Being a parent isn’t all roses but understanding your parenting style and your disciplining style can help you understand how to work with your child better. What is more interesting is that spouses differ in each of these styles. Learning how to also work with your husband or wife can help you navigate these tricky waters. First, we will look at the different parenting styles, and then we will go into the different disciplining styles.
What is Your Parenting Style?
Authoritarian
This parenting style focuses on obedience, discipline and punishment in order to get the desired behaviour from a child. An authoritarian parent often come from the space, “My way or the highway.” Here, a child’s opinion and/or feelings aren’t really considered. Oftentimes, instead of encouraging a child to make better decisions, an authoritarian parent focuses more on making a child feel guilty for their mistakes. While this isn’t necessarily wrong, it does have its ramifications. One downside to this is it could affect a child’s self-esteem. This may eventually be expressed in many ways, including aggressiveness or hostility.
Authoritative
This parenting style focuses on creating rapport via a positive relationship while still enforcing rules. An authoritative parent places an emphasis on communication with their child. The child’s feelings and opinions are often taken into account. They explain the rules, why the rules were put into place, and though they still discipline their child, there is an explanation so the child knows why they were disciplined.
Permissive
This parenting style doesn’t enforce the rules originally put into place. A permissive parent doesn’t dish out consequences for a child’s actions. One thing they may say over and over again is, “Kids will be kids,” as a sort of justification for their child misbehaving or not listening to them. Parents under this style will set rules, and when their child disobeys, they don’t enforce them or discipline them.
Some downsides of this include struggling academically, behavioural problems (they don’t recognise or follow rules), and social problems can also arise. They may not respect their peers boundaries which could create challenges maintaining their friends later on.
Uninvolved
This parenting style provides little guidance, nurturing, or attention for the child. An uninvolved parent is exactly that – uninvolved. There isn’t a lot of time spent with their child, they don’t particularly show much interest in their child’s life and there are very little rules.
This isn’t always the parent’s fault – sometimes they are uneducated on parenting matters, or perhaps they have a lot of things on their mind like bills, work, etc. Children with uninvolved parents often suffer from low self-esteem, they have little happiness, may exhibit behavioural problems, and may perform poorly in school.
While there isn’t an inherent right or wrong, there are pros and cons to the differing parenting styles. That being said, let’s delve into the different disciplining styles.
What is Your Discipline Style?
1. Love Withdrawal
Parents who use this style are known to give the “cold shoulder” to their children when disciplining them. It is a form of passive aggressiveness. Parents may threaten to leave, not talk or listen to their children, and express their disappointment to them. Many times, a child will respond to their parents request out of fear rather than out of respect. They are afraid to lose their parents approval and love, so they simply do what they say instead of doing what they say out of a healthy esteem for their parents. This can cause ramifications down the road in the form of resentment.
2. Power Assertive
Parents who use this style are prone to disciplining their child via spanking, threatening punishment, and/or withdrawal of privileges. Again, many children may respond to their parents’ request out of fear rather than out of respect or love. Children tend to follow their parents’ orders, but it is to avoid punishment.
3. Induction
This discipline style is different because there is an emphasis on teaching. Here, communication is at an all-time high between parents and their children. Children receive explanations for their behaviour, be it appropriate or inappropriate so that they understand the consequences of their actions. Children also are heard by the parents and their needs considered. This doesn’t mean the parents aren’t stern with the children when needed, it simply means the children understand more fully why their parents are upholding the rules. Here, children respond to their parent’s requests not out of fear so much as understanding the situation and making a behavioural decision from there.
Regardless of your parenting style or your disciplining style, when a child obeys a parent, they are doing it in one of two ways: they are either coming from joy (celebration), or two, they are looking for joy (fear). When action is born out of fear, the results can be mixed. At Little Human Scholars, our school located in Petaling Jaya, we focus on authoritative and induction. We teach from respect rather than fear and validate each child who walks through our doors. This gives them a better foundation later on in life.
About Little Human Scholars School in PJ
Little Human Scholars is an all-in-one childcare solution. It is a preschool, playschool, kindergarten, nursery and full day daycare centre (with extended hours) located in the heart of PJ.
In fact, the location is one of the things which makes Little Human Scholars so sought after – it is conveniently nestled near Jalan Gasing, University hospital, PJ Old town, PJ New town, Jaya One, Jaya33, and the PJ IT Mall.
The best part is LHS has premiere services many other schools in PJ don’t offer such as full day daycare with extended hours, CCTV access for parents, and a nifty little phone app called Toddlytic which provides parents with automatic updates on their child’s development, behaviour and health checks.
With full-time guards always present at each of their locations, access to CCTV (which is in every room except the office, bathroom and kitchen areas), and very strict pick-up and drop-off rules, Little Human Scholars treats every child who walks into its hallways as one of their own children!
This place has it all: location, safety, health, IGSCE curriculum and play-based learning. What more could you ask for? Did I mention they also have transportation services and offer meal plans for students? It doesn’t get any better than that.
If you are interested in a tour of one of our centres (that’s right, there’s more than one), all you need to do is fill out the form here or call +6017-7303-025 and an LHS administrative staff will get back with you shortly!
Cheers,
Jana Moreno