S/O Parental authority

[LucyStoner]

I think part of the confusion here, Tsuga, is that you are ascribing something to "gentle parenting" that comes more from your own experience with reading, from the sounds of it, attachment parenting books like those by Sears and not factoring in that it's a lot more varied than that. Attachment parenting is not the be all and end of non-coercive or gentle parenting, nor is AP synonymous with gentle parenting. On a Venn diagram, there's some overlap but they aren't the same circle. And certainly it's not the same circle as permissive parenting or neglectful parenting.

[LucyStoner]

I like that understanding!! We apply it too if things get too out of control. I wish my kids were more orderly, it's not too bad, but if I don't assign keeping their room tidy as a chore they just won't. Maybe someday?

My kids made a list of things they need and want to do each day and made their own magnet to do/done boards. While I suggested it, it was a collaboration and they each remembered to put their jobs on their boards.

 

I am getting the impression that some people think that rejecting an authoritarian or rules/obedience based model means anarchy or no one does jack sh!t. ;). In practice for me, that is not at all the case.

[8circles]

I think the point about the knives has been twisted a little bit.

 

When your child is doing something dangerous, you have to intervene.  Taking a knife away from a child who is not acting responsibly with it is not "demanding obedience", it is keeping the child and others safe.  There is no punishment, there is no judgement, there is no demanding obedience.  There is only keeping your child safe.  It doesn't go against gentle parenting.  

[8circles]

What you're saying is that if what worked for you doesn't work for me, there's something wrong with me.

 

I don't agree.

 

I know my kids are super strong, even atypical, but I don't think "not responding to dialogue at the age of two" is a sign of something wrong, just like not learning to read at five is not a sign of something wrong, and not being able to ride a bike at three is not a sign of something wrong.

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with needing to set firm explicit boundaries and preparing to enforce them (humanely, but firmly) if they are rejected.

 

There is something wrong with saying, my kid could do X, Y, and Z and if yours couldn't then yours has the problem.

 

Incidentally I did not mean to imply your kids were not lovely previously but that gentle discipline doesn't necessarily result in kids who don't get social norms. Some learn by example. Some by explanation. Still others learn by banging their heads against the wall.

 

I'm the wall.

 

Tsuga, I think you need to step back and re-assess how you look at your own experience.

 

You have posted before about your marital history and how traumatic it was.  It seems like maybe there could have been other factors in the relationship with your children besides simply the immediate interractions which you have posted about.  

[LucyStoner]

I think the point about the knives has been twisted a little bit.

 

When your child is doing something dangerous, you have to intervene. Taking a knife away from a child who is not acting responsibly with it is not "demanding obedience", it is keeping the child and others safe. There is no punishment, there is no judgement, there is no demanding obedience. There is only keeping your child safe. It doesn't go against gentle parenting.

Yep.

 

It's about teaching responsibility and respect for others. Your rights end where other people's rights begin. We all have the right to NOT BE STABBED so ergo you don't have a right to be dangerous or reckless with knives.

 

Caps are for humor. ;)

[creekland]

I am getting the impression that some people think that rejecting an authoritarian or rules/obedience based model means anarchy or no one does jack sh!t. ;). In practice for me, that is not at all the case.

 

My kids grew up on a farm and plenty of our vacations were camping trips.  Between the two, they've done far more chores than the average male I see in our local high school.  They still help out a ton when they come back home - everything from feeding critters to fixing fence, hacking weeds, or working in our garden.  There are also times when they were cleaning chickens/deer/fish or similar too.  Then they helped with laundry and dishes.  When camping, the guys learned early on how to set up and take down our tent and pack our vehicle.

 

How many times do I recall arguing with them about doing a chore?  Absolutely none.  We did plenty together as a team.  We also divided and conquered plenty of others.  If someone was gone or sick or had a bit of other stuff to do, then the rest of us pitched in without them.

 

Even my non-compliant guy had no problems pitching in as a team member.  Being a full fledged "your opinions matter" team member is something most kids like.  We've changed some of our ways of doing things due to good ideas our guys have had along the way.  Their thoughts really do count.  

 

Being a minion always told what to do and how to do it isn't the same.

