We need to remember as parents that everything we do affects our children. I'm Nicholeen Peck,
I'm a parenting expert. And in this video, we're going to be talking all about
"How does permissive parenting affect the child?"
We've all seen permissive parenting. And so, let's talk about what the effects are. I'm going to
share with you a list of those effects and then I've got some good news for you at the end. So,
don't get too discouraged. This is not going to be an exhaustive list. I could talk about the effects
of permissive parenting on our children for a very long time. I've been working with parents all over
the world since 1999 and I have seen what effects permissive parenting have. So, let's just dive
in. Lack of boundaries. Oftentimes children who have been parented in a permissive way
have not been corrected enough and so they don't have good boundaries. They don't know when to stop
themselves. This leads me to another thing. Oftentimes, they have bad social skills. So,
parents usually are letting them run loose with their friends all the time because maybe they feel
like that's what would make the child happy they feel like they need more social, more social. But
children should be trained socially by people who are successful socially which is their parents,
hopefully. If a parent trains their child socially, then the child will have better social
success. So, I usually see a lot of children that struggle socially. Another thing that
children who've been raised in a permissive way experience is higher levels of anxiety,
depression, feeling like they're not enough. So, parents often just let the child
excel however they're going to excel and they tell them how amazing they are all the time. They tell
them maybe how perfect or how gorgeous or all of these inflated type praises that they give. But
the child really knows the truth. They know that they aren't conquering a lot of things in their
life that they feel like they should. So, things get down and darker for them a lot quicker. Now,
this isn't to say that anxiety or depression or a sense of feeling of inadequacy or worthlessness
comes from permissive parenting all of the time. Obviously, there can be other origins for any of
these things on the list. But I've noticed that there is a link to the things that I'm sharing on
this list and permissive parenting. Because permissive parents indulge the child, then
everything becomes about the self. When someone is obsessed with how they feel and what they want
because they normally get what they want, then that child becomes selfish. It shouldn't surprise
us then that one of the results for permissive parenting is actually entitlement. A child feels
they're entitled to certain kinds of treatments. They might declare their rights or things that
they feel like they get and they don't understand authority because their parents have not practiced
good parental authority. This means they're going to have general lack of respect for other people
around them which is going to lead to behavior problems in their future. Part of entitlement
is manipulation. So, lots of times children who've been indulged they complain a lot more.
And they whine and they mope when they don't get their way. They can't accept simple no answers
that sometimes things just don't go your way or you're not perfect at everything that you try.
Another thing that happens because of the indulgence of many permissive parents is that
children actually become addicted to focusing on their feelings. How they feel becomes the
highest priority. They also can become addicted to ease which leads to laziness. And laziness is
an increasing problem among young people nowadays. They just aren't getting the opportunity to work
hard and to follow through. Because oftentimes permissive parents go, "Well, you don't want to
keep doing those piano lessons? Fine. I'll save my own money." And they are done with paying out
something for their child. They expect results or they take the thing away. And even though
that doesn't seem indulgent it is because it's teaching the child not to stick to something,
not to follow through, not to do hard things. Another effect that people might not realize is
people who've been parented permissively often times feel isolated and alone. They may be
surrounded by peers all the time. They may be in cars with their parents and going places all the
time. But because everything is revolving around the management of the details in the life of the
child, the child doesn't get what they really need which is a deep connection to parents, some good
deep discussion, some real-life connection in communication. So, then they feel lonely.
And oftentimes they even feel like someone doesn't care about them. Another effect is children often
lack respect for authority because they haven't had a good authority figure. No one has been
presenting themselves as the parental authority so they assume they are the authority. In fact,
oftentimes the parents unknowingly turn the child into the authority by allowing the child to make
all their decisions for their own life themselves. Well, why does a child need a parent if the
child's already the authority? You see the flaw in that type of reasoning. Parents have to maintain
leadership in order to help their children understand more about the learning process,
who they are and which direction would be best for them. Speaking of authority, when a person lacks
respect for their parental authority, guess what? They just lack respect for authority in general.
