Bluey is the Australian animated kids’ show that’s become a worldwide hit. It’s not hard to see why: the show is visually simple and appealing, the characters are engaging and its storylines comfortable and non-threatening. It’s also held up as the exemplar of so-called ‘gentle parenting’.
What is ‘gentle parenting’, exactly?
The goal of gentle parenting is to raise confident, independent and happy children through empathy, respect and understanding, and setting healthy boundaries. This parenting style focuses largely on age-appropriate development.
Instead of focusing on punishment and reward, gentle parenting focuses on improving a child’s self-awareness and understanding of their own behavior.
“The idea is to be more like a coach for your kid rather than a punisher,” says [Pediatrician Karen Estrella].
That sounds all well and good, but in the real world of bringing up kids, you have to be the punisher sometimes. You can’t pussyfoot around ‘validating’ your kids at every step. Even in the world of Bluey, it all sometimes seems a bit much. One episode centres on a typically selfish toddler who demands everything and everyone go their way. Even the other kids in Bluey realise that it’s a bit unfair on them, as the grandmother figure lets the toddler get her own way at every step.
Sure, the kids in Bluey are all pretty happy and well-adjusted, but that’s because they’re in a cartoon TV show. As lovely as the world of Bluey is, it’s no more a realistic guide to raising than the Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote were a guide to the wildlife of south-western America.
So, how does gentle parenting work out in the real world? According to one ‘gentle parent’, it’s not all backyard cricket and dollarbucks.
Jaclyn Williams (@breakingcycles.co) shared a reel on Instagram describing the approach she’d practiced for a decade – validating emotions, explaining boundaries in detail, compromising often, avoiding punishments – as something she thought fit the modern “gentle” model.
But as her children grew older, she began noticing patterns that didn’t align with the calm, confident emotional development she expected.
Instead, they turned out pretty much like the stereotypical snowflake generation kids.
One child grew increasingly anxious, suddenly unable to order food at restaurants or handle small decisions; the other became quiet, withdrawn and overly attuned to others’ feelings.
Outbursts, school refusal and heightened emotional sensitivity followed – symptoms she now recognizes as signs her children were looking for stability she wasn’t consistently providing.
The basic issue is, in the words of the Offspring: all the things you learn when you’re a kid, you’ll fuck up just like your parents did. In this case, in equal and opposite ways. It turns out that reacting to your own parents’ eff ups by swinging the pendulum to the other extreme isn’t the recipe for the nirvana you craved as a child.
Parenting experts say this pattern is more common than parents realize. Aja Chavez, vice president of Adolescent Services at Mission Prep/AMFM Healthcare and an EMDR-trained therapist, told Newsweek that many families lean too far into emotional validation while letting boundaries erode.
“A lot of moms and dads are trying so hard not to repeat the harsh or dismissive parenting they grew up with that they accidentally swing to the opposite extreme,” she explained.
The trick seems to be finding the golden mean.
Children, Chavez said, thrive when warmth is paired with structure. Without that balance, kids can become indecisive, anxious or overly eager to please – behaviors that mirror what Williams saw emerging in her own home.
For Williams, the turning point came with the realization that what she thought was gentleness had morphed into boundary-less parenting.
Validation had become lengthy processing, explanations had turned everything into a negotiation and compromises had eliminated clear expectations. The structure her children needed wasn’t there.
Otherwise you get exactly the grotesque examples we see, far too often, of a generation who’ve never been told, ‘No’. The tantrums, the screaming and crying, the hyperventilating crying. All because of the most trivial life events.
[Williams] started holding firmer boundaries, resisting the urge to rescue her children emotionally and allowing natural consequences to play out.
Her kids’ response was unexpected. “They embraced it and really started to thrive and actually didn’t even push back when I started setting firmer boundaries and not rescuing them so much,” she said. “They’ve blossomed so much, it’s been beyond what I could have imagined.”
Chavez said that response is typical: “Kids want clarity. When you mix warmth with consistent structure, their nervous system relaxes. They feel safe again. The anxiety settles, the entitlement fades, the people-pleasing loosens its grip and you start to see this more confident, grounded version of your child.”
You weren’t put on this Earth to be your kids’ best friend. You don’t have to be their drill-sergeant, either. Anywhere in between will usually work out pretty well.
