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Hello and welcome to Little Learners. In today's video I'm going to give you a brief overview of
the three main parenting styles, plus a kind of bonus parenting style as well, so that you can
understand the different types and what they might look like. I just want to start off by saying that
you do not, as a parent, have to subscribe to a particular parenting style. You do not have to
identify yourself as a particular type of parent but I think it's interesting to learn about these
different approaches to parenting and the kind of pros and cons that come with each of those. So if
you are interested in things like this then please give this video a ‘Like’ as it lets me know that
you enjoy videos such as this one and to keep making them. When we look at the different types
of parenting it has a lot to do with the level of control, level of affection, and how these kind of
play into everyday scenarios. Authoritarian Parenting. Authoritarian Parenting is also
sometimes known as kind of old-school parenting. This parenting style has a high level of control
from the parents and also demands respect from children for parents. So there's a high level of
control, high expectation of respect, there's kind of the 'do as I say not as I do' attitude and there
is often a very high expectation of what children are able to do, both physically and emotionally, and
these expectations are usually not age-appropriate, they're usually expecting children to
be little adults really and expecting them to be able to do things before they are developmentally
ready to do those things especially when it comes to emotional intelligence. For many authoritarian
parents this is just the way that they believe parenting should be done. They want the absolute
best for their children, they love their children and they have learnt throughout their own lives
or through literature that they've read or many different reasons can come into it that in order
to prepare your child for the real world we need to control everything that they do, we need to make
sure that they are doing as they are told and we should have very high expectations of them.
So a very quick example maybe you go out to a restaurant and you have a one-year-old at the
table and the one-year-old is throwing food on the floor. An Authoritarian Parent might expect that
child not to make lots of noise in the restaurant, not to throw their food on the floor, just having
these non-age related expectations. Now even though Authoritarian parents may love their children
there is often a lack of showing affection when it comes to Authoritarian Parenting because this
is often seen as a bit of a weakness. If a child is crying they might be told to stop, if a child
is upset they might be told to just get over it, not think about it anymore, and so children are
often not taught about how to regulate their own emotions and they are just taught that in order to
obtain affection from their parents or in order to obtain a connection with their parents they
must behave in a certain way. On the outside a child might look like a really well-behaved
child; they do as they're told all the time, they are extremely polite, but then on the inside they
may have very high anxiety, a lot of difficulty with building and maintaining relationships, and
less of an attachment with their caregiver than they would like. Moving on then to Permissive
Parenting. Permissive Parenting is kind of the opposite of Authoritarian Parenting. So Permissive
Parenting is about having very little control over children, allowing children to have the majority of
the control and showing lots of affection, but really just allowing children to have
all the freedom that they want and this can also carry over into situations where it might not be
safe for children to have certain controls like running into a busy road or accessing tools that
they are not developmentally able to look after safely like a pair of sharp scissors for example.
Now there are kind of two sides to Permissive Parenting I think. One is parents who are extremely
detached and don't want to be involved with their child and just allow their child to have freedom
because they don't want to deal with having to try and make boundaries and rules and try and have any
kind of control, and then we have the other side of permissive parenting where you have parents who
just love their children so much and respect their children so much that they either don't want to
upset their children ever, they don't want to say no, or they just want their children to have all
the freedom in the world and that's how they feel children will learn best. So it's certainly not a
case that all Permissive Parents don't care about their children or don't care about parenting, there
are definitely two sides to this and I think that that is a common misconception that all Permissive
Parents who just allow their children to have all the control don't care about their children but in
actual fact many of these parents care about their children so much and that's why they give lots
of control to their children. This Parenting Style also sometimes involves a very low expectation of
what children can do and what is age-appropriate, so maybe not giving their children the kind of
Independence that they are able to handle. So for example if a child is able to walk to the park
they might go in the push chair instead. That's a very simple example and of course though it's
not a one-size-fits-all but just to give you a bit of an example. Authoritative Parenting
on the other hand is kind of in the middle of these two I think Authoritative parenting can
often be confused with Authoritarian Parenting because of the words used there. It's also often
referred to as 'Gentle Parenting' and I know that Gentle Parenting has gained a lot of traction
over the last decade so if you would like a video about Gentle Parenting or Authoritative Parenting
then do let me know in the comments below. So Authoritative Parenting is to do with control
that is kind of shared, there's a bit of a balance of control between parent and child. The parent is
still mainly in control but they give the child control when appropriate, when they're able to.
