Post #13 C Permissive/ Indulgent/Laissez-faire/Passive Parenting style
I was still trying to sleep this morning at 7:30 am, the retiree’s right, I believe. I think, Brodie, our Rottie/Shepard-cross hasn’t read the policy which lays that point out quite clearly. He’d just heard potentially exciting noises coming from the trail across the street. Not really aware that going out the backdoor doesn’t connect him to the front yard, he wanted me to help him check things out. With absolutely no regard for my rights, he confidently strode into our bedroom, came around to my side, nosed my bottom and then sat back on his haunches, expectant that I would now jump obediently out of bed to let him outside. I didn’t roll over, so Plan B. He started whining. 20 minutes of intermittent whining, stalking out of the bedroom, returning to whine and I caved. Ok, so he did have to pee, but he was out there to warn off potential intruders. Brodie got to indulge the joy of threatening barking. I got to deal with the fallout before the neigbourhood noise patrol might begin shaking their annoyed heads. I know, I know, any good dog training book I’ve read says we should not give into our dog’s whining or allow him to learn that whining is a way to get what he wants.
And are there any parallels here with how Dave and I might have parented Yasik? Anything I have read about Permissive parenting might suggest there is. Actually, there are likely many, many more media sources on Permissive Parenting than on lax parenting of our puppies.
Roger that, let’s get back to seeing what the journal recorded of this aspect of our parenting. Surprisingly, at least to me, I don’t have many journal entries pointing to our experiences with Permissive parenting. Not that we can’t find ourselves often enough in the definition of Permissive parenting. Just the other night, on a call to Yasik, Dave called him by Dave’s younger brother’s name, something he has done many times over the years. He mixes Yasik up with his younger brother both because of what a brother signifies and because this brother was one of his closest friends growing up. Hearing the mix-up, though I have heard it many times before, I ran for note paper as I am now looking at the definition for Permissive parents, that of seeing or wanting to see the child in the light of a friend/buddy relationship rather than in the light of the parent-child relationship. Of course, now, though it is a slip of the tongue, it is also, as these two adults interact, a compliment.
For me the, at times, razor sharp line between playful interaction with my child, wanting him to see me as his friend rather than see me as taking on the business of mothering, began barely a half hour after our driver turned the van back toward Moscow. For Dave it came more apparent later as he and Yasik explored the wonders of the computer together. For neither of us would this, any more than any of the other parenting styles, have been a conscious parenting style selection.
Yasik was sitting in Dave’s lap but the translator in the front seat continued with Yasik’s immediate care, feeding him while telling us that he was not used to being in a vehicle and might throw food up. She then showed us this sort of pat-a-cake game. Dave took it over as the front seat-back seat stretch was awkward. Yasik was getting into the game, relaxing away the tension of saying good-bye to the orphanage. Initiating is not usually my auto-response when I am in a new situation, but soon I too tried the pat-a-cake slapping hands game. Four-and-a-half-year-old Yasik, in the middle of a vehicle full of strangers, most of whom are wrapping him in happy attention, was by now feeling the Russian version of Yeah! Alright! This is Cool! Translation, maybe Yasik’s emotional dial was swinging a bit out of control. There was more haphazard but stronger sting to the slap. I have never been comfortable saying “No” to much of anything, let alone the first half hour of excited play in my first day with my son. I allowed the slapping to continue until Dave thought it had gone too far.
Once we felt Yasik was settled into our lifestyle, we set about honouring the suggestion given to us at the orphanage to encourage Yasik’s interest in music. It was evident watching his wonder listening to music via headphones on the return flight from Moscow. It was evident watching him soothe himself, alone on the living room couch, rocking and singing songs of his childhood. He loved music. Did we have a rock star or a Mozart in the making? Whatever, we were going to follow up on the orphanage’s directive. As far as we knew that meant getting him into piano lessons. And for the first while Yasik seemed quite happy with the music lessons, admittedly, maybe more so when he got to play the drums in the class. Never thought to ask the little guy for suggestions. At his recital, he seemed proud to be dressed in long pants and a nice shirt, playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in front of an audience. Dave and I – well memory balks here – I was in tears. The practices leading up to this recital had been less tear-inducing, more frustration and laughter inducing as Yasik would flop his head down on the keyboard when asked to hit the keys. Still and all, we were giving him the opportunity to develop a skill we believed had roots somewhere within him.
We were ‘giving him the opportunity’ by bribing him with an allowance. That, and threats always the backup. Threats and bribes – two side of the same coin? [i]
The child will perform for the immediate benefit or pressure, sure. And we were heaping praise on his efforts as well. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star never sounded so amazing to my heart. We believed that we were giving him every opportunity to find his place in the world.
