The Gentle Parenting Truth My Son Taught Me
I was working on my laptop when I heard the commotion upstairs - the kind that every gentle parenting mom knows signals a big feeling moment ahead.
My highly sensitive son was having another emotional eruption. As a registered social worker and expressive arts therapist, I thought I had gentle parenting figured out.
I was wrong.
He came downstairs in tears, his carefully tied balloon burst in his hands. I knew exactly what I "should" do - hold space, validate feelings, stay calm. The gentle parenting scripts ran through my mind like a checklist.
I didn't say anything. I held his gaze and stayed silent, waiting for the right moment. He had blown up the balloon, tied it with pride, and then—POP—it burst. Disappointment, anger, and sadness hit him all at once.
I slowly walked toward him, our eyes locked. He softened slightly. I opened my arms, offering a hug, but he hesitated. So I stayed there, waiting.
"I felt so good tying the balloon, and now it's wrecked," he said, reaching out to place his hand on my arm.
"You felt so good... and now the balloon is wrecked," I echoed back perfectly.
"Yeah, and I'm mad," he replied, tears flowing again.
"You're mad," I repeated, and he cried until the tears dried up.
He tried a few more times with new balloons, but nothing matched that first success. More frustration. More tears. I went back to my laptop but stayed present, offering eye contact and reassurance when he needed it. Sometimes I spoke words of encouragement; other times, I simply watched.
I thought I was nailing it (at least in this moment). I wasn't trying to rescue or take over. I was staying present and not letting my own anxiety dictate my reaction.
But something was building. Despite my textbook responses, he seemed more frustrated, not less. I could feel my own emotions rising - it was hard to just sit there while he was frustrated and getting more and more vocal about it. He started shouting "This is stupid!" and "I hate balloons!" and throwing the deflated pieces across the room. I found myself trying to tame his emotions rather than allow them.
When he started getting upset about another failed balloon, I caught myself saying, "Okay, let's take some deep breaths together. Can you show me your calm down strategies?" I was trying to move him through the emotion instead of letting him be in it.
He looked at me with frustration mounting and said, "I don't want to calm down! I want to be mad!"
Instead of honoring that, I responded with more gentle parenting language: "I see you're having big feelings. Let's think about what would help you feel better."
That's when my son looked at me through his tears and said, "If you would just leave me alone and let me feel, I wouldn't get like this."
That sentence stopped me cold.
I'm Kayla Huszar, and I help women and moms who've spent their whole damn lives being everything to everyone else - finally turn some of that care inward, without guilt, shame, or losing their minds.
We make space for the weird, wonderful parts of you that got shoved to the back while you were busy holding it all together. But before I could guide anyone else out of the perfect parenting trap, I had to face the ugly truth about my own gentle parenting performance.
The Gentle Parenting Pressure I Didn't See Coming
Something is happening to modern parents. We're drowning in a way previous generations never did.
Seventy percent of mothers and sixty percent of fathers will tell you that raising kids today feels impossibly harder than it was for our own parents. Nearly half of us describe parenting as tiring most of the time, with three in ten saying it's straight-up stressful almost constantly.
But if you're drawn to gentle parenting—and nearly half of us are now—the exhaustion runs even deeper. We're not just trying to be good parents anymore. We're trying to be emotionally intelligent, perfectly attuned, therapeutically responsive ones all the fucking time. The parenting anxiety that comes with this pressure is unlike anything previous generations faced.
Gentle parenting emphasizes acknowledging a child's feelings and motivations behind challenging behavior rather than correcting the behavior itself. It prioritizes boundaries over punishment, choices over orders, and emotional validation over discipline. The goal is staying calm while helping children regulate their emotions through empathy and scaffolding.
I was a poster child for this approach. I'd internalized every script, absorbed every strategy, and genuinely believed I was offering my son exactly what he needed.
