Children often think their parents are gaslighting them. However, for caring logical, compassionate parents this isn't often true

 It's true that you cannot say that no parents or caregivers are "Gaslighting the children" in their charge but it is more rare.

Often what is happening is that parents are trying to prepare their children or wards for survival in the real world.

In the 1950s through the 1980s there were many Government social programs to help people when they made some kind of mistake.

Most of those programs are gone now since about the Clinton Administration and after.

Probably the most helpful institution for preventing harm to people were the Unions which were mercilously attacked by Reagan and other Republican Presidents to the point where there are very few strong and useful unions left in the U.S. in comparison to the 1950s through the 1980s. Social programs which helped people go off drugs instead of sending them to prison disappeared mostly too. And now, people driving up their student loan costs without good advice from parents or friends or counselors are putting many people's monetary future in jeapordy. In fact, I know many people well past 40 or 50 still struggling to pay off student debt instead of being able to buy a home or property to retire in instead. 

So, the point is often if you make even one mistake in the U.S. or someone taking care of you makes one mistake it is often a fatal one even if you live for years afterwards because there is no hope at all of ever financially recovering from where you are and you might be stuck on the streets until you die because of that one mistake either you or a parent or caregiver made in your life.

It's to the point where it is said that you cannot be wealthy if you are poor now in America, you have to move to Canada to get enough social welfare programs to be actually able to go from being poor to being rich these days. I mostly agree with this just from my own experiences in life since the 1990s in what I have seen in other's lives.

So, often what children or young adults call gaslighting is simply parents trying to make their young children or young adult children survivors in the real world.