Teach the Children.

FPP #6, Chapter 10 - Parents aren't perfect, and we learn over time what works and what doesn't. The difficulty is our children are individuals, with different skills, abilities, temperaments, and genetic makeup, All that interacts with our environment home, school, work, church and other organizations. Just from a parenting point of view, what works for one child may not work for another. Consider three parenting styles, while one is better than the others. As parents, we learn more toward either the first or second style. This information is straight out of the textbook.

The coercive/hostile or authoritarian style of parenting. This style is characterized by parents who deride, demean, or diminish children and teens by continually putting them in their place, putting them down, mocking them, or holding power over them emotionally or psychologically. It takes place in homes where there is a climate of hostility manifested by frequent spanking, yelling, criticizing, and forcing, and has been linked to many forms of antisocial, withdrawn, and delinquent behaviors in children and adolescents. Authoritarian parenting has also been associated with children believing they will get their way by using force with peers.

The permissive parenting style is characterized by parents who overindulge children or neglect them by leaving them to their own devices. This style includes a shirking of sacred parental responsibilities as parents fail to provide guidance and constraint when it is required for the child’s good. Modern-day prophets counsel parents to give and enforce reasonable limits to teach their children clear boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. In contrast to coercive parenting, where adult authority dominates excessively, Baumrind (1996b) notes that in the permissive style, children are primarily considered parental equals regarding rights, but not regarding responsibilities. Although permissive parents exert a degree of control over their children, they do so to a much lesser degree than coercive and authoritative parents. Permissive parents tend to avoid using their authority to control their children’s behavior, tolerate children’s impulses (including aggression), encourage children to make their own decisions without providing necessary parameters, and refrain from imposing structure on children’s time (such as establishing bedtime, mealtime, or limits on computer usage). They also keep restrictions, demands for mature behavior, and consequences for misbehavior at a minimum.

The optimal parenting style is the authoritative parenting style. This strategy fosters a positive emotional connection with children, provides for regulation that places fair and consistent limits on child behavior, and allows for reasonable child autonomy in decision making.

This style creates a positive emotional climate that helps children be more open to parental input and direction, and allows for parents to individualize child rearing as encouraged by Brigham Young when he enjoined parents to “study their [children’s] dispositions and their temperaments, and deal with them accordingly” (Widtsoe, 1978, p. 207).

Some children, for example, may require more limits, while others may respond better to more latitude, depending on their predispositions. Children and adolescents reared by authoritative parents tend to be better adjusted to school; are less aggressive and delinquent; are less likely to abuse drugs; are more friendly and accepted by peers; are more communicative, self-motivated, and academically inclined; and are more willing to abide by laws. They are also more capable of moral reasoning and are more self-controlled

For Latter-day Saint families, the implication is that such children are more willing to abide by and reap the blessings of spiritual laws as well. Positive parenting styles are likely more effective when parents are unified in their parenting efforts. In sum, authoritative parenting consists of three well-defined and researched characteristics: connection, regulation, and autonomy. These characteristics might also be referred to as love, limits, and latitude.

Research has shown that Latter-day Saint parents who take the time to become emotionally connected with their teens, set regulatory limits, and foster autonomy in ways described later are far more likely to have adolescents who are careful in their selection of peers, regardless of what part of the country they live. Children reared in these types of family environments, where prayer, scripture study, and religious values are stressed, were also more likely to internalize religiosity. Personal prayer and scripture study, as well as private spiritual experiences, were found to be a deterrent to delinquent behavior.

Activity 1 - What parenting style are you?

Activity - Sit down with your spouse and review how you're currently doing in regards to rearing your children. For newly-weds, it's time to prepare. Search on LDS.org for articles on parenting. Search for these parenting styles.

References

Hart, C. H., & Newell, L. D., & Haupt, J. H., (2016). Parenting with love, limitations, and latitudes: proclamation principles and supportive scholarship. In Hawkins, A. J., & Dollahite, D. C., & Draper, T. W., (Eds.), Success marriages and families – proclamation principles and research perspectives. pp. 103-117. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University