FAFO Parenting, But Make It Gentle

FAFO (f*ck around and find out) parenting has exploded online, and for a lot of parents, it feels like a relief. After years of being told to stay endlessly calm and validating, FAFO offers something different. It taps into a frustration many parents carry: Gentle parenting can leave you feeling like the villain whenever your child is upset. If your toddler melts down, you must have failed to regulate, failed to connect, failed to stay serene. It’s exhausting.

And toddlers aren’t reasonable people. Neither are teenagers, sometimes. You can’t logic your way through every storm. Parents have been told that the goal is calm kids and calm parents, and when real life doesn’t work that way, it feels like you’re doing it wrong. No wonder FAFO has become the rallying cry.

But here’s the thing: A lot of parents talk about FAFO with a FWMAFO tone—“F*ck with me and find out.” That’s when FAFO starts sounding like punishment or payback. And I get it! The way some parenting educators talk about gentle parenting makes it feel like we’re complete failures if we’re not endlessly regulated, playful, and wise. We’re all supposed to be some combination of Mr. Rogers, Mary Poppins, Stepford Wife, and Bluey’s parents. I’m a child psychologist. I’m all for co-regulation and enhancing attachment. But the way some corners of the Internet make it sound, you’re harming attachment forever if you don’t act precisely like those blue cartoon dogs.

What Causes Parents to Bounce Between Extremes?

For many parents, perfectionism in parenting has roots in trauma. They know exactly what they don’t want to do because they lived through parenting that left them feeling unseen, unsupported, or hurt. They don’t want to repeat those patterns, so they reach for a philosophy that promises something better. But when you only know what to avoid, you end up leaning on absolutes. Influencers step in and deliver scripts in black-and-white terms: validate every feeling, stay endlessly calm, be Bluey’s parents at all times.

And then real life happens. You discover it’s impossible to stay perfectly composed every second. You burn out. You snap. And then you swing hard to the other end of the pendulum, into FWMAFO-style reactivity. That’s where so many parents get stuck—bouncing between extremes instead of finding a middle ground.

Aren't Experiments the Best Way to Learn?

FAFO should be different. It’s about natural experimentation and consequences. Put off your packing until the camp bus is honking outside, but then don’t complain when your stuff arrives wrinkled. I didn’t hover, I didn’t keep reminding you. I explained the timeline once, you made your choice, and now you live with that choice. The key is how we talk about it afterward. If the focus stays on “What have we learned?” instead of shaming or blaming, the experience becomes a lesson. The best part of that lesson? I didn’t have to teach it to you. The world did.

FAFO was never meant to be revenge parenting. Its original meaning—“f*ck around and find out”—points to something simple: The world teaches through experience. Kids learn by experimenting, failing, and adjusting. When we can hold steady while they do, FAFO aligns beautifully with a realistic form of gentle parenting.

I believe there’s a way to honor both sides. Here’s how:

What Are “Demands?”

In my posttraumatic parenting work, I call this R² parenting: responsive and responsible. Diana Baumrind’s foundational research showed that healthy parenting blends responsiveness and demandingness. Too often, demandingness gets misread as parental control, when, really, it’s about recognizing the existing boundaries the world sets. Libraries demand quiet. The intersection of clocks and human biology means that bedtime eventually arrives, because bodies demand rest. Your teacher’s deadlines are a demand, and so is the due date on your library book or your college application.

Why not allow the world to teach your child the lesson? Your job is to provide emotional support once it does.

Source: jackf / 123RF

Here’s where a misunderstanding about demands comes in. So many parents believe their job is to demand things of their children, to dig in, and to “win” power struggles. Parenting isn’t a contest to win. It’s me and my child on the same side, working together to navigate what life throws at us. The demands don’t come from me. They come from the world. My role is to guide my child in navigating those demands or sometimes step back and let reality do the teaching.

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That’s what healthy boundaries look like. If I say, “Finish your homework by 6:30 so we can start screentime,” and my child doesn’t start until 6:30, then screentime shrinks to whatever is left. I can sit with the disappointment and even say, “I’d feel frustrated, too,” but the boundary stays intact. It’s not about me winning a power struggle. It’s about the clock and the demands it makes. You chose to dillydally, and now you're paying the price. That's not about me.

This summer, I let my teenagers drift into late nights and junk food. By the end of August, one of them admitted, “I’m actually looking forward to eating regular meals and having a normal schedule.” No lecture could have landed better. Their own body delivered the lesson.

That’s the spirit of FAFO. Parents don’t have to punish or rage. The world handles that part. Our job is to help kids learn the right lesson, to empathize when reality feels unfair, and to stand steady while big feelings happen.

Gentle parenting was never meant to be a test of how calm your child feels. Parenting is about preparing kids to manage life when it isn’t perfect. FAFO reflects that truth. And when we bring responsiveness and responsibility into it, we move out of the role of adversary and into the role of guide.

(c) Robyn Koslowitz, 2025