On TikTok, this family’s methods deeply divide Internet users. Especially when parents pause everything to wait for their children to wake up, even if it means sitting in the car.
How far can we go in the name of caring parenting? In recent years, the vocabulary of parenting has been enriched with new terms: positive education, Montessori pedagogy, proximal mothering… Seductive concepts on paper, which aim to break with the authoritarianism of yesteryear. But on social networks, the concrete application of these principles deeply divides. It calls into question the place of the adult in relation to the desires of the toddler and asks: is there a limit to parental availability? It is precisely this debate that a mother has relaunched on TikTok, with a daily practice that leaves thousands of Internet users stunned.
Caring parenting, deconstructed education, emotional storms, alternative school… These are the expressions that we hear on this mother’s TikTok account, followed by nearly 62,000 subscribers. She shares videos of her daily life and her vision of positive parenting with her two children. At her house, nopower relationship” between parents and children, no time constraints, no “no”, and absolute priority given to the immediate well-being of the child, even if it means parents putting their own lives on hold. Among some of the most viewed videos on the @moharmelle account, we find moments during which children sleep in the car.
And in this case, there is no question for this mother to wake them up: she therefore waits for them to come out of their sleep naturally, no matter how long it takes. “There are three adults waiting in the car.”she explains in a sequence viewed more than 670,000 times, in which we discover her with her husband and her sister-in-law. The young woman explains this principle in several videos: “I try to mother them thoroughly, I want them to feel safe and the most important thing is their well-being. That way, they feel listened to, I’m not asking them to postpone their needs.” And the least we can say is that his videos generate a lot of reaction in the comments section, where opinions are very mixed.
On the one hand, a large number of Internet users seem incredulous about this education. “That’s all you have to do”, “I will never understand this education, it’s beyond me”, “It’s a joke”, “Just nonsense”we can read in particular. “Sorry, but if he falls asleep on the plane, what do we do? Do we wait until the next flight?”laughs a TikTok user, while others point out that you can move a child from their car seat to a stroller or their bed, without disturbing their sleep. Some also highlight deeper issues like risk during periods of extreme heat, for example. Moreover, it should be remembered that according to a study by the American Academy Pediatrics, letting a baby sleep too long in his car seat increases the risk of sudden infant death, due to prolonged sitting.
Conversely, many comments also support the young woman and her methods, or at least her freedom to choose: “It’s crazy, so much hatred for such a basic thing”, “We’ve all been in a situation where the baby fell asleep and we waited for him to wake up on his own!”, “Why criticize? She’s just a mother who wants the best for her children”, “The comments shock me, what does it matter if she waits?”, “If she wants to and can do it, why would she deprive herself of it?”
This avalanche of comments proves that parenting remains a highly sensitive subject, where each divergent method is scrutinized. Whether we agree with this radical vision or not, this mother seems to have found a balance that suits her family. It remains to be seen whether this “no-constraint” method will continue to be debated as children grow up, or whether it will eventually become normalized in the infinite landscape of alternative pedagogies.
