Here are some photos of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively out for a walk in New York on Monday. This is one of the first times they’ve been out and about since Blake’s mess around It Ends With Us. I’m not going to relitigate the situation, suffice to say that Blake took some very public and, in my opinion, well-deserved hits. Blake has been an a–hole for many years, and it felt like a small justice to see other people realize it too. Still, Blake is already back to playing the victim and pap-strolling with Ryan, so clearly a comeback is afoot. Meanwhile, Ryan recently appeared at a Boston tech conference and he spoke about conflict resolution and parenting:
Ryan Reynolds is opening up about his and wife Blake Lively’s parenting style and how the way he processes his emotions has evolved over time. The Deadpool & Wolverine star, 47, spoke at HubSpot’s INBOUND tech conference in Boston on Friday, Sept. 20, where PEOPLE heard him reveal an impactful moment that helped him understand his emotions better.
“I took a workshop on conflict resolution, and that changed my entire life,” the Wrexham co-owner told author and moderator Marcus Collins onstage. “I just didn’t know how to process things that I felt. Because I [had a] scarcity mindset when I was younger. I didn’t know how to unfold that thing in your brain that conditions you just always to win or be right.”
“Something I love about [conflict resolution], and I know this is not very fancy, but what I love about it is that you can meet somebody where they are, and you don’t have to be right or wrong,” Reynolds added. “You can disagree and still connect.”
Although Reynolds said that working through his feelings was something he learned to do as an adult, the same isn’t true for his children: “I have 4 kids and so far, none of them seem to have that [scarcity mindset], partly because they were born on ‘Easy Street,'” he said with a laugh.
“Parents today are so different. We’re so soft,” he continued. “I don’t yell. I grew up with like — it was nuts, it was an improvised militia.”
Reynolds went on to explain how things have changed for the better.
“Now it’s like, I can go look at all my resources for parenting and remind myself how to be perfectly compassionate,” he admitted.
I think two things can be true at once: parents are “soft” these days AND there’s more compassionate parenting all around. Those two things are connected. Parents are trying to be more open-minded and understanding, moreso than their parents, but also – there are a lot of parents who are much too “soft” on kids because they don’t understand how to be a parent or how to discipline their kids. I also think that therapy-speak has taken over modern parenting, as evidenced by what Ryan said here.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds hold hands while on a morning walk in New York City. Blake wears a handmade sweater from Farella, Krewe sunglasses and UGG x Opening Ceremony mules Featuring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively Where: New York City, New York , United States When: 23 Sep 2024 Credit: Elder Ordonez/INSTARimages
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- Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds hold hands while on a morning walk in New York City. Blake wears a handmade sweater from Farella, Krewe sunglasses and UGG x Opening Ceremony mules Featuring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively Where: New York City, New York , United States When: 23 Sep 2024 Credit: Elder Ordonez/INSTARimages
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- Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds hold hands while on a morning walk in New York City. Blake wears a handmade sweater from Farella, Krewe sunglasses and UGG x Opening Ceremony mules Featuring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively Where: New York City, New York , United States When: 23 Sep 2024 Credit: Elder Ordonez/INSTARimages
“Discipline” isn’t punishment.
Soft also doesn’t mean without discipline.
Yes, his use of “soft” is problematic.
Discipline is about parental control, punishment is about correcting anti-social behavior.
Discipline has become a bad word when it comes to parenting – I have a friend who has a toddler and she hates that word but then again she is one of those parents who won’t teach boundaries and consequences. Her daughter is already showing bratty behaviour (throwing a mobile phone at her face when the ads play during her cartoons) that my friend just takes and then complains about but won’t check it.
You don’t have to raise your voice to check a childs behaviour – there are many ways to do that in a positive healthy way.
Parenting is the hardest thing anyone will ever have to do but you need to put in the effort/work to do it. Sadly a lot of parents can’t or won’t do it, like my friend.
Discipline starts with self-discipline. Parents who don’t have it can’t model it for their children and, hence, can’t “discipline” their children.
I have a daughter who is very soft with her son and I was not so soft raising her. She was unwilling when he was an infant and toddler to let him spend the night with either of his grandparents because she loved him. Well I loved her too but if one of her grandparents wanted to have her overnight I accepted quickly. He is now five and our school system does track outs periodically throughout the year. Well know she needs the grandparents to help and she finally understands to take the help and let him have sleepovers but now he doesn’t want to do them because he loves her too much lol. Raising them soft can be problematic. He did sleep over at our house and he did just fine. He did try to manipulate but he was dealing with me and not his mother. He will be sleeping over again this week because he did so good. He face timed her before bed and he had fun with us. I got soft and let him eat a donut for lunch.
