Recognize Yourself in These Parenting Behaviors?

Researchers and family therapists have noted a trend toward several extremes when it comes to how we parent today. We’re not all skewed one way or the other, but here’s a look at the kinds of extremes they’ve observed and how they affect kids:

Permissive

Rather than concerns that today’s kids are being “spoiled” materially, sociologist William Doherty, Ph.D., and others notice parents excusing their children’s disregard for rules and other out-of-line behavior. For example:

• Kids using the dentist’s waiting room as a jungle gym while parents page nonchalantly through a magazine.

• Children shrieking until they get their way, allowed to disrupt a school play or other event, instead of being removed from the setting.

• Parents seeking exceptions for their kids in defense of their individuality.

Endless negotiation between parent and child is a major part of this permissive trend. (“You don’t want to leave the park now? How about in a half hour?”) Yet there are ground rules, or should be, points out Jane Nelsen, Ed.D., author of the Positive Discipline series of books. Bedtime, homework and manners are not topics to be debated with a child; they’re simply the rules, Nelsen says.

Permissive parents often worry that they’ll quash a child’s self-esteem if they simply say “No!” and cut off further debate. But observers say that concern has gone too far.

“In past generations, kids were seen as little blobs until they reached adulthood,” Doherty says. Now, many parents have bent too far the other way, he adds. “We have no models for seeing children as individuals with talents to be cultivatedand reared to be responsible citizens of their family and community.”

Demanding

While permissiveness – or lack of parental expectations – is occurring in some realms, there’s an overblown sense of expectation in others. This “hyper-parenting,” as historian Steven Mintz, Ph.D., calls it, results in children being pushed to do too much, too soon in order to excel. Their every moment is scheduled to accrue skills in academics, athletics, music or art. These kids might be held to lower expectations for behavior, but much higher standards for achievement, he notes.