I try to ‘gentle parent’. My family just laugh at me ...Middle East

Ah, parenting: that thing many of us do at some point in our lives, and just about everyone has an opinion on. Some of which can be helpful, and some of which should be wrapped up in a nappy sack and chucked in the nearest wheelie bin.

Don’t get me started on popular parenting trends. As each decade passes, someone comes up with a “buzzword” for a “new” style of parenting which is magically going to make our parenting lives easier, and produce obedient, emotionally balanced kids who grow up to be perfectly packaged adults.

In case you hadn’t sensed the sarcasm in my writing, I’m not a big fan of trends. They tend to be yet another stick to beat parents with. I say parents, but let’s be honest here: it’s usually mothers who the glare of parenting trends tends to focus on.

Each kid is different, each parent is different – there is no one-size-fits-all, and we’re all just trying to get to the end of the day in a sane frame of mind so that we can watch the latest episode of The Night Manager in peace, get a modicum of sleep, and plaster a smile on our faces when our kids tap us on the head at 6am to tell us it’s wake up time.

So when the office was abuzz this week with the latest TikTok parenting trend – Fafo parenting – oh, how I laughed. Then I rolled my eyes so hard it was meme-worthy.

Let me break it down: Fafo stands for “f**k around and find out”. The term itself has been around for a few years now and is a favourite of tech bro Elon Musk, who often uses it in his musings on X. But Fafo has taken a hop, skip and a jump from the toxic platform we used to know as Twitter and into parenting land on TikTok. Oh, the circle of life.

The essence of Fafo parenting is explaining to your child that if you’re naughty and don’t listen there are consequences. Revelatory, I know. One video features a mum who threw her daughter’s iPad out the window after she was misbehaving on the way to school. I mean, that seems a tad like overkill (iPads ain’t cheap) but the fundamentals are what I would argue most of us were raised with, and what I raise my kids with: actions have consequences. Or if we’re going to be really honest here, the Jamaican version I was raised with: those that don’t hear must feel.

I say most of us, but “gentle parenting” has been having its moment for a while now. I’d agree there’s some space for it (though any time I try this approach with my kids in front of my brother and sister they laugh their heads off), but I would argue solely gentle parenting can run the risk of raising kids with reduced resilience. In the same way that helicopter parenting builds zero resilience, and that lawnmower parenting results in zero practical benefits at all when a kid becomes an adult.

I was raised heavily on the “those that don’t hear must feel” end of the scale – my siblings and I chuckle at the lack of gentle parenting we had growing up, like most children of Caribbean immigrants. Our parents didn’t have the same access to info that we have now, so did it the only way they knew how: learning from their parents and not repeating their mistakes. Which I guess is what we’re all doing as parents: using the bits that worked, and learning new skills which could help.

One thing I would say is that it’s important to remember we’re raising kids to be functional adults who can cope in the big, wide, often scary world. Life can be tough, relationships can be tough, work can be tough – adulting isn’t a bed of roses, and we’ve got to prepare them for that.

But let’s not throw iPads out of windows – that feels like an adult version of a temper tantrum. Just hide it away in a cupboard like a normal person when there’s misbehaving in your house, right behind a bottle of wine, like I did most of the Christmas holidays. Then grab the other bottle a wine in the cupboard, pour a glass, take a deep breath, and remember… this too shall pass.

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