 

If we were cleaning our house due to a visitor coming, everyone pitched in with no complaints too.  If I told my (two messy) guys they had to clean their rooms regularly for no particular reason, that's when there was resistance or general non-compliance.  They saw no purpose in a clean room just because it was my preference.  They wouldn't care if I kept mine clean...  Gross with food, etc, was different.  They didn't want to attract mice any more than we did - a good reason to not leave food around.

[mamiof5]

lol, my ds practices soccer tricks indoors ( it's really hot here!) I guess it's bad, but not as bad as drugs :)

Lol! Ours does too...we are OK with a softer ball...he likes practicing his football tactics inside. Kind of backfired on us the other day though, he kicked his actual football (full strenght)...we are lucky a big mirror didn't get chattered!

[LucyStoner]

We live in a small apartment and I have a penchant for hanging pictures and paintings on the wall. We have a reasonably nice collection of art. If anyone of us threw a ball heavier than a bouncy ball or a beach ball, we'd probably break something someone didn't want to break. There's open space outside so that is where we use balls. If we had an open rec room, I might feel differently.

[Pen]

"Baby, please stop throwing that knife. It's not a toy," that they at a bare minimum listen. 

 

 

If the knife in question were a lightweight plastic table knife, and the issue were something like not getting it dirty or broken because it is needed for dinner, but unlikely to hurt anyone or anything, then I might say something like the sentence above.

 

For a knife that were heavier or sharper than that, I would be stopping the action first, no 'please,' no 'baby,' and no explanations until the action has stopped.  I don't need to be listened to with something like that, but rather need the action to stop for safety reasons. And as an authoritative rather than permissive parent the determination that something is a safety issue, thus non-negotiable is mine to make.

 

Then I would afterwards explain why it is not okay, and work on some relationship repair if necessary.  If with my more developed prefrontal cortex I know that the behavior with the knife is potentially dangerous or destructive, I am going to stop that, and at that point I would be authoritatively telling the child what to do, since obviously if the child had known or understood he/she would already not be throwing the knife.

 

Now, if the child were older and later after the action that I found a safety issue had stopped, he or she wanted to enter a negotiation about how they were wanting to learn to throw a knife at a target, like Halt and Will (characters in Ranger's Apprentice), I might be willing to listen and to find a safe compromise of how and where and with what knife that could be done. Perhaps.

 

 

 

My ds was at a school for a while where the teachers felt they needed to say things,  in a sing song little happy voice, like, "Now, Nickie, sweetie, in this class we do not not stab each other with knives.  Now, Nickie, sweetie, in this class we do not hit each other over the head with a brick, either."  I don't think going to the old approach of whipping was called for, but a no-nonsense, stop the kid from the violent behavior instead of ineffectively pleading with the kid while he or she escalated the behavior certainly was. And it seemed like the kids were extremely needy for a firm boundary, and pushing harder and harder seeking it.

[LucyStoner]

To clarify, this was in the past. Ages 16 months to about 3.5. Then finally I started to see reason in their eyes.

You know, I think this part needs to be highlighted.

 

You are discussing the application of a different model for parenting that applies to nearly 2 decades of active parenting through the lens of your reactions and interactions with toddlers and young preschool aged children. 3 year olds are tiny balls of emotions and needs. They are infants with legs who can walk.

 

What you dismissed as having tried for instance with gimmes and allowances? It's wholly developmentally impossible for average 2 year olds to fully grasp the concept of money or their own spending. That's something you ease into with older kids, 4-6 is more typical. 2 year olds whining for crap at the store? One just leaves the store with the screaming child or, resorts, as hundreds of thousands of other parents do or dream of doing, to shopping without kids whenever possible or shopping exclusively online, lol. One simply does not have sharp knives where 2 year olds can get them anymore than one just simply walks into Mordor.

 

If authoritarian parenting worked for your family by age 3.5, that's great. Still, that it worked for you so young SO TOTALLY undermines your claim that your children are much harder to parent than average. I'm sorry, you do not have any frame of reference to understand what I am even talking about with respect to non-coercive, non-hierarchal parenting of a special needs child or really any child older than 3 or 4. That you posted repeatedly condemning the choices of parents using these techniques with older children and comparing them to your impossible sounding children without clarifying you were discussing *your children as toddlers*makes it really difficult to follow your claims and logic.

