Parenting With Respect and Responsibility

Parenting With Respect and Responsibility

Then and Now Disciplinary Actions

Rachel Oesterreich, Yahoo Contributor Network

Gone are the days of parenting when discipline was less about electronics and more about our interaction with other human beings. Many years ago when a child was disciplined, the parent had few options to choose from such as, spanking, grounded from outdoor activities, grounded to their bedroom (which did not hold a TV even back then), and writing sentences.

Today, there are so many different things that could be taken and adjusted during their discipline period, but is it enough? We ground our children from TV, gaming counsels, computer, tablet, and many more electronic devices our society currently has available to us. In many instances nowadays if you told them they were to be grounded from going outdoors to play or from playing with their friends in the neighborhood this would not faze them. How we have shaped our generations plays a big role in the decisions that are later made for our society all together.

Being a parent is a 24/7 job that will be forever evolving into new and better ways to administer the parenting style. The most effective style of parenting in the eyes of many mental health care professionals is the authoritative child rearing practice. In this practice parents are highly involved in their children's lives; their acceptance and involvement is warm, responsive, patient, and sensitive to a child's needs. Parents will also practice responsible demands and consistently enforces control and responsibility (Berk, 2010). We are humans, and by nature we make mistakes and wrong choices. Parenting is not something you are going to be 100% perfect at all the time. The important thing to remember when encountering different situations is to slow down and take that situation on step by step; this allows us to enforce authoritative parenting steps rather than making hast reactions.

It has been shown in longitudinal research studies that this parenting practice promotes maturity and adjustment throughout the child's life. Over time, the parent/child relationship that has been structured upon tends to drift in opposite directions. By being patient and using other attributes of this child rearing style can lead to a smoother transition in the parent/child relationship into adulthood (Berk, 2010).

References:

Berk, L. (2010) Exploring Lifespan Development., (2nd ed.) Pearson Education, Boston, MA