But I'd turned emotional moments into performance opportunities. Every tantrum became a chance to prove I could handle it perfectly. Every big feeling became a teaching moment I needed to orchestrate.
Research shows parental burnout is more prevalent among parents who aim to be "perfect" - and there I was, perfecting my way through my son's emotional experiences while calling it gentle parenting. This kind of maternal burnout disguises itself as conscientiousness, making it even harder to recognize.
The Hidden Cost of Gentle Parenting Performance
Here's the dirty secret about gentle parenting that nobody talks about: we're drowning in our own pursuit to parent differently than we were parented.
Most of us become obsessed with emotional regulation - and my clients share this with me daily - staying calm, helping our kids process feelings, becoming champion emotion coaches. We think we're doing it right because we're using all the "right words" (or at least trying to and feeling like shit when we don't), hitting all the marks the approach demands.
But there's a shadow side hiding in plain sight. More than a third of gentle parents are quietly torturing themselves, second-guessing every interaction, wondering if they're screwing up their kids despite ALREADY doing it differently while doing everything "right."
I was absolutely part of that anxious third.
Every emotional moment with my son became a test.
Was I validating enough?
Staying calm enough?
Teaching the right coping strategies?
Being too strict or not gentle enough?
The irony wasn't lost on me - I helped other mothers feel authentic in motherhood and quiet the noise of "how to" with overwhelm, yet I couldn't stop performing emotional intelligence with my own child.
I'd confused being a gentle parent with being a masking one. I thought if I put on a smile and a calm face I was regulated when in fact I was simply suppressing my own emotions for the sake of being a good mom. I was holding space and unconsciously managing outcomes. I believed gentle parenting meant having the perfect emotional response ready.
But my son didn't need me to perform emotional intelligence. He needed me to trust that emotions have their own wisdom, timeline, and resolution. And that we were both allowed to feel and express them.
Learning to Get Out of the Gentle Parenting Way
After my reality check moment, I made a choice that went against every gentle parenting script I'd learned: I let myself have my own emotional moment.
I made an angry face and slammed my fists on the table because something on my computer didn't save while I was trying to be present with him. He looked at me confused and I said the thing I was working on didn't save and I was pissed. I closed my computer abruptly (maybe even a little too hard) and then made myself a snack, turned on some music, and we danced together.
It was terrifying and liberating.
Every fiber wanted to jump back into the balloon thing with fixing, validation, coping strategies - something helpful. Instead, I fought the urge to intervene and simply switched gears and honored what I needed.
The wave of emotion moved through both of us naturally. I felt frustrated until the frustration shifted. He processed his disappointment without my management. Eventually, we were both smiling and ready to move on.
No teaching moment required. No emotional regulation strategies needed. No perfect therapeutic response necessary.
Just presence. Just trust. Just allowing.
The Research Nobody Shares About Gentle Parents
What the gentle parenting movement doesn't tell you is that many of us are struggling. The same research that celebrates our emotional intelligence approach also reveals that a lot of us engage in self-critique, and our parenting self-efficacy is significantly lower.
We're so focused on getting it right (and feeling anxious when we don't) that we're missing the point entirely.
One study found that 44% of parents want to raise their children differently from their upbringing - often with more gentleness and less punishment. But what happens when "more gentle" becomes another impossible standard?
I'd created a new version of people-pleasing anxious perfectionism wrapped in therapeutic language. Instead of just speaking from my heart and intuition with way less social media scripts in my head, I was expecting perfect emotional responses from myself.
The Freedom in Feeling Everything
When I stopped trying to perfectly execute every emotional moment, something beautiful happened: our relationship deepened.
My son started sharing more of himself because he knew his emotions were safe - and that I would respond in a way that actually sounded like me - not because I could fix them, but because I could witness them without trying to change them or thinking of the "right" response.
I started feeling again too - really feeling, not just helping my kids process their feelings. I rediscovered parts of myself that I'd thought were lost to motherhood.