[Pen]

I missed that part of the quote, didn't realize toddlers were the issue.  Thanks for clarifying.

[creekland]

My ds was at a school for a while where the teachers felt they needed to say things,  in a sing song little happy voice, like, "Now, Nickie, sweetie, in this class we do not not stab each other with knives.  Now, Nickie, sweetie, in this class we do not hit each other over the head with a brick, either."  I don't think going to the old approach of whipping was called for, but a no-nonsense, stop the kid from the violent behavior instead of ineffectively pleading with the kid while he or she escalated the behavior certainly was. 

 

Can't say I use a sing song little happy voice, but one of my main ways of changing behavior in my class comes from something like this:

 

"Hey Nick, how did you manage to make it to 10th grade and not figure out that hitting others with a brick is wrong?"

 

Kids will snicker.  Nick never repeats the behavior and almost always apologizes.

 

There's never a need to address it again - and there's rarely a need to address anything similar with any other student either.

 

Regardless of how they act anywhere else with anyone else, kids at the age I work with them really do know how to behave in society unless they are not NT or are on drugs.  They only need to think about their actions and how they are perceived.

[mamiof5]

We live in a small apartment and I have a penchant for hanging pictures and paintings on the wall. We have a reasonably nice collection of art. If anyone of us threw a ball heavier than a bouncy ball or a beach ball, we'd probably break something someone didn't want to break. There's open space outside so that is where we use balls. If we had an open rec room, I might feel differently.

We have allowed soft (like stuffed animals) footballs. Beware of bouncy balls...they can also cause damage if thrown directly or bounced too hard (had a large glass on a picture frame cracked like that) ;P

[mamiof5]

My ds was at a school for a while where the teachers felt they needed to say things, in a sing song little happy voice, like, "Now, Nickie, sweetie, in this class we do not not stab each other with knives. Now, Nickie, sweetie, in this class we do not hit each other over the head with a brick, either." I don't think going to the old approach of whipping was called for, but a no-nonsense, stop the kid from the violent behavior instead of ineffectively pleading with the kid while he or she escalated the behavior certainly was. And it seemed like the kids were extremely needy for a firm boundary, and pushing harder and harder seeking it.

I have seen this! Not sure if the sing song happy screechy voice causes the opposite effect?? Haven't seen it working at all...and yes, if anything the child turns around and does it again, or even harder (whatever they were asked not to do)

[LucyStoner]

We have allowed soft (like stuffed animals) footballs. Beware of bouncy balls...they can also cause damage if thrown directly or bounced too hard (had a large glass on a picture frame cracked like that) ;P

I'm probably the one most likely to throw a ball inside. #fanciesherselfaballer

 

But I learned my lesson. Mostly.

[LucyStoner]

I have seen this! Not sure if the sing song happy screechy voice causes the opposite effect?? Haven't seen it working at all...and yes, if anything the child turns around and does it again, or even harder (whatever they were asked not to do)

I assure you I do not have a sing songy voice. Some people have bitchy resting face. I have bitchy default tone. I have to watch it.

[IsabelC]

I'm not in the mood to debate parenting style (It's a hot day here!), but Bitchy Default Tone LOL I'm pretty sure I have that too ;)

And I did, a long time ago, attend a playgroup in which the 'chirpy falling minor third call' was so ubiquitous that they probably *would* have used it to attempt to circumvent a stabbing incident.

[Bluegoat]

Hmm. Still not sure how a hierarchy orientation can be both biological and cultural. 

 

I think it probably needs to be one or the other, and I'd lean to biological, with culture biasing the expression.

 

If people do have variations in the mental architecture - different basic tendencies - it makes sense that there would be plenty of families who simply do not have an obedience orientation, who find other ways of raising good, kind and healthy children.

 

Well, I think that's more or less what I was getting at.  If you did some sort of leaving a bunch of ten year old on an island, they would develop a hierarchy.  But under normal conditions, you'll see people express hierarchy according to the cultural norms of their society.

 

Even societies that look to create egalitarian or democratic or consensus based systems do so through the creation of a hierarchy and a recognition of authority residing in some body or process. 

