What style of parenting helps a child the most?

Most new parents are undecided about how to parent effectively. Usually, most of us resort to the style used by our parents to raise us. But is this the most effective, especially in our modern age?

In Health Day (2023), Kirstie Ganobsik discusses some of the possible benefits of authoritative parenting and how it compares to authoritarian parenting.

What is authoritative parenting?

She writes that authoritative parenting is a style that supports and nurtures children but still includes firm boundary setting. It stresses the importance of open communication and calm reasoning with a child to help them understand the rules. So, while children are encouraged to contribute their viewpoints and wishes, parents still have the final say.

The Cleveland Clinic notes that authoritative parenting combines high expectations of following the rules with high levels of affection, positivity and encouragement.

What is the authoritative parenting style like?

Authoritative parents will typically:

give children clear guidelines about expected behaviour
explain why rules are in place
take input from children about their wants, needs and feelings
talk frequently with children about all areas of their life

Authoritative parenting examples

Jeff Jack, a licensed professional clinical counselor at Westside Behavioral Health in Westlake, Ohio gives the following example of authoritative parenting:

“Imagine a 12-year-old who has historically struggled to make friends is beginning a new school year at a new school. On a Friday evening, the child is both thrilled and surprised when a new peer invites them to a sleepover. However, the child has not started a large science project which is due on Monday,” Jack said.

“The authoritative parent may choose to recognize both limit setting and a nurturing approach. The response might be: ‘Yes! I think it’s great that you got invited to a sleepover. You can go, but we also have to talk about how you’ll get your science project done.’ After some negotiating, the 12-year-old agrees to spend all day Saturday and Sunday working on their project in exchange for being allowed to attend the sleepover,” he added.

Jack noted that the parent in this scenario made an effort to understand three different needs of their child: academic, emotional and social.

In another example given by the Cleveland Clinic, an authoritative parent of a child who got into a fight with a bully tells their child that violence is never OK, while also showing empathy by acknowledging that it was a tough situation. In addition, they discuss the child’s feelings at the moment of the fight. All these steps are aimed at helping empower the child to better regulate their emotions and find solutions to the problem of bullying.

Authoritative parenting discipline

With authoritative parenting, discipline is meant to support children’s growth, help them to understand how to balance social responsibility and cooperation with assertiveness and self confidence.

Using the sleepover example, if the child of that authoritative parent had lied about having any homework, the parent may discipline them by, for example, limiting their video game usage. Jack explains that even if the child tried to make excuses for this lie, “the authoritative parent holds firm to their boundaries.”

At the same time, Jack notes that this parent may suggest a fun game they can play together during the time the child is normally playing video games.

“The use of punishment to uphold boundaries is not intended to make the child feel bad about themselves,” he explained. “Rather, this parent is interested in strengthening the relationship even in the context of the child’s missteps.”

Another example might be the parent who had promised his child a visit to an amusement park. When confronted with a breach of discipline on the child’s part, he found a way of punishing the child but did not retract the much anticipated visit to the park. “When I make a promise, it’s important that the child know I’ll keep it,” he said. “That is a lesson to the child that others must trust your word, even though you keep the boundaries firmly in place by finding other consequences for undesirable behaviours.”

Am I an authoritative or authoritarian parent?

Authoritative parents show high expectation levels and place moderate demands on their children while providing high levels of responsiveness to their children’s wants and needs. Authoritarian parents place high demands on their children’s compliance with rules and boundaries with low levels of responsiveness.

Children raised with the authoritative parenting style tend grow into adulthood with

Greater self-reliance and independence
Social acceptance
Strong emotional regulation abilities
Academic success and
Happiness

Image supplied by Freepik

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.