The emotionally attuned mother I was trying to become through strategic responding was already there. She'd just been buried under shoulds and supposed-to-knows.
The Dark Side of Gentle Parenting Nobody Talks About
Real gentle parenting isn't about having the perfect emotional response ready, and it's not even about following the experts. It's about attunement - deeply connecting with yourself and your child in the moment - and trusting yourself enough to not need a script.
And if you've been here before, you know the opposite of anxiety isn't calm, it's trust.
It's choosing presence over performance (perfectionism or people pleasing). It's saying "I trust I can handle whatever emotions come up" even when those emotions feel overwhelming—yours and theirs.
It's recognizing that your worth as a mother isn't determined by how well you manage motherhood or that there's one way to parent, but by how willing you are to feel emotions alongside your child.
Gentle parenting means trusting yourself and feeling your emotions more than relying on strategies. It means accepting that big feelings aren't problems to be solved but experiences to be witnessed.
What I Learned About Trusting the Process
The shift from controlling to trusting didn't happen overnight. It started with recognizing when I was trying to manage emotions instead of allowing them.
When I caught myself anticipating (and wanting to rescue) my son's feelings, preparing the perfect response, or rushing to calm him down, I'd pause and ask: "Who is this really for?"
Sometimes the answer was my own discomfort with big emotions. Sometimes it was my fear that I wasn't being a good enough therapeutic parent. Rarely was it for my son's wellbeing.
I started setting boundaries with my own need to fix everything (a lot of self-talk and positive reframing). Instead of having the perfect validation ready, I'd stay present and let him lead. Instead of teaching coping strategies in the moment, I'd trust that feeling the emotion fully was its own form of coping.
The most revolutionary thing I did? I stopped making every emotional moment into a teaching moment.
The Question That Changes Everything
Now, when I work with mothers in The Motherload Membership who are drowning in gentle parenting pressure, I share this simple reality check: When you feel yourself trying to perfectly manage an emotional moment, ask yourself "Who is this really for?"
If the answer isn't genuinely for your family's wellbeing and connection, it's probably worth questioning.
Your children don't need you to be emotionally perfect. They need you to be emotionally real. They need a mother who can sit with discomfort instead of trying to solve it away.
They need you to trust that emotions know how to move through us if we just get out of the way.
The Beautiful Mess of Real Connection
That balloon incident became a turning point in our relationship. My son, now older, still sometimes reminds me "just leave me alone and let me feel" when I slip back into trying-to-fix mode.
He's absolutely right.
The moments I thought I was failing at were actually when we were learning to trust each other most deeply. The gentle parenting that worked wasn't about perfect responses - it was about imperfect presence.
Our deepest connection happens when I simply witness his feelings without trying to fix, rescue, or change them. When I trust that emotions know how to move through us if we get out of the way. And the science backs this up - brain scans show an emotion will move through us when we allow it in about 90 seconds. When we feed it with bullshit stories, it lasts much longer.
You don't need to perform emotional intelligence to be a good mother. You just need to trust yourself enough to feel everything alongside the humans you love most.
Tired of trying to get gentle parenting "right" all the time? The Motherload Membership is where overwhelmed moms learn to trust themselves instead of scripts.
Comment "TRUST" and I'll tell you more about how we can help you stop performing and start connecting.
P.S. Three years later, I still catch myself slipping into gentle parenting performance mode. The difference now? I notice it faster, laugh at myself a little, and remember what my son taught me that day: sometimes the most loving thing I can do is get out of the way and let us both just be human.
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This information is for educational purposes only. Kayla cannot provide personalized advice or recommendations for your unique situation or circumstances. Therefore, nothing on this page or website should replace therapeutic recommendations or personalized advice. If you require such services, please consult with a medical or therapeutic provider to determine what's best for you. Kayla cannot be held responsible for your use of this website or its contents. Please never disregard or delay seeking medical or therapeutic treatment because of something you read or accessed through this website.
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