So, this usually means that they get in trouble. You're going to see more problems at school,
more problems sassing off to grandparents or other adults in their lives. They just won't see any
type of authority. Whether it's legal authority, church authority or familial or social authority
as anybody that should have authority over them. Now, they know they truly don't know everything
but they've pretty much been told from the example of the permissive parenting that the parents don't
know anything either. I honestly hate to have this negative list keep going but there are a few
more things that I think would be helpful and then we'll get to something that's going to give you a
little bit more hope. I promise. Another effect of permissive parenting is that children often have
a bad bond with their family members. So, when you don't respect other people's authority or
you don't even acknowledge any authority, then what happens is all bonds end up damaged. So,
this type of dysfunction is one of the things that leads to people feeling so alone. Even in
their own families and in their own home. In fact, oftentimes permissive parents will allow there to
be levels of sibling rivalry and contention. They'll assume that that's normal. Well,
I can tell you it does not have to be normal. My children are the very best of friends with each
other. Literally, the best of friends. And that's because I decided that was going to be part of
our family culture when they were very little. In fact, they didn't get the opportunity to play with
other children unless their family relationships and their sibling relationships were good first.
We just don't branch out into the world unless we've got the things at home settled. So,
people who permissively parent oftentimes put social things and things on the to-do list,
extracurricular things as a higher priority than what's happening in the family and in the home.
They would say their top priority is family but their time does not necessarily reflect that.
Children that have been raised in a permissive way often lack foresight. So, that's another
thing that they are lacking. They don't look ahead. Because if everything is about how you
feel and about yourself and about what you want next and what you want someone to do for you, then
you don't really spend much time looking ahead who you're becoming and what your future life is
going to be like. It shouldn't surprise us at all right now that we're having a failure to launch
problem where children are not leaving their homes once they reach adulthood. That's because they
weren't given the opportunity to expand their foresight to create a vision for their future.
An important part of a really good, traditional, strict self-governed family is creating a unified
vision of where the family's headed. Another common side effect of permissive parenting is
a person develops a bad work ethic. This means they end up with follow-through problems.
They don't do what they say they're going to do. Something always gets in the way.
Maybe they feel a certain way, they didn't get a good night's sleep. There's always some excuse.
There's some reason. Because one of the reasons that the parents didn't step up is because the
parents were overwhelmed by things happening in their own lives. So, the children are
running the roost and getting whatever they want. But the parents usually stay okay with it because
they get to do whatever they want to. And that feels pretty nice especially if you're overwhelmed
or if you've got something big that you're going through. In fact, that does bring me to a point
and that is that many people resort to permissive parenting when they're overwhelmed when they're
stressed when they have a hardship that they're going through. It's kind of like a default type
parenting where they go through the motions, they get the places the people where they need to go,
they make sure everybody gets food but like they don't really parent. Those things are
fulfilling basic needs, like basic biological needs. But definitely not spiritual needs or
bonding and connection needs that a child has. And so, you have to watch out for yourself
falling into the trap of permissive parenting just because you're going through a hard time.
Although you know what? If it's happened before and you've gone through a hard time and you've
fallen into a permissive parenting trap, that's quite a mouthful to say, you know? Anyway,
then don't be too hard on yourself. Just change now. It's okay. You don't have to keep things
the way that they were. Another characteristic of a child that's been raised by a permissive family
is they often want to be babied. So, that's where a lot of whininess comes in and they
feel like they need to pull away or shy away from hard things. So, are you ready for the good news?
Because I definitely like to give you some good news after this big list.
I hope you know that i don't want you to beat yourself up. Just because I'm being honest and
sharing my observations that I've seen over the course of 20 some odd years with parents
who are trying their best giving their all, their hearts truly do belong to their children
but they've fallen into permissive parenting traps. Just because I'm sharing that with you
doesn't mean that I think bad of you if you've fallen into some of those traps too. And you
shouldn't think bad of yourself. Just make the change now. So, here's the good news: The good
news is you can learn self-mastery for yourself and you can teach your children self-government.
So, I teach a program called Teaching Self-Government. We have books and trainings. Our
online teaching self-government parenting course is incredibly complete. It's in-depth. It will
take you step by step through that fine tuning that's required to switch from being a permissive
parent to being an assertive self-governed parent. Everyone can make that shift. It requires a change
of heart and it requires some new skills. But I help you with the skills and the heart part
just comes naturally. If you've liked this video all about the effects of permissive parenting,
I know you're going to love my next video which is How Do You Increase Emotional Maturity in a Child?
So, click on that video now because that's what we're really talking about when we're
talking about helping a person transition from these negative effects to being self-governed.