What Parenting Style Works For Your Children

When you start looking at having a family it means that you start looking at how you are going to parent that family. The decision can be a tough one, and sometimes you might feel like you made the wrong decision. There are a few things that need to be kept in mind when choosing your parenting style.

First and foremost, the style has to work with your children. And equally as important is that the style works for you, the parents. The parents being on the same page and working together will help the children know where you stand.

Remember that choosing a parenting style does not limit you. Even though you are raising your children with one style in mind, each situation will require a look to see if another method will work better. Your parenting will be a combination of many parenting styles, there will just be a dominate one.

When you have a baby and you bring them home you may pick a parenting style that works great with that little infant, but as a toddler or preschooler it might not work as well. This is a time to reevaluate your parenting style to see if it suites your child still or if there is a need for change.

As your child ages you will watch them develop and grow. Sometimes with children there are developmental delays caused by any number of things. These may be another reason to go back and rethink your parenting style. If your style is too much for the child they will digress even more, if your style isn’t enough for the child then they may never recover. This is something that your child’s doctor will be able to make suggestions on.

You will find as your child ages that there will different points of maturity. Although they were mature for their age at four, when they turn nine they may have become more immature for their age. Parenting styles will affect a child’s maturity a lot. You may need to adjust your parenting to help your child develop maturity or so that they can utilize their maturity.

With each child in your family you will find that you need to adjust your parenting. If you have children with similar temperaments then you may use the same parenting for all of them, but you would be the exception to the rule. Most parents will modify their parenting style to accommodate each individual child. This helps each child grow and learn to their full potential. Being flexible is what parenting is all about!

One word of caution is that with each child that you have, make sure that you are comparing each child to each parenting style. If you are comparing the children to each other within a parenting style, then you are going to have a very ineffective parenting style. Make sure you are parenting each child as an individual.

Another thing to think about is parents that use an authoritarian parenting style are five times more likely to have an overweight or obese child. Permissive and uninvolved parents are three times more likely. Healthy children are most commonly from an authoritative parenting style. But that doesn’t make any style better or worse, those are just statistics.

Remember as you become a parent and you start to get practice that one situation doesn’t determine a parenting style, it’s the pattern of your reactions. Make sure that you are parenting the way that is best for you and especially good for your children.