What's involved

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Effective parenting fosters a close connection that is respectful and long lasting. It involves tending to your child's emotional, intellectual, physical, sexual, and spiritual development. It requires being approachable, patient, and skillful. It includes setting limits, at times saying "no" and following through in ways that leaves both your dignity and your child's dignity in tact. It's a big deal! And no, it's not always easy.

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Parenting styles

 

Different parenting styles invite different emotional responses and behaviours. Kind and firm parenting, also known as authoritative parenting, is encouraging and pro-active. It involves long-term thinking and uses discipline to foster learning, growth, and improvement.

 

Short-term parenting styles lack thought for future implications. They include:

• Permissive parenting that overprotects, spoils, and rescues. 

• Uninvolved or hands-off parenting which may include the child parenting their parent, and

• Authoritarian parenting which inflicts suffering. Punishment is used for past behaviours with the misguided idea it will change future behaviours. The emotional toll is neither recognized nor understood.​

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The good news

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Despite your childhood experiences and how you may have been parented, you can learn effective parenting skills needed to interrupt unhealthy interactional patterns and replace them with healthy ones. This serves not only your child's development but also future generations. 

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