What is Your Parenting Style?

Trying to locate simple, straightforward and truthful information concerning parenting styles is something we know to be difficult. Books, TV, Articles and Websites do not always help us implement ideas. We also know the more information you have the better, but too much can be conflicting. Parents should be confident when choosing their own personal of parenting, and we hope you will find some of this information useful in your own effectiveness as a parent.

There are various styles of parenting but they all fall into three basic categories. Most parents will have one primary style of parenting but you will most likely see aspects of your particular kind of parenting in all of the them.

Giving Orders
This is an authoritarian parenting style. Parents that use this style feel they must be in control all the time. They parent by a set of rules that must be followed. Children have little or no freedom. Discipline is usually a form of reward and punishment. Children learn early to please their parents to gain a reward. They may behave because they fear their parents. Children either go along and have a hard time learning to think for themselves or they may rebel in reaction to the controlling methods of their parents.

Giving In
This is a permissive parenting style. Parents who adopt this style have concerns that their children will not like them if they set limits or they see themselves as their children's friend and not their parent who is there to guide and set limits. Children without limits have no sense of responsibility, have trouble with relationships and the rights of others and can find the world a difficult place. It is unfair to raise a child without limits or to keep changing the limits that are set. Children do not need or want freedom without limitations.