Martha Deiros Collado, clinical psychologist and mother, has amassed a huge following for eschewing gentle parenting. She explains how she does it
My daughter is whipping me with her pyjama top. What would parenting soothsayer Dr Martha do, I wonder. I figure she wouldn’t run into the next room for a cry, which is what I did. No doubt Dr Martha Deiros Collado, a millennial Philippa Perry with the reels and mega-social following to prove it, has not raised a daughter who lashes out like this.
What’s her secret? Is it gentle? Is it radical? Can we all have a piece of it? Dr Martha, a clinical psychologist with almost two decades experience working with children in the NHS, and two young daughters of her own, explains that the label she’s come up with for her style of parenting advice is not as catchy as some of her social content.
“Ideally, I would like to call my approach ‘parenting’,” she admits. “What it is, though, is ‘developmentally-appropriate parenting’. Thinking about the developmental needs of children, rather than our adult expectations.”
In practice, this means she is neither permissive nor gentle nor authoritarian, instead settling into a sweet spot of deep compassion with clear boundaries. Modern parenting research defines four styles: authoritative, permissive, authoritarian, and uninvolved or neglectful. Dr Martha’s style is closest to authoritative, which she says has been shown to be the most effective way to raise “emotionally intelligent, securely attached, confident and responsible children with better, more long-lasting relationships with their children and others”.
“Gentle parenting has not got any research around it,” she says. “It’s a bit of a movement and a philosophy. I’d never think of the idea of being gentle as bad. But I am very firm in terms of where my boundaries are.
“Children need boundaries to feel safe. If they don’t have boundaries they can feel lost, and that can make them volatile. They’re looking for fences to keep them safe and to bounce off.”
Dr Martha wants us to look at the child before us and consider what they need, instead of trying to control them to produce the result we desire: “The really important bit is to be gentle with ourselves while we move through parenting our children in such a different way than how most of us were parented. That’s the gentle bit of it. But it’s not permissive.”
We meet online, where Dr Martha does not look like the mother of a five-year-old and a five-month-old. By which I mean she looks rested. I know she is not perfect, as she recently shared her love/hate relationship with her grey hair in an Instagram post. Today it is dyed a glossy goth-lite with violet streaks.
Her brilliant first book, How to Be the Grown-Up: Why Good Parenting Starts With You, out on Thursday, modestly says she’s not here with parenting hacks. But I need those hacks. I am desperate for Dr Martha’s hacks.
From taming tantrums to why tears matter, making mistakes and managing your child’s disappointment, all the way through to talking to children about sex, war and mobile phone use, she has guidance for almost every sticky moment.
She recently posted about the smartphone debate, and how to have conversations about children’s phone and social media use with friends and other parents – without worrying about being judged or disliked or made to feel silly – the fear of being “that” parent.
I think that we’re having great fun, my daughter and I, reading How to Be The Grown-Up together. Sure, I’m doing most of the reading, but so much of the wisdom chimes with me that I’m laughing along and saying snippets out loud every few minutes. When I ask her if I’m doing a good job of being “the grown-up”, Percy’s answer supports Dr Martha’s case about brain development. She looks at me quizzically and says, “I don’t know. I’m seven.”
I am also comforted to discover that I wasn’t the only new mother told off for holding my baby too much, thus making a rod for my own back. Nor am I the only parent regularly asking my child to “wait a moment” and then feeling exasperated when they cannot wait a single second. But why would they wait, asks Dr Martha? “In our society we have a very poor understanding of child development. Adults often ask children to ‘wait a moment’ before listening or giving in to their request, and yet adults expect children to stop playing or running around immediately when asked to put their shoes on or leave the house.”
Guilty on both counts. There are so many things I believe that my daughter “should” be capable of doing at her age, often because I’ve seen other kids doing them. “We tend to overestimate children’s capabilities while underestimating the pressure of the demands we place on them,” explains Dr Martha.
Should anything go, then? Definitely not. The point is not to give in to your child, but to accept that they’re not a grown-up. That’s your job. However hard it may feel at times. We’re all in this for the long haul.
“The most powerful tool parents have is the relationship they have with their children,” Dr Martha says. She adds that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship, but that we should take the time to think about the sort of bond we want to share – perhaps one of openness, honesty and respect. “We influence our children through our relationship with them.
“The way that we do that best is by working on ourselves and thinking, ‘What are the skills I need that will help me build the relationship I want with my children, not just now but forever?’”
She scoffs at the idea that it’s possible to spoil our children to the extent that they will depend on us too heavily when they are adults themselves. “Well, I really hope they do need us forever. I’m not a parent just for now, I’m a parent for the rest of my days.”
The fact she is still being asked about parenting shows the knowledge isn’t out there, she says. “That’s what I want to get across in my book. One of the things I recognised when I became a mother, and through spending more time with mothers in early parenthood, is the lack of understanding of child development. There are things I feel should be common knowledge. They are facts, not questions.
“Just as two plus two equals four, it should be common knowledge that holding babies is really important for brain development, that soothing your babies is not spoiling them, it’s soothing a nervous system that is going to help them grow and develop into secure well-rounded human beings.”
If you’re reading this and worry that you’ve made mistakes with your own parenting – which of course we all have – the great news is that we can fix it. Dr Martha is emphatic about how effective repair can be.
“Being a parent is messy work and, because we are human, we will get it wrong,” she says. Admit your mistakes, say you’re sorry, offer to try to do things differently next time around.
And this goes whether your child is four, or 40. “It is never too late to have a conversation to repair,” she says. “I don’t believe in placing blame on our parents, because we are all flawed humans. I do believe in finding forgiveness for whatever was experienced in your childhood.”
Indispensable pieces of wisdom from Dr Martha
Being a perfect parent is never the goal, progressing with your child in mind is the journey.
Picking up and holding a baby when they cry meets their need for safety and security, and the effects can be profound. Babies are not born able to self-soothe; when they feel physical or emotional pain they cannot do anything to make themselves feel better.
To ‘discipline’ a child means ‘to teach them skills’ NOT to inflict pain.
Good parenting is about learning to control your own reactions to your child’s behaviour. If you want your child to get quiet, you need to model that.
Sharing is a choice kids cannot make willingly until they are developmentally ready. Children need boundaries otherwise they can feel lost.
Perfectionism can hold children back. You can help by focusing on nurturing the traits of grit, determination and courage.
A bedtime meltdown is a cry for connection with you. They don’t need tough consequences or punishments at bedtime. They need connection, safety and calm.
Repair the relationship with your child whenever you say or do something wrong. Say sorry and take accountability for your actions regardless of what your child was doing at the time. Commit to work on better regulating your emotions.
Show yourself compassion for doing this work and accept it is hard will be imperfect
When teenagers are close to their parents, although they go out to their friends and build their identity, they come back to their parents and share with them.
Feelings are not good or bad. All feelings have a purpose. They all communicate important messages.
How to Be the Grown-Up: Why Good Parenting Starts With You, is published by Bantam at £16.99