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Parenting
Parenting
Styles - Rigid, Lax, or Somewhere Inbetween?
DECEMBER 9, 2009 - Posted by JustinS
Parents
gladly receive children into their lives eager to teach and
guide them. Fond hopes are created and dreams planned as their
child begins to grow and develop. The difficulty is, kids don't
arrive with an owners manual. So, most parents by default end
up parenting based on their own experience they learned consciously
or not from their families of origin. I often meet with parents
concerned about the interactions they are having with their
teen and how they might best deal with them. One consistent
pattern I find is that parents are drawing on a reservoir of
knowledge based on their own reality, their own upbringing.
They coach, discipline, and otherwise teach their children and
teens based on tenets they feel will help their child. Often
these tenets or principles are laden with family history and
are not necessarily used by the parent based on its effectiveness
but due to the parent's familiarity with the parent. Take for
example a client I'll call Rob. He was an executive with his
company and fairly well educated. He expected his son to be
a hard worker and one that is goal-driven. I was seeing his
son who was in his late teens. His son was apathetic with most
chores at home and often was flaky and otherwise checked out
when it came to keeping on task with responsibilities and relationships.
Rob would often try and lecture his son with hopes that good
strong rational visit would get some 'sense' into his son. What
he didn't realize was that his son was aware of his success
financially as a father and often resented internally that he
could not measure up and to make matters worse his father was
consistently lecturing him. So, we have a cycle; a son that
resents and avoids and a father that continues to lecture with
hopes his son will one day 'get it'. Parenting is less about
a specific approach and more about the parent's being able to
locate and enter what I call teaching windows, moments when
the child is teachable and is apt to listen and actually hear
you. Looking for these windows and studying your child or teen's
temperament will best help you engage in ways that they can
hear and ultimately follow.
Often parents get stuck in cycles of lax parenting or pal-parenting.
These parents struggle to draw boundaries and are more of a
friend and end up with kids that don't respect them and kids
that often manipulate and take advantage of the parents lax
and peer status. Other parents are at the other extreme, they
are rigid and hypercritical. These parents are demanding and
often critical of their children/teens. They see their child
as one that should follow; often fear and demands are tactics
used to change behavior by these parents. The last paradigm
that is actually the most helpful is a balance between the two.
It is referred to as authoritative parenting. It is clear yet
open; firm yet loving; consistent yet flexible. These parents
open up choice and discussion with children and are not easily
manipulated nor are they easily angered. They remain calm and
speak clearly and are not worried about saying no yet still
are not rigid in demanding things their way.
It
is through a parent's studying and understanding their teen's
temperament and then working to engage as an authoritative parent
that one can find harmony and unity in parenting. Diana Baumrind,
a psychology theorist, developed three models of parenting.
I have included a document on
it here in my document archive. Teenagers are often difficult
as they seem to become autonomous in their relationships yet
when parents employ authoritative parenting coupled with solid
understanding of their child's disposition (and all are different!)
parenting can be a smoother more enjoyable ride!
Copyright:
No part of this article in section or full may be reproduced
without permission from the author Justin Stum, MS LMFT. The
one and only exception is for educational purposes and only
if the contact information below for the author is fully cited
here in article.
Justin
Stum, MS LMFT, 321 Mall Drive Suite I-101, St. George Utah 84790
435-986-1777, http://www.pathwaystherapy.net
Tags:
parenting, teenagers, adolescents,
parenting a teenager