[Bluegoat]

Do we define authority as having more experience in the world and using that experience in a responsible manner ? If we define authority this way, then this is what I claim re my children - mostly when they are small, and mostly in situations of safety. 

 

I am explicit, especially when children are small, about my greater experience, but extremely light in my application of said experience. 

 

My only 'authority' as I see it, is a greater range of experience, and the consequences attached. 

 

As children grow, they have their own store of experience. Mine is always greater by virtue of age, but the balance shifts between me having all the experience, and all of us having experience to draw upon. I have no trouble deferring to my now-older children if their experience is more relevant.

 

That would be part of it, part of the basis of your authority, and along with that your greater mental development and physical power.  Also though, and more primary, is that it is your responsibility as a parent to protect and teach your children. 

 

There is nothing wrong with deferring to children when they have greater knowledge, or just a good argument, or when their abilities are great enough to make a particular sort of decision themselves.  Past a certain point that will pretty much be all of them, at which point their responsibility will be to the authority of society or God or whatever and they will have all the responsibilities of an adult in the community.

 

But up until that point - which is usually culturally defined, it is generally up to the parents to discern when it is appropriate to assert authority and when it is not - s one of the things about being a child is that your own perception of your ability is not reliable.

 

I tend to think that in many ways, we extend childhood and delay adulthood pretty significantly in our culture.  On the other hand, in a lot of other cultures where adulthood comes earlier, more respect and authority is given to the views of elder members, even by the younger adults.

[Bluegoat]

Pretty much everything that people here are calling permissive parenting I would call authoritarian.  If the adult gets to decide what is serious and what can be negotiated, and when a child s developmentally ready for some responsibilities,  and gets a veto when necessary, that is being an authority. 

 

Even if it happens only once a year.

 

And if you expect the kids to abide by those decisions, even if you explain them, and even if the kids accept and go along with it, that is still expecting obedience.

[LucyStoner]

Pretty much everything that people here are calling permissive parenting I would call authoritarian. If the adult gets to decide what is serious and what can be negotiated, and when a child s developmentally ready for some responsibilities, and gets a veto when necessary, that is being an authority.

 

Even if it happens only once a year.

 

And if you expect the kids to abide by those decisions, even if you explain them, and even if the kids accept and go along with it, that is still expecting obedience.

No one is calling their parenting permissive. Permissive parenting is almost always a slur people apply to other parents. I do not consider myself permissive as a parent. But that doesn't mean I am an authoritarian parent either. And when I have tried it on for size, the results have been horrible.

 

Insisting that you grasp a family dymamic better than the members of that household based on a few Internet message board posts? That smacks of hubris to me.

 

Authoritarian parenting is not a model that works in my home. It has a definition that surpasses "parent makes final safety call" to boot. I do not operate in that paradigm. And I am fundamentally a superior judge of what works for me and my family and what is going on in my home than, um, anyone else besides my husband and my sons.

 

Is it possible you are confusing "authoritarian" and "authoritative"?

 

http://m.prokerala.com/kids/parenting/parenting-styles.php?ua_redir=1

[Bluegoat]

No one is calling their parenting permissive. Permissive parenting is almost always a slur people apply to other parents. I do not consider myself permissive as a parent. But that doesn't mean I am an authoritarian parent either. And when I have tried it on for size, the results have been horrible.

 

Insisting that you grasp a family dymamic better than the members of that household based on a few Internet message board posts? That smacks of hubris to me.

 

Authoritarian parenting is not a model that works in my home. It has a definition that surpasses "parent makes final safety call" to boot. I do not operate in that paradigm. And I am fundamentally a superior judge of what works for me and my family and what is going on in my home than, um, anyone else besides my husband and my sons.

 

Is it possible you are confusing "authoritarian" and "authoritative"?

 

http://m.prokerala.com/kids/parenting/parenting-styles.php?ua_redir=1

 

I don't think I've said anything about permissive parenting - you are maybe thinking of another poster.  I'm not really looking to use any parenting jargon at all.  The OP was about parental authority, which is an idea, not some sort of parenting style.  I don't have a problem talking about the style as well and there is some cross-over, but many people have been arguing that parents (or anyone else) do not have a role or call or whatever you want to call it to be in authority over their children, and that they should not expect or teach children to obey them on the basis of that authority.