He was estranged from his Father for a long time before his death and comments like this show why.
My Dad was extremely emotionally abusive, so yeah, I’m a lot more careful about the things I say to my kids because I don’t want them to grow up scared, feeling terrible about themselves, and afraid of their parents. If that makes me soft, I will definitely take that adjective over the ones I would use to describe my Dad.
Being from VanCity, you’ve likely heard things about Ryan and his family, specifically his father and brothers. I believe he grew up in a household where corporal parenting was paramount; Ryan describes it here as militaristic.
His brother was rejected from the Vancouver Police Department due to a domestic violence history. Not that it has much to do with what Ryan is saying about parenting but it may shed some light on what he was likely exposed to growing up.
Like him or not, I respect his desire to learn proper conflict management and change the generational cycles of parenting for the better. Parenting is hard. There is no definitive rulebook to follow in today’s world. When you’re raised in a household with corporal parenting and even violence to command specific behaviours, choosing a more compassionate and understanding approach to guiding your children will always appear “soft” by comparison.
Well said, Stef.
I was raised in fear of my parents’ disapproval. Their way of discipline was to get angry and punish us by withholding love, and it devastated me. They were spankers too, and my mom was a face slapper. That certainly left its mark. I never had kids but I see my contemporaries and how they raised their kids in a softer way, and it helped the kids gain much more confidence and self-esteem. Same with how their kids are raising their children. They certainly discipline their kids but never use withholding love as a weapon like my parents did.
I’m really annoyed by the narrative that our parents were cruel and neglectful. My mom has always been a gentle, loving parent, and I model my own parenting after her. Rather than softness, I think the key difference is that most of today’s parents hesitate to let their kids be more independent and do things for themselves.
Everyone’s parents are different. Mine were from an older generation (I’m 71) where children were not allowed to have differing opinions, discipline was harsh and involved withdrawing love and getting spanked and slapped. You’re lucky your mom was gentle and loving, but mine were not. So don’t get annoyed when people tell their own stories — we’re not all as lucky as you were.
Meh, I know what he means. Too many parents let their kids run wild and call the shots because they don’t want them to be mad at them. You don’t have to hit kids or be cruel for discipline.
I’m not soft – my parents weren’t either – but I do think I’m more compassionate and sympathetic than my parents were. My parents don’t process emotions at all and don’t really want to work through any “issues” with their (now adult) children even though we have a lot of issues there.
So that’s where I try to do better with my kids – the processing of emotions and trying to work through issues. I apologize to my kids. I’ll say something like “ugh I’m sorry, Mommy is just really tired today and has a headache, I overreacted.”
So I guess there’s more compassion and understanding – if thats softness then I guess I’m soft but I don’t see it that way. There are still expectations, household responsibilities, and if my children misbehave or are disrespectful there are consequences.
I dont know. I don’t like the implication that parents today just let kids do whatever and there is no discipline or responsibility. The only kids I know who were raised that way were my cousins who are both now in their late 30s. I do think parenting styles have changed but I dont think that’s automatically a bad thing.
My father grew up with a father who used his hands instead of words to discipline him. It teaches fear. I decided that there was no way in hell I would pass on this family tradition and I understand where RR is coming from.
Parents are soft. As a teacher, I feel like I am doing more to raise them than their parents a lot of the time. Parents think their kids should never hear no or be told to correct their behavior and it is putting a big strain on the school system.
Gen X and Millenials were raised by Baby Boomers. Some of the cliches about the generations ARE true. That’s how they become cliches after all. We were the latchkey kids, often of 2 income households so the parents were working.
My parents did their best. And because they couldn’t be there all the time, when things did go wrong (and they inevitably did!) they could get….extreme (disclaimer, my parents weren’t spankers or slappers, they were the no activities/no friends/no TV/stay in your room or the corner type).
That certainly affected our parenting. We are also the generation that grew up looking at the Missing Child milk cartons at breakfast who may have known a kid that was abducted or nearly abducted. So our pendulum has swung the other way. We want to be the kid’s friend so they don’t hide things from us.
We learn from our parents (or the people that raised it). In general, we either carry it on, or we go extreme the other direction.