There is also a really high level of affection and compassion, the age-related expectations for
children is usually fairly spot-on and children are encouraged to have Independence but there
are also very clear boundaries set. There is a big emphasis in Authoritative Parenting about
emotional intelligence, treating children with respect and knowing that respect is earnt
and it's all about kind of a mutual respect. Teaching children how to regulate their own
emotions, talking through their emotions and not punishing a child for having emotional outbursts,
knowing that those are normal and we can help children to work through those. So if we think
about each of these three types of parenting I'm going to give you some very simple examples of
what this might look like in different scenarios. Please remember that these are just generalised
examples and not necessarily specific to each parenting style but it may be helpful to kind
of illustrate how they might work. So if we are in a supermarket and a child has been asked to
stay with their parent when we're walking around the supermarket and the child keeps running off,
Authoritarian Parenting might look like shouting at the child, giving the child a time out or
telling the child that they won't be able to play with their toys when they get home. Having lots
of kind of consequences, punishments and really an immediate punishment for that behaviour.
Permissive parenting might look like not calling the child back, letting them run around the supermarket
and not knowing exactly what they're getting up to, allowing them to have that freedom but also
not setting any boundaries about that. There may have not even been the boundary set in
the first place to stay with the parent and the trolley. Authoritative parenting might look like
a child running off, the parent bringing them back and explaining to them, 'I've asked you to
stay with me and you've run away and this is why I've asked you to stay with me, these are
the reasons and I understand that you want to go off and look at things so tell me what you'd
like to go and look at and we can go and look at it together,' so it's kind of that mutual respect
there, creating that boundary of 'you must stay with your parent' but also respecting the fact
that a child has these desires to go and look at some other things and responding to that. Not
necessarily having to say 'no' completely but coming up with a bit of a creative 'yes'. Very
simple examples but hopefully that gives you an idea of what it might look like in practice.
I'm going to talk about over involved parenting or 'Helicopter Parenting' next. So this is more of a new
thing I suppose it's existed before but the term 'Helicopter Parenting' is newer and this
is to do with parents being overly involved in their child's lives and not allowing
that independence. So there's probably very high affection, there might be very high anxiety from
the parents perspective that they need to have this very well behaved child or they don't want
the child to have emotional outbursts or tantrums in public, there is a lot of pressure on parents to
look like the most amazing parent ever and the way that many parents view how they are judged is by
how their child looks in public, so if your child looks like they're really well behaved in public
that must mean that you're a really good parent. So Helicopter Parenting can look like a parent
jumping in and doing things for a child rather than letting them do it themselves, even though
they are able to do it themselves. Helicopter Parenting might be deciding things for your child,
not giving them the option to decide, and really just not giving the child any kind of independence
or choice because you're jumping in before they even get to do that themselves. As a parent I know
how much pressure is put on parents to get an 'A' in parenting and it's just not realistic because
- and I want to emphasise this - you cannot control a child. You cannot control a child. You as a person
cannot control 100% another person and I think that the idea that you can and should control
a child is where Authoritarian Parenting came from and the anxiety that comes with that can
cause Helicopter Parenting. It can also cause some cases of Permissive Parenting because parents are
so worried about being judged in public and their child having a tantrum in public and that making
them look like a bad parent, they don't intervene and let their child do what they want because as
long as they can keep them happy then it's fine. Now these are the main three - plus one - parenting
styles that we generally think about but of course they are by no means the only parenting styles
that exist and there are many different parenting styles that might incorporate different aspects
of these parenting styles or fall in between them in some cases. There may be some parents that take
a bit of one and a bit of another, there may be some parents who are an Authoritarian parent
one day and a Permissive parent the other day, because parenting is a roller coaster. But I think
it's really important to just remember that you cannot control a child, all you can do is give them
the tools to learn and to understand and regulate their own emotions and behaviour, support them and
be there for them and just know that as a parent if you love your child and want the best for them
you are doing the best you can, and for a lot of us the parenting style that we have, even if we don't
give it a name, has to do with how we were brought up ourselves. Either we had a really good childhood
and we use a lot of the parenting techniques that our parents used for us on our own children, or we
didn't have a very happy childhood and want to do things very differently to how our parents
parented us. So a lot of the time the way that we parent our children has to do with our own
insecurities anxieties or our own desires but above everything else we just want the best for
our children and we are all doing the best we can. If you've enjoyed this video please
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