Parenting

4 Parenting Styles There are four identified parenting styles that we will describe. Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, and Neglectful.

  1. Authoritative parents yield the healthiest outcomes for their children. These parents understand the importance of encouragement, structure, diplomacy, and love. They apply the right amount of balance to each child. Authoritative parents are active participants in the emotional and social well-being of their children’s lives. They are also careful not to hover or micromanage their children, allowing a healthy amount of autonomy and independence.
  2. Authoritarian parents are overbearing, demanding, and strict. Open communication is not encouraged and is replaced with rigid control. Authoritarian parents show less love and more criticism. Parent-child relationships are based on merits, control, and dictated by the parent; there is no fellowship. This parenting style is often rooted in a lack of parenting education, negative parenting history, and results in psychological control. There tends to be a lot of arguing, struggling for control, and overt rebellion of the child.
  3. Permissive parents are attentive to their children but without structure. This parenting style can be motivated by fear, fear that the child will reject the parent. Permissive parents allow their children to have high amounts of independence, even in unsafe situations. Children often self-govern and are permitted to make final decisions. Since this parenting style lacks boundaries and parenting security, children often develop self-esteem and self-efficacy difficulties.
  4. Neglectful parents are uninvolved. This parenting style lacks structure, discipline, and relationship. Parents are absent from the lives of their children, which results in estrangement. Neglectful parents are not responsive to their children’s need or emotional states.


All Successful Parenting Styles Must Contain Encourage and Support

Encouragement builds a child’s positive concept of themselves, instills confidence, gives them hope, and contributes to their self-efficacy (ability to be effective and successful). Encouragement occurs when you focus on the positive no matter how small and avoid criticism.

Support, like encouragement, adds to a child’s healthy development. Support is the hands-on element of encouragement. Supportive parents don’t “tell” their children what to do; they “show” their children how to do a thing, then do it with them. When you work with your child, you communicate to them that you are personally interested in their lives. Support occurs when you take the time to listen to them, negotiate with them, and show care and concern for their decisions.

Parents must remember that the children they are raising today will become the adults of tomorrow. Therefore, you are raising adults. God works with us to mature us. He gives us grace for the purpose of growing into spiritual maturity. Raise your children the same way—to mature them. You are not raising children…you are raising adults. Work with them intimately, do not be harsh with them, encourage and support them, emotionally connect with them, and love them with the same tender, unconditional love that God loves you.


Structure

People learn primarily through observation and experience. God commanded his people to observe and live by his commandments as a way to direct their behavior. Observation and experience are wired into our brain as mechanisms for learning. As children are developing, their brains are developing with them. It is very natural for a child to observe something, then copy it or experience something and associate it with something they previously were exposed to.

Structure is the establishment of rules, routines, and boundaries. Structure helps make sense of what a child may observe or experience. Structure will also control, to some extent, what they observe and experience. For example, suppose your child wants to watch television on a school night, but the rule is no television on school nights. Because of the rule, the child will understand the behavior as unacceptable. Although they may not like the rule, having the rule in place helps to direct their behavior. Structure is all a part of training adults to function in society; remember you are raising adults.

Discipline

To begin, it is pivotal to understand that discipline is not punishment. Punishment is a punitive approach where there will be a harsh or difficult infliction targeted at the person. Discipline is an educational approach that is targeted at the behavior. Focusing on the person creates feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness to change. When a child has done something wrong, it is important that you do not scold their personhood.

For example, saying something like, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you listen?” targets the child’s concept of themselves. Statements like this may cause them to believe that there is something wrong with their ability to comprehend. Instead, bring the matter to them and allow them to talk about their actions. If the child is younger, you may want to highlight the behavior and the negative consequences associated with the behavior. For example, if your toddler hits someone, you may say, “Hitting is not nice. You want to be nice to them so they will be nice to you.” or, “When you hit, it makes me (or them) feel sad.”

Discipline separates the person from the problem, which is precisely how God deals with us. God separates sin from the person. When disciplining children, your goal should be to separate them from the behavior. If they are lying, first identify that they are not liars. Then explore what motivated the lie (why did they choose the lie-telling behavior rather than the truth-telling behavior). Finally, encourage them to do better and express your belief in them. The expectations, if positive, will positively impact your child’s behavior.

Discipline Techniques

  • Time-Out with Commitment: Brief amount of time a child sits alone. Prior to child re-engaging the parent will gain a simple commitment from the child, that the behavior will not be repeated.
  • Conversation: Dialogue that explains undesired behavior and always encourages desired behavior.
  • Reframing: Seeing the good and separating the child from the behavior; being encouraging.
  • Negotiation and Contracts: Agreement where the child is allowed to talk through the consequences for undesired behavior and allows the child to take ownership when the contract is broken. Also provides a way for the child to obtain what they may have wanted.
  • Ignore: Not giving attention to the behavior. Behavior may increase before it decreases.
  • Removal of Privileges. Taking away something meaningful.
  • Coaching: Helping child identify their emotion or fear and encouraging them to do better.
  • Choices: Provides the child with options to avoid power struggles.
  • Storytelling: Using a fictional story that teaches a lesson.
  • Redirecting: Diverting child’s energy into something productive that they will enjoy and will occupy their time.
  • Modeling: Demonstrating the desired behavior.
  • Rewards & Consequences. Exploring the product of various behaviors, and may involve leveraging the desired reward or an unwanted consequence.


Parenting Recommendations by Age.pdf
Complete and Continue