Parenting begins with the parent means that when you are in the position of having a child now you are accountable for someone else. What you do, how you behave, and what you say will have an affect on your child or children. It does not do any good just to supply food, clothing, and shelter alone. Even though those things are essential for a child’s development and acclimation to their environment. A child’s soul must be nurtured as well. This means their mind, will, emotions. Without this taking place in the home the child will struggle emotionally, socially, and even mentally.
Nurturing a child’s soul is predicated on the parent’s self-awareness, knowledge, and understanding of when to teach, coach, support, discipline, and listen to their child. As the parent, it is essential to engage with your child in various facets to develop their gifts, social skills, knowledge and understanding of what it takes to be a good human being.
However, parenting can be more difficult if the parent does not know who they are or have not done anything to better themselves as a person. Then you become a parent and not only struggle with yourself, but the expectation of children can pull a lot out of you as a parent. So, it helps to be grounded as a person. It helps to know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in your home. This awareness comes from gaining knowledge about parenting and aligning it with your experiences with your parents and you formulate a parenting style that benefits your child and yourself. If you are married or in a co-parenting situation it is imperative to agree on a common form of parenting so that the child will not have room to place the parents against each other.
So, let’s look at the most common forms of parenting. If you do not know your parenting style it will help you see if your style is good or not and whether it benefits your child.
- Authoritarian or Disciplinarian
- Permissive or Indulgent
- Uninvolved
- Authoritative
Your parenting style can refer to the combination of strategies that you use to raise your children. These styles are primarily in the United States and do not include cross cultural styles of parenting from no other country besides the United States. However, the work of Diane Baumrind in the 1960s created one commonly-referenced categorization of parenting styles which are the 4 listed above.
Our next post on Friday of this week will get into the details of each parenting styles as well as its pros and cons.
(All information pertaining to this post can be located from the following link, www.brighthorizons.com/family-resources/e-family-news/parenting-style-four-types-of-parenting)
“Healthy Living Begins with Healthy Thinking”
Joseph Briscoe
Life Coach