Strict, Democratic or Permissive -- What's Your Parenting Style?

NEWS FLASH: There are no perfect parents. There is no one who carries the ideal balance between love and limits all the time. 

There are times when parents must be strict or authoritarian, leaving little if any room for negotiating. This is most appropriate when making rules about safety, health issues or morality. 

There are other times when parents can afford to be permissive, allowing wider boundaries when there is less at stake. 

Most of the time, though,  parents should try to position themselves somewhere in the middle -- as a democratic parent -- leaving the majority of things open for discussion, realizing that as the parents, Mom and Dad do have ultimate veto power. 

There is nothing wrong with allowing your child input when determining limits boundaries such as curfew, bedtime, or computer use. 

Listening to your child is probably the most important thing a parent can do.  Listening does not mean yielding to your child’s every desire, nor does it mean allowing your child to tell you what is going to happen. It means taking the child’s perspective into account before acting.

The younger the child, the more authoritarian the parent needs to be, for obvious reasons. Small children need their parents to keep them safe. 

But as children grow, they can be given choices, encouraged to give their input, and have their feelings considered.  

By the time a child becomes a teen, the democratic style of parenting is critical.   

Research tells us that children who are raised in consistently permissive or authoritarian households tend to have poor outcomes. Children need rules and boundaries in place in order to successfully manage themselves.   

So, if you are raising children, ask yourself these questions: 

* What are our house rules?  

* Do we still need each one?

* Are the house rules appropriate for the ages of our children, or have they outgrown them? 

* How much of my parenting time is spent being authoritarian, democratic, and permissive?