• Babies
• Building a Family
• Children
• General Parenting
• Newborns
• Teenagers
• Toddlers
• Pregnancy

Finding Your Parenting Style

Finding your disciplining style

Finding Your Parenting Style

Womanly Wisdom

As your child becomes proficient in language, you'll find that it's easier to get her to follow your rules if you take the time to explain, in simple terms, why they're for her own good. Children want respect, too, and by explaining your rules you are showing her the kind of respect you want her to learn to give to you.

Although there is no standard set of rules for us to work with as parents, there are lots of wonderful books that provide concrete tips on everything from managing your home to raising your child. In the end, however, you can't raise a child by the book.

You're going to have to work out a style of your very own, building it up from everything you've experienced and observed throughout your own life. You need to have the confidence to listen to your own heart when it comes to raising your children. This can be hard to do—it means risking criticism when your choices differ from what others think you should do. But it's the approach that is most likely to be successful, because it involves being true to yourself and your values. Tap into your own experiences as a child—remembering not just how your mom handled situations but how you, as a child, felt at the time.

Discipline or Punishment?

One of the central issues in childrearing today is how to instill discipline. It used to be easy: Mom said, “Go get the stick” or Dad decided it was time to take a trip out behind the barn with a switch. There wasn't a behavioral problem around that parents couldn't solve with a few well-placed wallops.

Those days are gone. We now understand that when you strike a child you only create fear and humiliation. When you use pain and fear to break the spirit of a child, you give up any chance of earning the respect you think you deserve. What you gain in its place is a very angry child who has learned not to trust the people he loves the most.

When You Have to Say “No”

We need to find alternative ways to maintain appropriate boundaries for our children's behavior. Without these boundaries, children can be amazingly disrespectful and tyrannical. To set limits you must learn how to use the power of a well-timed “no.”

A “no” can be hard to enforce. If your child is a glib talker, he's probably got a million arguments why your every “no” should turn into a “yes.” And it can be exhausting to hold fast in the face of a child's concerted efforts to change your mind. But stick to your guns! Each time you reverse a “no” you chip away at your credibility.

Momma Said There'd Be Days Like This

When my daughter was little I found it hard to enforce rules. By her preteen years she'd become impossible to control. We could have gone on forever like that, but one day I had a real breakthrough. Just before a planned family trip to Disney World, she misbehaved badly. I told her she couldn't come on the trip if she didn't change her behavior. She didn't believe I'd go through with the punishment—and I must admit, it was hard. But I held firm. We went, and she stayed home. I thought she would hate me forever, but our relationship took a turn for the better from that day forward.

It's Intuitive, Not Permissive

Intuitive mothering doesn't mean that you set no rules for your child. After all, children need limits to feel that life is not hurtling out of control. Intuitive mothering just means that you must develop and apply the rules of your household according to your own internal sense of what is right and wrong. You still need to learn to set limits and stick with them.

Letting kids be kids

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Parenting styles are very personal—what works for you may not be your neighbor's cup of tea. Some mothers think it's important to include their children in most aspects of their adult lives. They bring the children to adult gatherings, to restaurants, and so forth. This style has some very positive points. The child learns how to relate to adults, and the adults get to enjoy the best of both worlds: an active social life that doesn't require them to spend time away from their children.

Other parents may choose to reserve some of their social time for themselves, without children around. This, too, is a valid option. It has the benefit of allowing parents some private time to recharge their batteries after a hectic week of child-centered living, and gives them a chance to reconnect in their relationship.

Whichever style suits you, it's important to give your child the sense that she is valued by adults, and not someone who can simply be banished from the main action. So even if you choose to reserve some of your social life as for adults only, it's a good idea to include your children periodically in some of your gatherings. That way they'll learn how to interact with grown-ups, and will feel more plugged into your life. In addition, they'll learn an important lesson in diversity.

Mom Alert!

To develop adequate social skills, your child really needs to participate in the give-and-take of relationships with children her own age. If you live in an area where few children live nearby, make an effort to hook up with a play group, or take regular trips to a local park where she'll have a chance to interact with other kids.

It Takes a Village…

The absence of a standard set of child-raising rules for all of us to consult is only one of the reasons that bringing up children today seems more difficult than it was for our parents' generation. Another, and equally problematic, trend has been the break-up of the extended family. The little nuclear group of Mom, Dad, and the children often lives far from the aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas who once were part of the neighborhood.

It's not hard to find playmates for your school-age child, but it is often difficult to expose her to a diverse range of people—diverse in age, interests, backgrounds, and styles. This exposure can be crucial: Children who learn to appreciate what is good in different types of people learn also to appreciate what's unique in themselves.

Defining Your Parenting Goals

You need to develop your own parenting style, one that suits your personality, interests, and values. But it's equally important that you develop a firm understanding of your parenting goals. Earlier generations of parents focused on obedience, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. A good child was a quiet, well-behaved one.

Today, we generally set our goals a little higher. Sure, none of us want our children to terrorize everyone and run wild. But we don't want their good behavior to come at the expense of their creativity and enthusiasm. We believe that childhood is a time for a child to be a child—that it's unnatural to try to make them conform completely to adult standards of behavior.

Womanly Wisdom

If children are valued they will learn to value others. Set limits, stick to them, but make all decisions with love.

Combining these two desires—for reasonably well-behaved children who also feel free to express their individuality—can be difficult. And it sometimes requires effort on your part to pull it off. For example, you need to recognize that certain places are not necessarily appropriate for children. Children do, after all, get bored—and when they're bored they're likely to act up and make noise. This is understandably unwelcome at the opera, or in a romantic restaurant. On the other hand, the only way children can learn to interact with the world outside the family is through immersion in it. They should be welcome in such reasonable venues as family restaurants, grocery stores, and similar places.