The Gentle Parenting Book: How to raise calmer, happier children from birth to seven

I love this book. It is easy to read, clear and concise. I enjoy Sarah Ockwell-Smith's down to earth style. This book is a great gentle parenting guide with a wide variety of topics. "Gentle parenting is not permissive parenting" - a common misconception! I like that this was addressed in the book. We are moving into a world of consciousness and Sarah Ockwell-Smith is guiding the way!

Well written, chapters are divided by age. Good reference book

Great book :)

Sarah has confirmed my wife and I'd intuition about how to listen and be more openly involved in the parenting process. This will be a great resource for years to come for how to deal with different situations raising our 1 year old.

Love Sarah Ockwell smith and this book is no different!

I mostly agree with this approach, but Ockwell-Smith's book is just a regurgitation of others who have said it much better.

I came to read The Gentle Parenting Book after first reading The Gentle Sleep Book four years ago, joining the Gentle Parenting UK Facebook group and reading some of the author’s online articles. I thought had better get a more thorough grounding in the Gentle Parenting approach to feel more confident applying it in my home life.Being a scientist, I normally love an evidence-based book, but as I read through, I had a generalised low level of irritation. I wondered if perhaps it was a bit outdated, but no, it’s only 3 years old. On reflection, I think part of it is that the author uses the gentle approach to justify her own parenting choices, without necessarily presenting a balanced argument, and the other part of it is that she writes from a place of unacknowledged privilege that a lot of other people won’t have access to. I’ll give some examples.When talking about self-care and support networks, she makes an assumption that people have friends and family who are willing to help out by looking after their children for an hour, an afternoon or a night(!) and that you even have children who can be left with other people. She also seems to think there are voluntary organisations that can help out with this. I can’t even find a voluntary organisation to help support my severely disabled, deaf, mentally ill, autistic relative, so I’d put money on there not being one set up to give parents the evening off from their life choices. And speaking of money, the next suggestion is paid help if you can’t find free help. Money is also not really given enough consideration in the section about childcare, where the best option is for a parent to give up their job to stay at home to raise the children. Apart from any feminist concerns I might have about the effects of having children on one’s career even if you go straight back to full-time work (and let’s be honest, it is still a female parent who most often gives up work to raise children), I don’t actually know anybody who can afford to give up work to do this. The next best option is to employ a nanny, which is also THE most expensive childcare option. The least desirable childcare is a nursery, which realistically is the most practical and affordable option for most families (and the nursery we use is actually pretty damn good and does way more painting and messy play than I ever would). The author also doesn’t think children should start out of home childcare until they are three, so then you’re back to being able to afford to not go back to work after parental leave.Re the parenting choices that she presents as the most gentle, there’s the bed-sharing, which is presented as safe as long as you follow some guidelines, whereas in reality there continue to be infant deaths attributed to sleep space even when parents do follow the guidelines (see the American Academy of Pediatrics website for the most up-to-date evidence on this, including how these deaths are classified as SIDS even when accidental smothering is the cause). And even though I breastfeed, I took exception to the section on how breastfeeding is the ‘gentle’ choice for babies. A lot of women can’t or don’t want to breastfeed, for very valid reasons, and there is enough pressure and shame piled on them for this without them deciding to be a gentle parent but then feeling like a failure from the outset because they are formula feeding. I had a massive issue with the presentation of formula-feeding as increasing the risk of certain types of health problems, for both mother and baby. Only one source of evidence was presented for this argument, despite it being a really complex issue. The majority of the evidence shows a lowered risk of certain health problems arising from breastfeeding. That is absolutely NOT the same as saying that formula feeding increases the risks. If we were discussing the benefits of walking, such as increasing fitness and releasing feel-good endorphins, we wouldn’t describe cycling as decreasing fitness and making you depressed specifically because it’s not walking. They are separate things with their own risks and benefits and you can’t reverse transpose the benefits section of one into the risks section of the other.Some of the recommendations are likely to be a moot point by the time you buy the book anyway. I bought the book because, let’s be honest, I wanted to find a way to shout less at my very opinionated four year old. I didn’t buy the book because I wanted to read about how because choices I made during labour and birth weren’t the same as the author’s, that I wasn’t being gentle to my baby. During labour and birth I didn’t really get to make many choices, because that’s not how it works. I couldn’t wait to go into labour naturally (the gentle way) because I had to be induced for diabetes. Again the evidence presented is very one-sided against induction, only presenting the risks with none of the benefits (such as preventing still birth), and ironically there is a recommendation to use the BRAIN acronym to consider the pros and cons when facing choices. I wasn’t allowed a water birth, and I didn’t have the opportunity to have battery operated candles to light the operating theatre where I had my forceps delivery first time around, or my c-section second time around; apparently the obstetrician didn’t consider them bright enough. Again the money things crops up with some people hiring their own doulas as birth companions. And the section on pain relief was a humble brag about the author birthing two 11lb babies naturally with no pain relief. *slow clap* Another section that could make expectant mums feel nervous and established mums feel guilty. Pain relief is there for a reason, birth hurts, use pain relief if you want to. Discussion of the medically managed third stage also fails to acknowledge any benefits and only talks about the risks. And for a chapter on ‘the best choices’, there are some fairly old references used.I’ve probably been a bit harsh, as there are lots of useful bits in the book, namely the bits that focus on parenting and how to do gentle parenting with your children – ie the reason I bought the book. I just found that about half of the book was devoted to irrelevant stuff that felt forced, out of place or like a particular agenda was being pushed.

