No matter what our circumstance, we all have parents. But why is it that some parents are more involved than others? There are four different types of parenting styles that are important to understand, and each of our parents have one or more of these styles in their personal parenting style. These styles are authoritarian, permissive, authoritative, and neglectful.
So what are these styles? What do they mean?
1. Authoritarian. An authoritarian parent is a parent that has high standards and low love. They have a lot of expectations that they put on their children and do not tolerate anything less than the best. A lot of authoritarian parents do love their children a lot, but they do not understand how to show their children. Children with authoritarian parents usually describe their experience as having a parent who acts more like a sergeant than a parent.
2. Permissive. A permissive parent is one that has low standards and high love. They usually love their children a lot, but because of that, want to be their child’s best friend rather than disciplining their children. A permissive parent allows the child to get away with a lot of things that can actually keep them from positive growth and progression.
3. Neglectful. A neglectful parent is one with low standards and low love. These parents are not involved in their children’s lives at all. Unfortunately, there are too many neglectful parents, who leave their children feeling invisible and worthless.
4. Authoritative. An authoritative parent is one with high standards and high love. These are parents who are very involved in their children’s lives, but they also understand that the child must grow and cannot be perfect all at once. These parents have a growth mindset for their children, and encourage their children to do their best—nothing more and nothing less.
In general, there are five universal needs. Depending on what type of parenting style you or your parents have, you can determine which of the five are or are not being met. The five needs are:
1. Contact and belonging- this includes physical contact, eye contact, conversational contact, etc. This also includes children feeling like they’re contributing. If a child does not feel this need is being met, it usually comes out in undue attention seeking. If this is the case, a good parental approach is to offer contact freely and teach them to contribute to the family unit.
2. Power- this includes agency and experiencing natural consequences. If children do not feel this need is met, they usually will act out in rebellion and acting controlling. A good parenting approach for a child going through this is to treat them like they are agents and to help them understand that they will have their consequences and cannot avoid them.
3. Protection- this includes safety and security. The mistaken approach that children have is revenge. This usually means settling for fear of others if they don’t feel that they can gain respect. Parenting approaches for children like this is to teach them to be assertive. But in order for this to work, a parent must model, encourage, and accept it when the child is assertive to them. Those parents also must teach the child to forgive.
4. Withdrawal- The child must learn how to make time to re-calibrate. If not, the child may accept undue avoidance (putting off those things that are difficult). A parenting approach would be to teach children to take a break from whatever hard task is at hand, and then get back at it when they’re at peace and ready to work again.
5. Challenge- This has to do with trying things that are hard. If this isn’t in balance in a child, they will be involved in undue risk taking. Parents can model skill building and teaching their children to have courage to do what is hard in order to work with the child in overcoming the risk taking.
Parents do not have to be stuck in one parenting style or another. But parents must be aware of what they are doing and how they are acting in order to truly meet the needs of their children. Parents must be humble enough to change if needs be to create an environment where their children can grow and flourish.
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