 

I don't think I'm saying I understand other people's parenting better than they are.  I am taking at face value the practices and dynamic they describe, and in most instances I see them assuming and using authority as the basis for their role some of the time, and in some cases even coercing obedience when it is necessary. I think in many cases people have negative connotations for the words authority and obedience.  They tend to assume - as many have argued here in rejecting the idea of obedience - that they mean some sort of arbitrary claim of always being correct, or that they expect children should have no imput, or there should be no other basis for action within the family.  Parents say and children do, like robots.

 

I don't think you will find any substantial thinker who has conceived or talked about the basis of authority and the nature of obedience in that way.  I think shying away from those words is a cultural bias based on a distorted sense of what they mean, and I think it is a loss not to use them properly.  One of the things that has struck me in this conversation is that those who don't want to use those words have had a hard time finding language to describe the nature of their position as parents, and a hard time describing what the other side of that (obedience) consists of, either in a family dynamic or in a wider context.  For the most part they have described their specific family dynamic under normal circumstances or under extreme ones.  That gives a good picture of what they are doing, but it is not easy to talk about the principles involved without language to describe it.  Sure, you may be the one to take something dangerous away because you have more knowledge.  But that doesn't apply to everyone who has something dangerous even always other people's children, you don't have a right to interfere in many cases where you know better.  So what is it that we call that particular position in relation to the other, and what do you call their recognition of that position?  Normally they would be called parental authority and obedience to it.

 

And aside from that limitation, I think when we lose those words, we do find that power becomes less visible as we discussed near the beginning of the thread, and that is potentially quite dangerous.  And some people actually begin to feel when they are exersizing that parental authority, they are doing something wrong, and that can cause them problems as well.

[Bluegoat]

I thought I would use this opportunity to point out that systems can be both egalitarian and assign different roles to different individuals. Civil rights organizations can be an example, or book clubs, or homeschool co-ops. The members may have equal rights to participate in the decision-making process, but different roles. Not everyone can be chairperson, but everyone can get to decide when they are fed-up with a certain chair and want another one. Would you call that type of organization hierarchical? You could certainly say so, yes, based on certain roles requiring leadership and others not so much. But there is no lack of equality, everyone participates in the decision-making process, and there is no hierarchy in terms of value. Families can be like that too. Different responsibilities, but equal value and hopefully mutual respect among all members. 

 

Sure, those kinds of groups exist, though I am not sure that it would be proper to call them hierarchical which implies ordering by importance or rank or level in some way - not necessarily in terms of power or authority of course since it could apply to many other things.

 

Having looked it up - what you are describing is apparently called a heterarchy. 

 

I think though that while not all family interactions involve anyone pulling rank, and it may be that especially as kids get older, none do, its actually quite rare to see them without that kind of underlying hierarchical structure.  Children almost always have less power in that structure than parents do whatever people acknowledge as the case, and often when that isn't the true it isn't a good thing. I don't think though that really has anything to do with either value or respect - you can value each member and respect them without them all having equal power or decision making status or authority.

[ElizaG]

Those articles that give a list of three or four "parenting styles" -- including "authoritarian" and "authoritative" -- are pretty much useless IMO.  For one thing, they don't reflect the actual approaches of most people I know.  For another thing, the definition of the terms seems to vary depending on the source.

 

In version A, both authoritative and authoritarian parents are firm and confident in their use of authority.  The difference is that the "authoritative" style is thoughtful and caring, and respects that the child is an intelligent being, whereas the "authoritarian" style is basically acting like Godzilla.   :001_rolleyes:

 

In version B, authoritarian parents are firm and confident in their use of authority.   Authoritative parents are sometimes like that, but also sort of squishy... e.g., they might decide to "pick their battles" for the purpose of avoiding a lot of "push-back," even if their original expectations were thoughtful and reasonable.  There seems to be a subtle sense of ambivalence about their own authority, and discomfort with expressing it openly.

 

These are obviously different meanings, and it seems to me that each version twists the traditional definitions of these words.   Version A equates "authoritarian" (which just means "characterized by obedience to authority") with being an ignorant person.  Version B makes "authoritative" (which means "having authority") include people who might not be all that confident in their authority at all.  

