Monday, November 1, 2010
Types of Parenting
In their book Parenting with Love and Logic, Dr. Cline and Mr. Fay say there are typically two types of parents - helicopters and drill sergeants. Helicopter parents think love means rotating their lives around their children. They hover over and rescue their children whenever trouble arises. They're forever running lunches, permission slips and homework assignments to school; pulling their kids out of jams and shielding them from teachers, playmates and other elements that appear hostile. Drill sergeant parents think love means being disciplined and acting right. If they bark and control the kids will turn out right. In other words, the kids are constantly told what to do. Is there a problem with either of these types? Which is better? Is there an alternative?
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I think you certainly want to protect your children from evil, and train them up in the Lord. However, not at the expense of teaching your children how to protect themselves - learning right from wrong. As a teacher I ee quite a bit of the helicopter parent. They may mean to do well by protecting their child, but what they are in fact doing is not allowing their child to learn from their own mistakes. Which begs the question, "What mistakes do you allow your children to learn from on their own and which mistakes do you protect them from?"
ReplyDeleteGood question. Even Cline and Fay admit there's no surefire, absolute, guaranteed money back approach in raising responsible children. They do offer Love and Logic Tip #1 - When our gut talks our head listens.
ReplyDelete"Allowing kids to fail with love, letting the SLO's (Significant Learning Opportunities) do the teaching, treating themselves right as a way of modeling healthy adult behavior - these principles can go against the parental grain. Most of us raise our children based on our gut reactions. But how do we know whether such responses are trustworthy or just the result of bad lasagna? Actually, adult "gut reactions" are the result of childhood responses to family emotions and interactions. Therefore, "gut feel" is more valid if we had a happy childhood and presently have peaceful and rewarding relationships at home and elsewhere. Sure we all will "nerd out" more often with children if our own childhood and/or present home life are in turmoil, but generally our actions with our kids will be fine. If, on the other hand, we react to our childhood by saying, "I sure want to do things differently with my kid than my mom and dad did with me", then our gut reactions will probably be untrustworthy and faulty. Those instinctive reactions come from our parents - and we hated the way they parented us! Don't be alarmed if you fell uneasy with some of the techniques of Cline and Fay. In fact, if you want to raise your kids in ways different from the way you were raised, your uneasiness probably confirms that you're on the right track."
I might add one from my experience - allow your kids to see/hear your decision making process. When my oldest son was a teen his youth group at church was doing some sort of carnival thing at church one Sunday night. He was supposed to build some type of game for the event. Of course, he never said anything to me until mid-afternoon of the Sunday of the event. I asked him what made him think I could magically come up with an idea, find the materials and ultimately produce a product in a couple of hours. He said "you always do. I've seen you do it." What I realized is that he watched me take materials and produce something in a couple of hours but had no concept of the fact that I had hatched the idea in my mind some time before that, procured the materials prior to and had a complete thought out process in my mind that only then was able to be executed with the materials and time at hand. Some of us older guys were brought up in a generation and by a generation that didn't communicate much and that certainly contributed to my approach with my sons. I spent a lot of time working alongside my Dad and Grandpa without saying a word. Maybe your generation can do better. Oh yeah.......pray alot!
As a parent with decades of experience, one thing I know is that one cannot protect one's children from mistakes. They will make them - some quite serious. What we can do is make sure we help them learn/profit from that mistake, llove them through it, and pray, pray, pray.
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