@acuriousgirl Well firstly I would be wary of using the term "gentle parenting" as a descriptor because as far as I can tell, it is not a term with a widely agreed-upon definition (even though a lot of people are very attached to
their specific definition and assume that everyone shares it - this causes a lot of problems!) It is essentially a floating signifier. And as someone else said below, a lot of the parenting advice that you find online which is labelled as "gentle parenting" is
not evidence based, regardless of what they feel works for them or not. If it's a genuine expert and not just a random influencer, then they will usually have some kind of theory or reasoning behind what they are suggesting which DOES have a useful, universally-agreed upon definition, so you can use that as a starting point (e.g. "emotion coaching" or "logical consequences" or "co-regulation") and look at whether there is a sensible evidence base or psychological/biological basis for it or whether the person is misusing it. For example, attachment is definitely important for children, but "attachment parenting" is just borrowing the name, it's not necessary to follow tenets of attachment parenting to attain secure attachment.
Behaviourism isn't immune from bad advice, BTW - there are plenty of "experts" advocating for approaches which look like behaviourism who aren't following evidence based practice, and some of the history of behaviourism is downright barbaric, though referring to outdated aspects like electric shocks is a bit like saying psychology is all nonsense because Freud was wrong about a lot of things. And it's also not like behaviourism is the only evidence-based parenting practice, it just tends to lend itself well to being studied because it is about measurable outcomes.
But secondly, most good advice which incorporates aspects that people consider "gentle" shares a whole lot of aspects with positive (behaviourist) parenting - focusing on the behaviour that you want to see, choosing an effective antecedent, breaking expectations down into steps and working on one at a time.
And honestly, the vast majority of kids have a normally developing prefrontal cortex, and they're going to pick up reason, empathy and social cues given ANY reasonable parenting, just because they are human and humans do that. Even animals pick up on social cues. There is all kinds of research showing very very young children will perform prosocial behaviour almost instinctively whether it's rewarded or attended to or not, and that adults release oxytocin (a feel-good hormone) when they do nice things for other people (for example). If you think of everyone you know who you know anything about their childhood (e.g. family members, childhood friends, close adult friends/partners) you probably know that parenting style is absolutely not a direct correlation to adult character. Some of the best adults I know grew up with parenting that was, objectively, abusive. I won't say it didn't give them any issues, because it did, but in terms of becoming morally good people and encouraging correct behaviour in adulthood, well they got there in spite of it.
Therefore a lot of parents put their child's behaviour down to their own parenting and claim something "works" when it might not actually be their method at all. Look at how many people insist that spanking works, when we know that the evidence shows it does not.
There are some children who will struggle more with aspects like picking up social cues, emotional regulation, impulse control etc and they may need more targeted input, but if you're looking for a black and white answer to "should I attend to my child's emotions during emotional dysregulation or will this reinforce the behaviour?" it doesn't really exist. It's going to be different for different children. If you feel you're getting better results from ignoring the behaviour and your only concern is that you might be invalidating or teaching her that emotions aren't allowed, I really doubt that if you zoom out a bit and look at this in the context of your whole relationship. OTOH (anecdote incoming) my kids tend to really struggle with emotional regulation likely due to ADHD (the eldest is diagnosed, the middle one is on a waiting list) and ignoring specifically emotional-dysregulation-based behaviours doesn't decrease them even if we are very consistent with it, whereas coregulation (in the moment) and active teaching of emotional regulation strategies (outside the moment) has really helped, even though this would seem counterproductive in terms of behaviourism. Ignoring other behaviours, such as whining, is effective for us in decreasing those behaviours.