 

I'd be inclined to put these lists in the same category as those lists of "four educational philosophies" that keep getting trotted out.   And if you look into the origin of these models, both of them were invented in the mid-20th century by people who were actively trying to promote one of the given approaches, as defined by them ("authoritative" for parenting; "social reconstructionist" for education). 

 

What makes this even sillier is that a great deal of subsequent social science research is based on these sorts of categories.  The unspoken assumptions here are that:

 

1) it's meaningful to divide all parents into three (or four) groups,

2) these particular groups are the right ones, and

3) there's a reliable way to figure out who fits where -- probably in some cheap and quick way, given the researchers' constraints. 

 

To me, all of this is doubtful, and it puts the value of their research into serious question. 

[Pen]

I have seen this! Not sure if the sing song happy screechy voice causes the opposite effect?? Haven't seen it working at all...and yes, if anything the child turns around and does it again, or even harder (whatever they were asked not to do)

 

 

This was a Waldorf school  for the younger children, and the voices were not screechy, but rather very soft, high pitched, and sing song. In itself it did not seem to cause problems, like if the teacher was using that to call the children in from play outside, say, that was fine and mostly seemed to work well and be much more pleasant than, say, a loud whistle like some public teachers use here to get attention when kids are at recess.

 

The problem was, imo, that while the approach was rigid and authoritarian with regard to things like that everyone had to do circle time together in the same way at the same time, it was permissive (at best, sometimes also uninvolved) when it came to bullying and such issues (though Waldorf teachers I met did not believe that young children were capable of bullying).

 

I had the opposite sense of what was needed, or what level of adult control was appropriate for what...if a child did not want to be in circle time, imo, that should be okay and in the child's autonomous realm to decide.  Or, to give an example that I saw happen, if a child who was a fluent speaker in another language did not want to do rote practice of beginning lessons in that language, that should have been fine, and the child should not have been forced to do that--instead should have been allowed to do something else at the time, or to help teach since in fact the child was bilingual and fluent and the teacher was not.

 

OTOH, there were attack issues going on, like one child who would hit others with a stick, or another who would karate chop others, or yet another who would semi- strangle others that were approached as I said, as if that was negotiable and something the teacher would prefer not to have happen, but certainly was not going to intervene to actually stop it.  And it this case, that high pitched soft sing song, was especially ineffective, and all the more so, couple with the sort of words that were being used, and an absence of any control.

[LucyStoner]

I don't know what all authoritarian parents and homes look and and feel like. I definitely don't think that it needs to be abusive or legalistic. I know some great parents who function from an obedience based framework.

 

What I do know, however, is that we do not function in a situation where the parents are at the head of the family or where kids obey because they are kids. I have a fundamental responsibility to take care of my kids. I am not in charge of them or vice versa. The only person we get to control is ourselves. I work to meet their needs and I work to teach them boundaries so they respect the limits of others and systems they choose to be in. I guess I would say I have a responsibility to them rather than that I have final authority over them. Maybe that seems like a semantic difference but I can tell you that in practice, for us, it is not.

 

The irony here is that I am NOT a hippie and I tossed all of the Sears' books in the bin pretty early on (sexism, classism, general distaste). I did however attend a "free school" with a democratic, consensus based model myself as a high schooler and while that model is not ideal and has limitations, I did learn a lot about how groups that are not hierarchical function.

 

We have definitely embraced the idea that, for us, family is made of equals. My voice isn't the trump card because I am mom. It might be awesome to have a trump card but it doesn't work for us.

[Pen]

Pretty much everything that people here are calling permissive parenting I would call authoritarian. 

 

 

I don't think I've said anything about permissive parenting - 

 

 

I think the first above is what was thought to be something you said about permissive parenting.

 

 

From my pov, although people have variations and overlap in what they actually do, and are not necessarily entirely consistent, the categories do make some sense in terms of predominant style that someone might use.

