Developing Parenting Skills

My Mom was a depression-era child. Her mother was a stay-at-home Mom, while her Dad worked in a factory, stopped at the corner pub each night on the way home, arriving home after the family had eaten their dinner. He ate his dinner alone while completing the newspaper crossword puzzle, perhaps played his piano for an hour, and then went to bed. Consequently, Grandma was the disciplinarian in a household of three girls and one boy, since Grandpa chose to checkout emotionally when he came through the front door each night.

Because we usually do what we know how to do, we tend to use the same parenting style with our child as our parents did with us. There are three parenting styles—authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. In the authoritative parenting style, the parent establishes rules and guidelines, enforces the rules, while maintaining a warm, loving relationship with the child. The authoritarian method of parenting has parents setting rules, being very rigid with the rules, and expecting the child to obey without question. Permissive parenting styles encompass no behavior guidelines, allowing the child to feel his way through life, learning as he goes. While a parent who employs a permissive parenting style may be very involved in their child's life, there are no clear expectations or ground rules.

Most certainly, Grandma used an authoritarian parenting style, as did my mother. However, because my father's parents raised him mostly with a permissive parenting style, my own upbringing was a mixture of the two. Little wonder I had a difficult time as a stepparent thrust into a house full of children whose parents had raised them with a permissive parenting style. Over the years, I leaned upon my authoritarian upbringing, while my husband and the children's mother continued to use the permissive style in parenting the children. The two methods combined into authoritative parenting, with good results.

Combining two forms of parenting styles is exactly what experts recommend. When parents develop parenting skills with the following guidelines, then your chances of raising children into productive, capable adults are greatly increased:

• Daily conversation between children and parents.
• Build relationships with action and discussion.
• Set expectations and goals.
• Establish consequences for rules infractions.
• Be an empathetic, caring, kind, trustworthy, understanding, patient parent.
• Allow your children to voice opinions and treat the family as a democracy.

When you form a family unit where everyone feels secure expressing ideas without fear of recrimination, then you foster an atmosphere of higher-level thinking. Always approach your children with respect, and teach by example.