Kelly Medina Enos, 34, a certified gentle parenting coach from York, shares her approach to parenting, which emphasizes empathy and understanding over forceful discipline.
She stopped making her five-year-old son, George, apologize, believing it to be disingenuous. Instead, she teaches him to reflect on situations and communicate his feelings.
Kelly, who adopted gentle parenting after struggling with George’s behavior at 18 months, now avoids forced isolation, opting for a “calm down corner” instead.
She also uses baby sign language with her daughter, Ariella, to help her communicate.
Kelly believes gentle parenting is about seeking connection, setting boundaries, and teaching children to process emotions without shame.
She stopped making her five-year-old son, George, apologize, believing it to be disingenuous. Instead, she teaches him to reflect on situations and communicate his feelings.
Kelly, who adopted gentle parenting after struggling with George’s behavior at 18 months, now avoids forced isolation, opting for a “calm down corner” instead.
She also uses baby sign language with her daughter, Ariella, to help her communicate.
Kelly believes gentle parenting is about seeking connection, setting boundaries, and teaching children to process emotions without shame.
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FunTranscript
00:00I feel like there's this misconception that when you are doing gentle parenting,
00:04authoritative parenting, that your child gets away with a lot of things, there's no discipline,
00:07there's no boundaries, there's nothing like that that teaches them the right way to do things or
00:14expects a certain type of level of behavior from them. Now there absolutely is, but it has to be
00:22developmentally correct. So you can't expect, as you wouldn't, a six-month-old to be walking,
00:27you can't expect a two-year-old to be listening to every single thing that you're saying.
00:32Their brain's not fully functioning, you can't expect a two-year-old to never have a tantrum,
00:36you can't expect a four, five, six, seven-year-old to never have a tantrum or have big feelings and
00:40express those big feelings in what you perceive as maybe a negative way.
00:44But I do want to share a clip with you because I did manage to get one of me disciplining George.
00:50Just a bit of a backstory, we'd gone over to the Vanguard Center for breakfast over at M&S
00:54and sat down and had breakfast. George had some beans on toast and bacon and then he had a little
00:59Colin Caterpillar cake thing afterwards as well. Left M&S after picking up Dottie some clothes and
01:05he saw two young girls 10 o'clock in the morning having themselves an ice cream. Go on my girl,
01:11it's summer holiday, do what you want. However, George had already had quite a high sugar morning
01:18with the Colin Caterpillar cake, he'd also had like quite a sugary cereal before his second
01:22breakfast. I don't need to justify myself but my guy asked for an ice cream and I said not today.
01:28Obviously he was pretty pissed off about this, he was disappointed, he felt like it was unfair,
01:35he was pretty angry, he was frustrated and when we were walking to the car he very much vocalized
01:42how angry he was that he did not get an ice cream. Now as he's talking and talking I can feel myself
01:50becoming more triggered because I have all of these preconceptions in my brain of if he's not
01:57appreciative, why doesn't he just remember the fact that he's just had a really lovely breakfast
02:01at M&S, like that's he's going to turn out to be such an ungrateful little boy and I'm starting,
02:06right, I can feel myself. Does he not remember that he's literally just had something to eat,
02:10like how, how dare he then ask me for that and then kick off about it even though, so I was like
02:16now's not a good time for me to speak. Anyway long the short of it is that I had to obviously
02:21get George in the car, I had to get Ariella in the car, I validated his feelings the entire time but
02:25as I say the tone in which he was speaking to me and the way in which he was speaking to me
02:29was rude, was disrespectful and was not the way I want him to speak to me or to anybody else.
02:34But in this instance it is all about connection, it is all about just getting him back to his
02:41regulated logical thinking brain and out of his survival brain and I'm sure as hell not going to
02:47be able to bring him back to that brain by saying to him, do you not just remember that we've actually
02:50just had a Colin Caterpillar, okay, do you not, do you not remember that I've just bought you
02:54breakfast, like you're not even, that's not gonna, that's not gonna do it. So all I said literally
02:59in the car was, when he kept repeating please can I have one, please can I have one, I said not today,
03:04I can see that's making you frustrated and angry, I totally get that and I totally understand
03:09and then he would kick off again and all the rest of it. Anyway, car ride home, he had pretty much
03:14calmed down and then about 15 minutes after we got home I was feeding Ariella, he was completely
03:20regulated, I was completely regulated and I thought now is a good time to have a discussion.
03:25Is that all right if we have a little chat about what happened at the shop? Mummy's gonna talk,
03:30all right, and then you can talk about what you want to talk about, all right.
03:33You asked me, mummy can I have an ice cream, all right, I said no. Understandably you are going to
03:39be upset and frustrated that mummy has said no to you having an ice cream and I understand that,
03:46all right. When mummy says no to something you are more than welcome to be frustrated and be
03:52upset about that but what you are not okay to do is speak to me disrespectfully, it's not kind.
04:03Ice cream, okay and mummy said no and that's the end. That's the end of it, is it? That's all you
04:14wanted to share on it? Yeah. Did you think the way you were speaking to mummy was okay? No.
04:21How can we better handle disappointment? So if somebody says no to something,
04:27how can we better handle it? What sort of things can we do when we feel frustrated?
04:34I mean that's a good idea, we could throw bronnie in the rubbish bin but I don't really know
04:37how much that would help our frustration. What other things can we do?
04:42Um, not shouting at mummy. But to help you calm down? Um, maybe we can find some books.
04:53What can we do?
04:56You can blow out your candles and it helps you, it helps you to calm down,
05:01doesn't it? Okay, I love you and I'm sorry that you were disappointed we didn't get an ice cream
05:07today. I hope you had a nice breakfast and I hope you enjoyed your Colin Caterpillar cake though.
05:12It's nice, huh? I was disappointed when they said they didn't have any pancakes left. Me too.
05:19Maybe we need to get some. Oh, for everyone. For everyone? What, for the whole shop? Yeah,
05:24so he said we can just throw them in the mouth. So what? Put syrup on it, put strawberries in it,
05:31put blueberries in it and then throw it in the mouth. Oh yeah. And then we're all done and we
05:38can go back home and then throw pancakes in our mouth. Then everybody will have pancakes in their
05:45tummies and they'll be happy. So, next time mummy says no to something and we feel frustrated,
05:52what are we going to do? Blow out candles. We're going to blow out candles. I'll do this.
05:57It's okay to feel frustrated but it's not okay to be unkind to mummy, is it? Or to anybody. I just
06:04thought about everybody having ice cream. Yeah, you saw those two girls having ice cream, didn't
06:10you? Yeah. Maybe thought it was a bit unfair that you didn't have one, huh? Yeah. Yeah, I get it.
06:17What? I love you. I love you. What are you going to do now? I'm going to play with my balls.
06:21Okay. I'm trying to play with my ball. I'm trying. Well, I can help you when I finish this task.
06:28Okay. Okay. Love you. Love you.