 

As a kid, I lived with more than one family and saw/experienced different styles as the main style of different family groups or individual parents. I even saw one case where there was a difference in how different parts of a large family were parented: the oldest children were raised authoritarian style as the predominate style, with rigid rules and belting for infractions.  There had then been a gap of a few years before the next group were born, and those were being raised with a permissive to even uninvolved style--and semi abdicating the raising of the middle kids to the group that was by then in teens when the middles were born. Finally after another gap the youngest born were being raised in a relatively authoritative style as the parents were back more involved in parenting, than they'd been for the middle group, but no longer with such rigid rules and belt to enforce them as they'd been with the oldest ones.  In my own life, both to the extent that I got to experience it from time to time, and to see it, I feel clear that the middle range of the parenting modes (generally "authoritative" [eta to fix the word and add the underline...easy to mix up arian and ative] even if imperfectly managed tends to be better than the extremes at either end.  As well, as a foster parent, it seemed to me that the kids needing foster care generally had parenting that was at the extremes of either authoritarian (which at its extreme could be into what was "abuse") or of uninvolved (which at its extreme could be into what was "neglect').

 

If nothing else, it seems to me that as a model it can be helpful as giving a sense of guidance for some people to use.

[albeto.]

Those articles that give a list of three or four "parenting styles" -- including "authoritarian" and "authoritative" -- are pretty much useless IMO.  For one thing, they don't reflect the actual approaches of most people I know.  For another thing, the definition of the terms seems to vary depending on the source....

 

And depending on the intent, ime. Every article I've read sounds like an assignment to pick out the subtle propaganda in the journal example.

[Pen]

"Authority" itself has multiple meanings.

 

I expect this adds to confusion since sometimes it may be used in the sense of the power to enforce decisions, like the police,  and other times in the sense of someone who has more knowledge, like someone who is an authority in a branch of physics.  Or in other senses of the word.

[Pen]

1)   .... I guess I would say I have a responsibility to them rather than that I have final authority over them. Maybe that seems like a semantic difference but I can tell you that in practice, for us, it is not.

 

 

 

2)  We have definitely embraced the idea that, for us, family is made of equals. My voice isn't the trump card because I am mom. It might be awesome to have a trump card but it doesn't work for us.

 

 

1)  I think "responsibility" is definitely true and important, and maybe a better term in most/many cases.

 

2) In my case I think both responsibility and authority are relevant.  And I think that I have authority sometimes in both the sense of power and of greater knowledge.  

 

For example:

 

Supposing let us say that a child wants to do something that is illegal at our home but not necessarily dangerous--perhaps it would be something like to befriend and give a home to a wounded wild animal, such as an eagle or owl, which is protected such that that is illegal here. I may greatly sympathize with this desire even.  However, I have the responsibility for home and all who live here and for the child with regard to that, as well as  a responsibility to the animal and to the laws about it.   I would likely have authority in such a situation in the sense of authority as greater knowledge on a subject, in so far perhaps I know though the  child may not know that it is illegal here to keep such an animal here.  (In this case, ds does know that it is illegal, and also, I think, the reasons why. But there are still things where I have more authority in the sense of knowledge. Though some things where ds has more authority in the sense of knowledge than I do, or where we both lack knowledge.)

 

And I do also have the final authority in the sense of power to say, no, I am sorry, I think it could be really cool to raise an eagle or owl, but there are reasons for it being illegal  and nothing about the possible real life amazing My Side of the Mountain-like experience of doing that would be equal to the repercussions of breaking the law or the risk of having the animal die unnecessarily.  I could go along with a negotiation to the extent of trying for a compromise like trying to get permission from the game warden to keep the animal legally, or more reasonably, and more likely to succeed, getting an internship at the raptor center where it might be sent for healing and reintroduction to the wild if possible, in order to have more of a connection to the animal. I might even make such suggestions myself, at which point it would become within the child's area of autonomy to decide if he wanted to call the game warden or if an internship at the raptor center was desirable. 

[LucyStoner]

I realized how absurd the authoritarian model of parenting model was in my family when my son parroted the things I was saying and turned it back on me. I distinctly recall him proclaiming that if I didn't give him something he wanted back that he was going to "take my driving chair away and I wouldn't be able to drive anymore! " He was 2 or so at that time. I realized the way *I* was communicating with *him* was equally absurd sounding. We changed things up a lot. Not all at once and not without some growing pains but as they say, the proof is in the pudding and considering all that he faces we have done pretty darn well this far.