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Gentle parenting is a helpful concept until a parent confuses sympathy with empathy.

Sympathy tempts parents to enable, perceive their child as a victim, and shield them from disappointment.

Empathy means resonating with a child's feeling state to truly understand them, so they are not alone in it.

The premise of gentle parenting is great. Respecting and understanding the child while calmly providing empathy is the general gist. Yet, this approach may backfire and create significant issues if a parent confuses sympathy with empathy.

A chronically sympathetic parent is more likely to raise a child who lacks accountability, who manipulates, and who often quits when things get hard because they lack resilience.

What Confusing Sympathy With Empathy Looks Like

When a parent confuses sympathy with empathy, they tend to lower expectations, bend the rules for their child, enable, and perceive their child as a “victim” in almost every situation.

You can tell this is happening when the parent makes excuses for their child and rarely holds them accountable. For example, after their child throws a giant fit and either breaks things or becomes aggressive, the parent says sympathetic things like, “He didn’t eat breakfast. Poor guy. He is hangry…” or “She was mad because her friend said something hurtful. Her friend is the toxic one.” Excusing destructive behavior because the child was dealing with difficult feelings is rarely the right answer.

However, calmly honoring feelings but firmly correcting behaviors, in a direct and concise manner, may........

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