To learn about your parenting style and to offer an opportunity to have a closer, more rewarding relationship with your children and adolescents.
If you are having trouble with your kids or are trying to co-parent and it isn’t working well, the style of parenting you are using may be why. Take the following Parent Quiz.
Parent Quiz
Rate the following on a scale of 1 to 3 as to whether it represents your style of parenting:
1. All the time
2. Sometimes
3. Never
“My child is my best friend! All his or her friends love me because I really understand them. They love coming over here because I give them a lot of freedom and space.” (However, sometimes I wonder if I am too lenient and too permissive.)
Parents are usually fearful of their kids. They are afraid to say no because their child won’t like them.__________
“My child is my ‘archenemy.’ He or she says that he or she hates me and that I don’t get him or her, and he or she is either in his or her room or at a friend’s house. I don’t know anything about his or her life.” (Am I too hard on my child? He or she is always in trouble with us, and we are all miserable.)
Archenemy parents are very strict and often over punish and over consequence. They are afraid that their child will grow up and be a really, really bad person._____
The thing that both of these types of parents have in common is guilt.
Try the following to gain a balanced relationship with your child:
• Forget about being best friends with your child, but do get to know their friends and the parents of their friends.
• Do let your son or daughter have friends over. Give your child space, but be around and aware. Have a set of rules of which you both are aware. Make the consequences for failing to obey these rules available.
• Draw up a contract/agreement of what is expected and what will result if the contract is broken.
• Hold your child accountable for respectful behavior, and correct every time him or her when you notice.
• Remain interested in your child’s life, but let him or her have a life—don’t smother him or her.
And aim for this:
For the most part, I know what is going on in my kid’s life. I know most of his or her friends, and my kid respects most of my rules most of the time.