I’m a gentle parent and refuse to yell at my kid — people say I’m ‘abusive’

Being a mom is a thankless job.

Mom Sabriena Abrre, from Vancouver, Canada, uses a parenting technique called “gentle parenting” that involves not yelling at her child, something online trolls are calling “manipulation” and “child abuse.”

Abrre posted a video to her TikTok yesterday that’s racked up over 225,000 views explaining how she handled her 4-year-old daughter Zamira screaming “bloody murder” in her face. 

Abrre recalled the harsh way her mom disciplined her when she was a child and explained why she prefers a gentler approach.

“I quickly was reminded of being a child and yelled at by my mother and being slapped across the face or being put in time out, being punished,” she said in the video. 

“As someone that’s gentle parented for four years I know that I want to be able to handle these situations differently,” she explained. 

Abrre wanted to scream back at her daughter — though she exercised restraint. 

“My knee-jerk reaction in this moment is to be like ‘Don’t you dare scream at me, like, I’m your mom, you don’t disrespect me like that,’” she detailed. 

But instead of screaming, Abrre says she realized she “needed to be calm” if she was going to “teach her anything.”

“I look my daughter in the eyes, looked down, and said ‘That really hurt my feelings,’’” she recalled. 

Abrre then told her daughter she needed some space and left the room.

Even though her feelings weren’t truly hurt, Abrre said she “exaggerated the hell” out of her facial expressions and made it look like her daughter had ruined her whole day. 

She said: “The second I cut off access to me, set that boundary, and turned my back my daughter started screaming, ‘I’m so sorry.’”

She called her daughter’s apology “noteworthy” because she doesn’t force her kids to say sorry or apologize, which she acknowledges is “controversial.”

“I want to build that intrinsic motivation to repair the situation. I want them to feel remorse and want them to repair it rather than me forcing them to,” she said. 

And after leaving the room for a little over a minute, she said her daughter started “wailing crying.”

She said she hardly cuts off access to her kids so this particular incident was particularly “jarring” to her daughter. 

When she walked back into the room and her daughter apologized bare responded by saying: “Sometimes we all let emotions get the best of us. I forgive you but I want you to know that really hurt my feelings.”

They then cuddled for three minutes, and she said Zamira, who was overly tired from not having a nap, fell asleep in three minutes. After waking from her nap Zamira apologized again and Abrre said they re-repaired the situation. She then created a teaching moment for her daughter about what she could have done instead. 

TikTokers flooded Abrre’s comments section to scold her for her “gentle parenting” technique by likening it to abuse. 

“No this is emotional abuse,” said one commenter.

“Nah cuz when my mom walked away i felt ABANDONED,” said another. 

However, others supported Abrre’s approach to discipline. 

“I’m a young teen & I love watching your videos they make me feel so happy that there are kids that are being cared for a nurtured unlike I was,” said one supporter. 

“Over-exaggerated emotions is PERFECT for her age! Emotions of others are tricky at that age so making them big helps her to understand!! Awesome job,” someone stated. 

Despite the support, Abrre posted a follow-up video responding to comments calling her manipulative and abusive, which she inferred was because she “exaggerated” her emotions of sadness. 

She said that even though her feelings weren’t hurt by her daughter whose meltdown came from being tired, that’s only because there’s nothing her daughter could do to hurt her feelings because she “doesn’t take anything personally.”

Although, she said that had her daughter yelled at anyone else in the world the way she yelled at her, feelings probably would have been hurt. 

She said yelling at someone is “not cute” and she wanted to show her daughter that a natural response to being yelled at is not wanting to be around someone. 

“As parents, we need to teach our kids that their actions have consequences,” she said. 

Had her child been just 2 years old, she would have responded differently, she explained: “I might’ve said ‘I see you’re really upset. It’s okay to feel upset sometimes. You’re also really tired… would you like to cuddle?’”

But now that her daughter is a bit older, she wants to teach her how to respectfully communicate with nonfamily members since she’ll be starting school soon.

Abrre isn’t the only mom giving gentle parenting a spin. Last year, a mom explained why she doesn’t say “no” to her kids, and said it’s helped her family massively.

Though another mom said her years of gentle parenting left her feeling completely burned out.