World Proof Your Kids
My kids are growing up fast and so I’ve picked up Tim Sisemore’s excellent book “World-Proof Your Kids” again. I’ve found it a really useful corrective and especially this section on reactive verses authoritative parenting. It’s so easy, in the busyness of a new life and post, to not give the kids the parenting they need. This is a real rebuke to me:
Reactive parenting focuses on surviving the stress of life. The day has too much in it already to spare time for children’s problems, so they are met with little patience. Often such parenting is done in stress-filled anger, the parent reacting excessively to the provocation of the child. This may lead to the parent feeling guilt and a sense of needing to make it up to the child, thus beginning a pattern of erratic angry explosions followed by permissiveness. When we stop to look at this, no one sees this as healthy or biblical. Nonetheless, the reactive parenting style captures the predominant theme in parenting today: giving consequences for misbehaviour.
Sisemore goes on to outline the relationship between nurture and control. The diagram below shows four parenting styles (neglectful, indulgent, authoritarian and authoritative) and the resulting behavioural patterns in the kids:
I have just done a parenting course called Building Families for Life at the YM working on the same principles. It is an excellent course presented by Christians and embodying Christian values.