah, a single mother of two boys. Schools in two different towns told Hannah the same thing about her children: they needed boundaries.

What stuck with me was breakfast. Hannah explained that she had seen another father tell his children they could eat what was served or choose to skip it, and her initial reaction was simply, wait, are we allowed to do that? At home, on the other hand, she was preparing toast and sausage for one child and eggs for the other. She was a short-order cook with no tips and had very demanding customers.

I laughed when I read that, but then I winced, since I see all sorts of Hannahs in my community.

The parents read the books, look at the accounts, and make great efforts to improve the situation they grew up in. Many of them are now tired and silently questioning whether they have become too lenient.

If this sounds like you, the issue isn't about warmth, and nothing has been ruined. I believe many loving families have fallen into a pattern that isn't working for either the children or the adults, and it is important to name it.

Gentle parenting became popular quickly, mainly because of social media. In 2024, psychologists Annie Pezalla and Alice Davidson published what they call the first systematic examination of what gentle parenting means to the people practicing it. They surveyed about 100 parents of kids ages 2 to 7, and roughly half called themselves gentle parents.

For most parents in this study, gentle parenting involved staying calm during difficult situations, acknowledging their child's intense emotions, and offering plenty of affection. I would love to see more of this in homes.

The researchers also found that these parents discussed boundaries extensively, but they didn't agree on what holding a boundary really involved. More than one-third of the gentle parents said they felt uncertain or exhausted. A smaller number of parents who were very critical of themselves were considerably less confident as parents than any of the other participants in the study.

I want to be really clear, because I know this one can feel personal to pro-gentle parenting supporters. I’m not saying gentle parenting is permissive parenting. As it was originally written, gentle parenting includes limits. Sarah Ockwell-Smith, the author most tied to the term, lists boundaries right alongside empathy and respect, and her books say outright that you don’t need to be permissive to parent respectfully. The trouble is what happened when it got squeezed into 30-second reels. The soft parts travel fast and the firm parts get cut for time. So a lot of loving parents are practicing the warmth half and missing the limits half, through no fault of their own. If “gentle parent” fits you, keep the label. I just want the boundaries to come along with it. Because gentle parenting without limits is permissive parenting with different branding.

I’ll also be honest about where I land differently. Gentle parenting leans heavily on validation and co-regulation through talking. Naming feelings is a great skill, and I use it all the time. But a lot of kids, including many neurodivergent kids, don’t calm down with more words. When a child is flooded, every sentence is one more thing their brain has to sort through. For some kids, the most loving move is to say less. You can stay nearby and quiet, or step away for a minute while they’re safe. Your child can still feel seen by you when you aren’t saying anything. Sometimes being seen looks like a parent sitting on the floor a few feet away, just waiting. The talking can come later, once everyone’s calm.

In the 1960s, psychologist Diana Baumrind began classifying different kinds of parenting, and later researchers reduced this to two dimensions. One dimension is warmth, which refers to how loving and responsive you are, and the other is expectations, which refers to the level of structure and follow-through you provide.

If you turn both dials up, you reach what researchers call authoritative parenting. Permissive parenting is characterized by high warmth and low expectations. Authoritarian parenting, on the other hand, is marked by high expectations and low warmth and involves the “because I said so” method, which many of us are trying to move away from.

When researchers combined several studies, they found that the style characterized by high warmth and high expectations was linked to fewer behavior problems and better school performance; this result was consistent across European American, African American, Latino, and Asian American families.

Imagine it's like driving: warmth is equivalent to the gas pedal, and the limits are like the steering wheel. A vehicle with a lot of fuel will still move, but if no one is steering, no one in the car will enjoy the journey.

Many parents who had given up on yelling and hitting raised their warmth level considerably, and that's excellent. At the same time, they accidentally lowered their expectations too, since firmness was part of what they were leaving behind. It never had to be like that; you can retain all the warmth and yet still be the one in control.

No one deliberately decides to become a permissive parent; it develops gradually, typically when you are tired.

According to Passarella, peace now seems worth more than peace later. I've been in that situation too. When a child is crying for a third cookie, and you haven't had a normal conversation with your partner all day, it's very tempting to give in and hand over the cookie. I understand that; I've done it myself

The problem appears later on. Once "no" becomes "yes" after persistent pleading, children learn that if they keep asking, whining works. Decades ago, psychologist Gerald Patterson referred to this as a coercive cycle: the child pushes the parent, and the parent gives in. Both sides feel relief in the moment, which makes it more likely they'll repeat the behavior next time. It's similar to a slot machine: a machine that pays out from time to time makes people keep pulling the lever much longer than one that never pays out at all.

Tears begin to seem like a sign of damage. If you think that your child crying shows you are harming them, then enforcing any limit will appear cruel. That is why I wrote a full newsletter on this topic, “Can We Stop Calling Every Tear Trauma?”, since so many parents find themselves in that situation. A child can be upset and yet still receive proper care.

