By Jodie Benveniste, Director Parent Wellbeing

I’ve always maintained that there are as many ways to parent as there are parents and kids.  That is, we are all different.  We all have different histories, personalities and lifestyles and we need to find a way to parent that suits us and our children.

Parenting and being a parent is more art than science.  And finding the best way to care for your kids and yourself takes trial and error, a bit of insight into what makes us and our kids’ tick, and intiution.

But there is one qualifier.  Research tells us something very important about what style of parenting is most beneficial for children and families overall.

Three different parenting styles have been identified:

1. Authoritarian parents

Authoritarian parents are firm, harsh, punitive and emotionally very cold.  They expect their kids to obey them because they are the parents and because ‘They said so…’.  They punish their kids harshly if they misbehave, and they aren’t very loving or affectionate.

2. Permissive parents

Permissive parents are very loving but they are also very lax.  They don’t control or discipline their children.  Instead, kids have the freedom to do what they want when they want, and they don’t receive a lot of guidance about how to live their life.

3. Authoritative parents

Authoritative parents are loving but aren’t too loose with their parenting. They set limits and boundaries, explain why there are boundaries, but they also encourage independence.  And they are loving and emotionally available.

No guessing which style of parenting is the best.  It’s authoritative parenting.

Research shows that children who grow up with authoritarian parents can be unhappy, dependent and submissive.  Kids with permissive parents can be immature, impatient and sometimes aggressive.

Whereas, kids who grow up with authoritative parents are friendly, cooperative, socially responsible and self-reliant.

So if you want a maxim for good parenting remember these three things:

1. Be warm and responsive

2. Set boundaries

3. Be consistent

And within these three guidelines, there is plenty of room for being the parent you want to be.

By Jodie Benveniste, director of Parent Wellbeing

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 3:40 am and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.