Bought when my baby was 9 weeks old, with all of the very best intentions of being gentle, loving parents and always respecting her and doing our absolute best for her, as I believe we have in every step of pregnancy, birth and her first weeks.Skim-read the chapter on birth and breastfeeding (obviously retrospectively) and quickly learned that, in the eyes of Sarah Ockwell-Smith, we have already failed. How dare she judge my necessary caesarean and our need to bottle feed that came about largely as a result of falling ill afterwards.Women like Sarah are dangerous. Their faux-gentle tone is laden with poison as they judge new mums trying their damndest to do their very best by their babies. The guilt she makes it clear we should feel (see page 45, where she sanctimoniously suggests that by not breastfeeding I’ve freely chosen to increase my baby’s risk of a long bulleted list of illnesses including leukaemia) is so painfully damaging. She couches all of this sneery judgment in a tone that implies anyone who hasn’t chosen to (or been able to) make the exact choices she would is wilfully neglecting their child.I am so upset by this first chapter. I have every intention of raising my daughter in line with the ethos of gentle parenting, which I’ve researched and understood. It’s just that now, I’m not quite sure where to turn to learn how to do it - because I cannot respect or take advice from this cruel and judgmental text.

I was really excited about this book, but it wasn't as good as expected.I liled that the book outlines what sort of problems you can expect at different baby age, it's good to be prepared :-) I also.found some valuable tips how to handle difficult situation with toddlers - yet to be tested.However, I feel that the essential advise could fit in the booklet, rather than the book. There is lots of "book fillers" and repetitions that don't bring any value.I also agree with the reviews that the book is very opinionated. At the start, the author says that gentle parenting is for everybody: for those who had natural birth or c-section, bottlefeed or breastfeed, stay-home or working mum... but later in the book you read that the choice "closest to gentle parenting ethos" (the phrase coined and often repeated in the book) is natural birth, breastfeeding and not sending the children to creche, essentially giving up your day job.The book is definetely not in my top10 recommended reads for new parents, but it's ok if you have some spare time.

Having been in the gentle parenting Facebook group for a while and trying to follow this way of parenting I finally bought the books.However I wasn't as pleased as I wanted to be with this one. There is some fantastic advise in it but it felt that some came across as slightly judgemental. An example, we tried breastfeeding and my daughter was malnourished so had no other option than to bottle feed. It was a hard enough struggle as it was, had I read this book before I would have felt even worse about it. I know that I was still being a gentle parent even when feeding her by bottle, but this book makes you feel as though breastfeeding is the only gentle option. There are some fantastic points in it but I'm glad I have read it a bit later down the line than before the birth. Personally I prefer her other books to this one.

What's gentle parenting? Despite the attempt to explain it, this book leaves me none the wiser!There's some information in here, I'm sure, but a lot of this book felt fairly patronising and vague. The overwhelming feeling I was left with at every stage was that I was being given weak, unsolicited advice. "Why not try making it into a game?" Most advice felt like more of a tactic than a strategy.The author's frequent examples of people who had written asking for very, very, very specific advice [how do I get my 27.3-month-old to eat pineapple on a Tuesday?] felt entirely fake, possibly just inserted to promote private services.Overall, I don't feel that this book has a cohesive strategy, and it hasn't been helpful.