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Information Babies Parenting | Parenting |
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| Written by Kim Olver | ||||
| Monday, 21 May 2007 | ||||
Page 1 of 2
From the day your little one arrives, you will be making decisions about the quality of care and experience your child will have. This article will help to start your discussions on the kind of parents you plan to be. - Ed While need strength is important in determining compatibility, you still need to look at the quality world pictures or exactly how a person decides to meet their needs. A prime example would be having two people, both with a high need for fun. He likes to get his fun need met by going out to bars with his male friends and going to football games and she enjoys shopping and attending the opera. Both have a high need for fun but they choose to get their needs met in vastly different ways, making their mutual satisfaction, at least with each other, highly unlikely. In the area of parenting, there are generally three styles of parenting that experts discuss. They have various names but they are generally called the autocratic, democratic and permissive styles of parenting. I teach a democratic style of parenting that is based in Dr. William Glasser’s Choice Theory that I call Empowerment Parenting. Autocratic parents adopt an attitude of “My way or the highway.” These parents can often be heard saying things like, “As long as you live under my roof, you will do what I say,” and “Do it because I said so,” and “I don’t want to hear it. End of discussion. Period.” These parents do not love their children any less but they operate from a faulty mindset that if they don’t control every aspect of their children’s lives, then the children will obviously run amok. These parents believe that it is their responsibility to teach their children discipline and responsibility and if they listen to what their children have to say, they are in danger of being manipulated. The permissive parent is at the opposite end of the continuum. These parents want to avoid conflict at all cost. Their belief is that the best way to parent their children is to be their child’s best friend. They think that if they allow their children to do what they want, then the children will like them and tell them things that these parents want to know. There is another variety of permissive parent and that is the uninvolved parent. These are the parents who have other interests that take priority over raising their children. They are workaholics, have a large investment in their significant other relationship, or possibly have some sort of addition. These children are pretty left to their own devices to raise themselves as their parents are too busy or too distracted to notice. Either way, children are left without boundaries and without boundaries, children do not feel safe. Research supports that the best results are seen with democratic parenting. In this parenting style, the parent is still the parent, not the best friend. However, the parents are very concerned with what their children need and provide them with opportunities for success. Parents focus mostly on keeping their children safe, while allowing them exploration to discover life and to make mistakes while the consequences are small. In my marriage, I believe both my husband and I started out wanting to be democratic parents to a certain degree. Over time, what happened is that I leaned more in the direction of a permissive style and he moved more in the direction of an autocratic style. He would say that he had to be autocratic to counterbalance my permissiveness and I would say I was permissive to counter his authoritarianism. It is impossible to tell which came first but this conflict in parenting styles can create great conflict in a relationship where partners are parenting. |
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