Parenting

This week’s discussion in the class focused on the topic of parenting. This is quite a controversial topic, so please respect those who share their opinion. Three types of parenting that we discussed are autocratic, permissive, and active. Autocratic parenting styles is one in which we are most familiar with, the classic shows depicting mothers and fathers yelling at their teenage children to do something that they want them to do. Whether that may be requiring the child to do chores or following the rules that they had established. All these things end with a battle of power. Most of all it ends with heartache pain and no clear end of resolution of who wins or loses. I remember from my own experiences when my parents yell when they want something done, I usually feel more inclined not to do it and on top of that, I always feel horrible. My dream as a parent was to be someone even greater than what my parents were. The type of parenting that I am hoping of becoming is an active parent. This type of parenting is one in which the parents understand their children, where they are coming from, but also help guide them in this journey of life. In the videos that we watched it should these parents working with their children in building ways to support them. They also showed the parents working with their children in making consequences together when the child disobeys the rules. As parents and future parents, we need to understand that they are people and have a mind of their own and we need to treat them as such. We cannot let them walk over us though, but we cannot be over them all the time. Something they stated is that we need to place limits, but also give them freedom. I would also like to describe a bit about permissive, this parenting style is one that we may see quite often in which they let the children run over their parents. They let their children do whatever they want to, without any consequences and rules. A way it was described was through an example of a parent asking their children to eat greens. Then they asked the child would decline and that was that. Through further study, they found that these children soon grow up with high chances of receiving health problems. They also tend to go into the route of pain, finding themselves in circumstances leading them to jail. They also tend not to have the best grades in school. The way we parent our children affects them in the long run. I know many of us do not want to see them failing in this world. We would rather want to see them succeed. To do such a thing I believe we need to change the way we parent our children to an active role. It is not easy, many may blow a fuse due to some of the things our children do, but we need to may an effect. If we do become angry, simply state that you will talk about making consequences together at a later time after you have calmed down. Something we need to know is that all of us need five things to fill our needs. The five things are contact and belonging, power, protection, withdrawal, and challenge. If we don’t tend to these needs the children start to have mistaken approaches to undue attention-seeking, tend to control others and rebellion, revenge, undue avoidance, and undue risk-taking. There is a way to tend to these five things. It is through a wise parental approach of offering contact freely, teaching our children to make contributions, and giving them choices for consequences and response-ability. Also, it is through Assertiveness and teaching them to forgive, teaching them to break a task, and go back and encourage skill-building.