Why "Soft Guidance" Beats Gentle Parenting Every Time

It's a well-documented fact that no kid wants to do chores. By definition, chores are the tasks kids slog through because someone told them they have to do them, or because it's how they afford their bucket of popcorn before sneaking into an R-rated movie. No kid actually likes them. Right? Well, no kid except for Tyler Butterworth's kids. In fact, they've even been known to assign themselves new chores just because they look . . . fun. Recently, after Butterworth made a video teaching his elementary-aged son how to clean the bathroom - featuring safety goggles, many giggles about "poo particles," and Butterworth's signature certificate of completion upon learning a new life skill - the professional content creator's younger daughter asked if she could clean the bathroom the next day. The secret, Butterworth thinks, comes down to the way he teaches his kids to take ownership over their household chores. Instead of dictating to them what needs to get done, he rolls up his sleeves and shows them exactly how to do each chore, providing a safe space for them to try themselves and fail - and also crack a smile, or several. With this approach, he's taught them a range of life skills, from how to change a tire to weed-whacking the yard. Experts Featured in This Article Madeline Levine, PhD, is a psychologist, educator, and author of three books including "The Price of Privilege," which examines emotional problems in affluent teens. "These simple things maybe parents don't expect their kids to know how to do, but I want to challenge [my kids]," Butterworth tells Popsugar. "I want them to be self-sufficient, I want them to know how to do all these things. Just telling them how to do it is not successful. Keeping it fun and light-hearted is what makes them pay attention." Lately, there's been a wave of caregivers demonstrating similar parenting styles on social media. Logan Connell, @logancx.life, has his toddler help him feed the dog, clean the kitchen, and make dinner. Tiffany, of @freedomhavenfarm, creates what are certifiably the cutest videos on the Internet, featuring her toddler, Sophia, as she helps her bake, tend to their garden, and feed their chickens. Across a spectrum of ages, kids are learning to contribute to family needs in low-stakes settings that are gentle-parent-approved - kid-safe knives for chopping veggies, for example - but that demand more from them than the traditional gentle parenting that has become so popular with Gen X and millennial parents. And parenting experts are pleased to see this shift. View this post on Instagram "The gentle parenting - things that have emphasized the kid's emotions, and have parents being extremely concerned with what children are thinking and feeling - that's for the most part good," psychologist Madeline Levine, PhD, tells Popsugar. "But there's a whole other part of childhood development that's been ignored." The family is a child's first community, Levine says, and in a community, "you need to know how to do stuff." But in many households that deploy classic gentle parenting, children are expected to contribute very little, if anything, to the family community. When that attitude follows them into adulthood, it can lead to a crippling fear of failure, which further prevents them from learning to be self-sufficient. Throughout her 45-year practice in a wealthy part of the Bay Area, she's seen this pattern repeat itself countless times. "A good chunk of my practice for the last 40 years has been a kid who didn't get into the college they wanted or the traveling team they wanted, and they're just destroyed," she says. "You have to fail in order to develop some resilience, hopefully not failing in terrible ways but in small increments that you can handle. That's the heart of resilience. To know that you can fail and it's not the end of the world." Parents who take the time to intentionally teach their children how to do chores and help out around the house are building a kind of confidence that is stronger than whatever comes from telling their kids how great they are, according to Levine. "Research shows that [behavior] doesn't encourage competence, it encourages doing the same thing over and over again," she says. "If you want to encourage confidence, kids have to do stuff. And sometimes they'll fail at it, but if a kid is working with a parent, there's some soft guidance. If a kid puts bleach into the laundry, the parent can say it's wrong." "Kids are capable of so much more than we think." Of course, not all parents can devote the time for elaborate life-skills lessons. Levine herself is "well aware of the financial demands people are under now," and understands the fear that doing household chores with a young kid will ultimately just slow parents down. And when time is money, many parents feel they can't afford to lose it. But ultimately, it's a matter of priorities - and being practical about what kids can handle. For instance, maybe don't expect your 3-year-old to mow the lawn. Instead, bring them out to the garden to help you weed. "You may think 'it's easier to do it myself than to teach a kid,' and in its start-up phase, it's probably more time-consuming up front, but it pays dividends," Levine says. "As soon as a child is physically capable of taking a sponge and wiping off a table, I would encourage it. Kids are capable of so much more than we think." Plus, working alongside your children is a bonding activity. "It's important to prioritize family and to find opportunities to spend time with kids, whether it's doing something good in the community or in the house," Levine says. Butterworth, who has a military background, has adapted some of his army training into his parenting style. After each skill lesson that his kids complete, they receive a certificate and a handshake, like a mini military awards ceremony. The kids each keep an "I Love Me" book, or a binder where they log all their certificates so they can reference what they've accomplished, another bit of inspiration Butterworth took from the Army. "When they turn 18 [I want them to] have a binder with all their certificates in it with all the lessons in them that they've learned from me and my wife," he says. "The more I can teach them in terms of life skills and common sense, the better." With this method, Butterworth has managed to do the unthinkable: make chores enjoyable for his kids. Of course, there are some tasks they're not wild about, like shoveling horse poop. (The family of four lives on a farm.) But when they help out, it gives them "a sense of pride knowing that dad isn't out there doing everything himself." And every task that they tackle together brings them closer - something Butterworth values especially now, after years of working a night-shift job that prevented him from being present with his kids during their earliest stages of life. He missed a lot of bedtimes and early morning rises - the small, quiet moments that are so special to parents of little kids. "It's not that I'm making up for that now," he says. "But if I can spend time with my kids in a positive way and teach them something, just being present, it's always a good use of my time." Related: The Rise of the Dad Club Emma Glassman-Hughes (she/her) is the associate editor at PS Balance. In her seven years as a reporter, her beats have spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she's covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and food, climate, and farming for Ambrook Research.