Validating is often confused with agreeing. It isn't necessary to respond to “You really wanted to stay at the park” by saying “Okay, ten more minutes.” You can acknowledge the feeling and yet still go to the car. You can use an empathetic tone while keeping the boundary unchanged.

All situations become a matter of negotiation. It's good to give children a choice - such as which shirt to wear or which book to start with. However, when every request turns into a debate, children conclude that your rules are like an initial bid.

Our responses are shaped by our childhood experiences. In the Pezalla and Davidson study, the parents who were kind used detailed and specific terms when talking about their own parenting but used simpler and more severe ones when referring to their parents, for example, the word “reactive”. It is a great aim to want to do better than the way our parents did. It would, however, help to know what you are creating, since rushing away from yelling might take you somewhere you never intended to end up.

Young children don’t mean to be terrors–truly they don’t. The front part of the brain responsible for planning and controlling impulses continues to develop until the mid-20s. When a four-year-old wants a cookie, she doesn't consider dinner or whether it is fair to her sister; she only thinks about the cookie. This is completely normal, and that is also why you have to take into account everything else.

Children feel safe because of having limits. Since the rules remain constant, they don’t need to keep checking whether the wall will collapse if they push hard enough. Children who are always testing are usually those who aren't sure where the boundaries are. 

Kids also need to cope with frustration, a skill developed through small disappointments. According to the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, positive stress refers to short and mild stress. For example, a difficult goodbye or a frustrating situation is a normal part of healthy development if a caring adult helps the child work through it. Children learn this by hearing “no,” feeling sad, and then discovering they survived; if we remove all the difficulties, they never get the chance to practice.

In the article by The Cut, a first-grade teacher observed children asking for a Band-Aid immediately after sustaining a paper cut and refusing to carry their own backpacks while their parents took on that task instead. Although these are small issues, they accumulate over time. A child who doesn't carry their own backpack at age six might struggle to carry their own disappointment by age sixteen.

On my social media handles, I do a series called “SAY THIS, NOT THAT.” The whole point of this series t is not for you to memorize scripts, but to understand the why behind the “say this” bit. 

So what does it actually look like on a regular Tuesday? Permissive vs authoritative parenting?

In both styles, the love is there. The difference shows up when your child pushes back. In permissive parenting, the limit bends to make the upset stop. In authoritative parenting, the limit holds, and so does the warmth. You stay close, name the feeling, and keep your answer. A few everyday moments, side by side:

I want to gently oppose the idea that if your child slapped you or threw things across a friend's living room (actual examples from an article by The Cut), the strategy you're adopting is simply to wait it out by giving them a hug and taking a deep breath. Although hugs are useful, a hug by itself doesn't teach a child that hitting is unacceptable.

You can have the responsibility. Being responsible doesn't make you unpleasant. Your child needn't have a say in all matters; they need a chance to have their say and an adult who hears them out and still makes the decision.

A boundary that you maintain only when you have the energy is in fact just a suggestion, and children are very good at working out the difference. This entire premise (creating warmth and boundaries a la authoritative parenting is the entire premise of my future AND FIRST book Loving Limits!) 

To conclude her article, she makes a point that I really enjoyed. The parent standing there while their child throws toys might not be entirely ignorant. Instead, they could be overwhelmed, having been given too much advice and too many experts saying that time-outs or a sticker chart will be harmful.

If that's the case, I should ask you to close a few tabs in your mind. You really don't need to stick precisely to anyone's method, including mine. Just trust your instincts a bit more.

Children don't need perfect parents. They need parents who love them deeply, guide them clearly, and are willing to repair when they get it wrong.

And consistency doesn't mean perfection. You can change your mind. You can make exceptions. You can have moments when you're too exhausted to hold the line. Caving 20% of the time isn't what undoes a boundary. It's when the exception becomes so common that your child no longer believes the boundary exists. What matters is that your child can generally trust that your words mean something.

The goal of parenting was never to raise a child who is happy every minute. It's to raise a person who can hear "no" without falling apart, respect other people's boundaries, cope with disappointment, and still know, deep down, that they are loved.

And that person is forged in hundreds of tiny, mundane moments.

The toy you didn't buy them even when they were whining for it. The show that stayed off even when they were begging for one more episode. The times you'd sit beside your crying child, giving them all the comfort in the world without changing your mind in the slightest.

Your child may not see those moments at the time and may not even appreciate them 20 years down the road. They may not even realize how important they were. But those moments do matter.

Because every time you hold a reasonable boundary with warmth, you're teaching your child something they will carry into adulthood:

I can be disappointed and still be okay.

I can hear no and still be loved.

I can have the hard feelings without needing the world around me to change.

Warmth and firmness can exist in the same moment. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is allow your child to be disappointed while reminding them that they don't have to face that disappointment alone.

Where do you find yourself caving most?  Bedtime, screens, food, sibling fights? Tell me what makes it hard to hold the line in that moment. I'd love to hear from you.

Dr. Mona will answer these questions in a future Sunday Morning Q&A email. Chances are if you have a parenting concern or question, another parent can relate. So let's figure this out together!