Perfecting your parenting skills

Welcome to Perfecting your parenting skills.

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

It may sound mad but I always have a treat or a good film ready for my daughter and I to share when she comes off her Ipad. These are two ways my daughter and I connect currently although I would prefer them to be going for a walk or doing yoga together (she is a preteen). In the past, we would bake a cake or we would play with playdough. Depending on where you are with your child offer this connection to them when they come off their device.

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

If you have had a challenging day at work, or a thumping headache all day then you are not going to be in the best place to connect fully with your child. Give yourself forgiveness and compassion, you are trying your best. When we do not have the capacity to deal with the transition our children go through then this can be a testing time for your parenting. As I said previously this journey to maintaining consistent well-being for ourself can sometimes take some conscious effort for us. Taking up regular exercise, eating well, surrounding ourselves with loving friends and family and getting regular breaks is so important for our parenting. This is partly why I created the Screen Harmoniser and Healing Programmes for parents – to highlight to parents how important self-care is to your parenting.

4. Phone a friend to listen to you beforehand or during this transition

I will phone a friend or loved one to fill myself up with support and connection before

Sometimes the time of transition has become so challenging that I have phoned my mum or friend crying about feeling so fed up of this struggle every day. For me, this was an extremely effective tool to loosen up tension in the home.

These 5 tools are for the “longterm preparation” on how to manage Screen Addiction generally:

1. Build a connection

This is a big one clearly and covers a lot. So what is it to build connection? Connection starts with us, it starts with how we feel in ourselves as a human being. It is only once we are fully resourced that we can then help another especially our child. Assuming we are full up in our own well being – how do we then build a connection with our children? We play with them, we join them in their fun activities and we allow them to be who they are. Sometimes when we become parents we have to remember how to play and this is difficult when we are also looking after everything too. Personally, I exercise every day, sometimes it’s a walk in the park and sometimes it’s a hardcore work out session depending on how I’m feeling. I also attempt to eat highly nutritious foods and keep the junk food on the low side. I make an effort to connect with loved ones daily and to take time out to meditate and do hobbies I love, I get out in Nature a lot too.

2. Prepare friends who you can phone.

This is about building on your existing strong relationships and if you feel you do not have strong relationships then this may require more inner work for you. When we can open up to others about our struggles it then allows a deeper connection within the relationship. Tell people what is going on at home with your addictions and speaking up helps to open up a world of healing for you. Sometimes I find just asking for help is all that is needed and then what you need appears.

3. Have a fun distraction prepared

This tool is for when you have the capacity, you can prepare something fun to do with your children for when they come off their screens. Such as some drawing pencils and nice paper ready to draw or have a pack of cards ready to play a snap. Yes, of course, your child may throw the cards everywhere or walk off in a huff but the intention is there which is important. We need to remember how addictive these games and platforms are and how much our children have to deal with on their devices sometimes. So when they come off the device they may be holding a lot of built-up stress in their bodies or upset from last week! My daughter and I will sometimes bake a cake or she will read a book on her own, sometimes we watch a nice film together with tea and biscuits.

4. Make sure you’ve had a fulfilled day

Getting our child off the screen can just feel like another job to do just like hanging up the washing or cleaning the toilet. So try to make sure you’ve had a fulfilled day and if you haven’t then why haven’t you? And is there something you can do to change that? And if there is not is there something within you that can be calmed and soothed? If you are stressed out on a regular basis then this can seep into our home lives and affect our children and so on.

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

School Entrance Tests

Perfecting your parenting skills