I ditched gentle parenting. As my child got older, I felt like I was enabling bad behavior.

Darren Robb/Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI

• I'm a millennial mom and always dreamt of being the cool parent. 
• While pregnant I came across the concept of gentle parenting and was sold. 
• I realized I was enabling bad behavior from my preschool child, and stopped gentle parenting. 

As a millennial mom, I've always had this fantasy of raising my child as my friend — being the "cool mom" was absolutely my dream. I was so afraid of traumatizing my son by being too firm and imposing too many rules.