Welcome to Perfecting your parenting skills.
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Perfecting your parenting skills
Here we reflect upon effective parenting styles and in particular how much raising EMOTIONALLY RESILIENT children is like BEING A TEAM LEADER in your other working life. Certainly, all busy parents must find the time and patience to work with their children. In particular when these become teenagers who developmentally crave more autonomy, freedom and empowerment.
Parenting styles intro
No one denies that parenting is difficult, but you can make it easier on yourself by identifying your parenting style. According to scientists, in very general terms there are four main parenting style categories. Parents are authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, or neglectful.
We don’t necessarily agree with pigeon holing any parent. Although we do believe that it’s certainly useful to recognise elements of how you typically behave as a parent. Or as a leader (of your child’s healthy emotional and physical development).
What are the most effective parenting styles?
So, which leadership and communications tips work best?
he was developing as a leader of leaders that he could draw on and apply at home as well. There are many leadership tactics and work strengths which informed parents can apply to interact with their teenage children in a more positive way.
Coach and guide
Recognize that your teen now has more life experience. Like a leader grooming a successor or protégé, think of yourself as a guide or coach who is setting up another person to spread their wings and be fully independent in your absence.
Bring a development focus
Bring a development focus and meet your teen where they are now. This includes assessing their current life skills and acknowledging that they are growing up. Name the change or transition you are in as parent and child and determine together where they could take on more responsibilities with regard to chores or what set of decisions they can start to make more on their own.
Actively work to build their self-efficacy by offering more opportunities to engage in experiences that will help them develop their skills, judgment, and resilience. This could include things like independently navigating public transportation to get to school or taking on a part-time job.
Re-examine how you assess risk
In order to safely encourage and offer a greater range of decision-making and growth experiences, one of the most important tools for a leader of leaders is reexamining boundaries and assessing risk. Sometimes when leaders receive feedback to “empower more,” they swing the pendulum too far by being too hands off.
Loosening the reins without some level of intentionality can result in inadvertently putting someone in a situation they are not yet equipped to handle or where the risks are too high. Your goal is to safely widen the guardrails while empowering and offering autonomy within new limits.
Reset certain boundaries
With our teens, resetting boundaries allows us to more safely offer rope while still providing clarity on curfews, home chores, and family values. Consider activities where you can allow your teen to take more initiative, such as searching for summer internships or engaging in trial and error (even if you don’t like the new haircut that results). The key is to allow more room for your teen to discover their own authentic way of getting something done effectively.
Allow them to make more decisions for themselves
As you see your teen making more decisions for themselves, ask open-ended questions to better understand what is on their mind, uncover their assumptions, and learn how your kid reasons through things. Help your teen discover some of their own answers by asking great questions and engaging their own developing reflective capacity and introspection. By really understanding and hearing where they are, you can help them to brainstorm ideas and solutions or offer additional perspectives on their thinking.
What are the most effective parenting styles?
What’s meant by parenting Style? Your parenting style says a lot about your relationship with your child.
Authoritative parents are often considered to be more effective. The ‘authorative’ category of parenting styles are characterized by having high expectations for their children’s behaviour and attitudes plus showing them, understanding of children’s feelings. In particular adopting an encouraging support of good – over ‘bad’ – types of behaviour. Especially in public and with other children. These qualities create a healthy environment that allows children to thrive.
Whereas Authoritarian parents are characterised as the strict parents. These parental behaviour and parental attitudes are chiefly about insisting their child behaves in accordance with the authoritarian parents own standards. These may or may not reflect societal or cultural norms for children’s behaviour. There is little opportunity for debate since the parent is always right. In their own mind. Regardless of whether their behavioural standards are even reasonable for a child of that age. open dialogue. The behaviour rules are set in stone. Without encouraging open communication. Or allowing for exceptional circumstances. The children of authoritarian parents soon learn that any deviation from these rules will be punished. Sometimes severely.
Indulgent, or permissive, parents, are extremely lenient. These parents avoid confrontation at all costs. While the parents are very nurturing, they don’t set boundaries for their children so their kids don’t learn important rules.
Finally, neglectful parenting is the most dangerous of all of the styles. As the name suggests, these parents neglect their children’s basic needs. For instance, they are not there for their children emotionally or physically. If you are a neglectful parent, you should seek outside help to mend your relationship with your child and to find a new parenting style.
other parenting style typologies
next we explore some other parenting style typologies. Then compare and contrast these with the more commonly used four factor model described above.
Being supportive
So what do we do as loving parents to be supportive?
Well primarily we have to resource ourselves fully to be the best parents we can be. This is easy to say of course but more tricky in practice. It is one thing to intend to look after ourselves but when we actually want to instil well being practises into our moment to moment existence this is another thing and a life long journey. Being a role model for our children is the best way to go, showing them how to look after themselves.
1. Have a fun distraction ready
Arguments and disagreement are not something new between parents and children.
Our children are making massive connections through their device, through gaming, social media and YoutTube for example.
3. Remain calm and prepare your self to connect with your child
4. Phone a friend to listen to you beforehand or during this transition
These 5 tools are for the “longterm preparation” on how to manage Screen Addiction generally:
1. Build a connection
2. Prepare friends who you can phone.
3. Have a fun distraction prepared
4. Make sure you’ve had a fulfilled day
Jen is a parenting expert, healer and entrepreneur. She started Let’s Connect and Feel Better with the intention to empower all to connect on a deeper more profound level. With their children, family and ultimately themselves.
Make sure to read more about this very relevant subject:
Tech-savvy Parenting in a Technology-Driven World