So why was Yasik not embracing the opportunity with the appreciation and thrill we had imagined. The only other little boy in the group seemed proud to be learning to pay the piano. Yasik continued to moan and groan and flop around on the piano seat through the mere 10 to 15 minutes of piano practice before school. I continued to push, bribing and threatening to contain his conflict with piano practice. That last sentence might lead you to ask why I put this story in the Permissive parenting post rather than the Authoritarian parenting post for it is a bit of a stretch to see it as illustrating one of the traits in the definition of Permissive parenting: These parents mostly allow their kids to do what they want and offer limited guidance or direction. They prefer to avoid conflict and will often acquiesce to their children’s pleas at the first sign of distress.[ii]
The journal records one particularly bad lesson after a week of sketchy practice (some adjustments for the essential story). I have not recorded (in itself a comment) how Yasik might have been feeling, but I image relief that the class was over and he was going home to TV, computer time or maybe the freedom to go down to the park to play with his friends. I came away from the awkward class hour feeling self-pity at my unrewarded struggles to get him to practice, probably the driver of the next few minutes. I asked him if he wanted to quit piano.
“Yes”, he said. Groan.
“We’ll have to get rid of your piano you know.”
“Ok.”, this from a kid who had shown signs in the apartment in Moscow of the hoarding trait sometimes noticed in kids who’ve spent time in an orphanage. I guess the need to hoard was no longer a trigger; maybe competition with his cousin would trigger him.
“We’ll give it to Kyle”, who a couple of years later showed roughly the same interest in piano as Yasik. “OK.” he said. I’m dead.
On to the next manipulation. I turned off North Road at Foster Ave. to loop around and return to the building housing the piano school. I told Yasik, now showing some concern, that I was disappointed in his choice. No comment.
But if it was his choice, then “OK, you can quit if that is what you want – but you have to tell Mrs. B. We are going back to the school to catch her before she closes up.”
“OK.” Maybe it’s for the best I even thought. No more hassle. But I hated to have to tell Mrs B. I hate disappointing authority. And what if it was a chance he’d never have again.
And into this downward-spirally dream came an inspiration. I had just run a yellow light near Lougheed Mall and he’d told me to be careful. He had less confidence in my driving abilities than in his father’s.
“OK. If you quit, I can too. I’m just going to quit driving. I’m not good at it. It’s too hard. We will park in the mall and then we will walk up to the school. You go in to tell Mrs. B. you are quitting and then we will leave the car and walk home. Dad can come and get the car.” It was now becoming dark, cold and raining. We bundled up, got out and started to walk. Seriously.
He was saying we can’t do this. I said we can and we marched.
We walked almost two blocks when he said, “I was just fooling. I won’t quit.”
And I said, “OK, I’ll drive.” I grabbed him and hugged him. He was embarrassed in the street but I know he was happy for the hug and kiss, and relieved that we were finally just going home. For a plus, when we reached Lougheed Mall, I let him drive (sitting in my lap of course) around the empty parking lot. Manipulation or not, I wondered at the time.
I was holding Yasik to piano playing not in a direct authoritarian, no revolt-tolerated plan of action, but with bribes and threats in ‘his best interest’. Cecile David-Weill, in Parents Under the Influence:words of wisdom from a former bad mother ( P. 57) wonders if a parent might push piano lessons on his or her child to give the child an opportunity the parent felt was missing from his or her own childhood, making the push for lessons “all about her, her own upbringing and her own regrets, rather than about her son and his interests, which don’t even cross her mind.”
Is it possible that both Authoritarian parenting and Permissive parenting come from a place of parent-driven choices for the child, one coming at it from direct demands, the other from threats and bribes? Do Permissive parents really not want to get in their child’s way? Do they think that a softer approach will get them what they want? Expected obedience/threats or bribes, are they too just two sides of another coin?
Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, has written How to Raise an Adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success because she has seen the impact of over-parenting on young people.
Some students bided their time until they could finally get out from under their parents…. Some expressed anger at their parents. I read the resignation in their eyes. I sensed their bewilderment at the dawning realization they were living within a landscape full of possibility unavailable to them because they were on a leash and led down a path of their parents’ making – that they’d spent years learning how to reach for and achieve their parents’ ambitious dreams but were not allowed to dream dreams of their own…. Sure there’s the chance that all of this striving for perfection, even in a field the student doesn’t think she likes, will by some measure turn out to be “worth it” in the long run, or that a kid who never mastered anything in particular will later regret being allowed to quit piano.… I’m focusing on what happens when harsh, not-necessarily-fitting expectations have been imposed on children and they have lived up to those expectations. A great many students experiencing such things sought mental health counseling. Some dropped out of school for a while. Some fell completely apart. [iii]
Of course this piece seems to fit more precisely into the post on Authoritarian parenting, unless we are flipping a coin here between direct commands and threats or bribes.
Have we ever resolved the question of whether or not it is problematic for little boys to play with guns or how much TV or computer time is damning? Media regularly address one or the other of the concerns, and regularly we hear rumblings the government is going to apply restrictions in the ‘best interests of the child’. So was it cute or worrisome to come into our living room to find our young man sitting on the couch with his little hockey stick, popping off cars passing by on the street. Little boys, they say, turn anything from carrot sticks to Lego blocks into guns. I went with being disconcerted while Dave was tempering. Yasik had become what I felt was too interested in shooting bad men. Yet if we truly believed shooting cars with a hockey stick would lead to a life of crime, our response was lame. Dave and I tried to child-proof the remote with whatever techniques were available at the time, but Yasik figured out how to get all the channels back.
Until the movies came out or until the night I came into Yasik’s bedroom at the end of an evening as I routinely had done since his first nights in our home, to read him to sleepiness, I had been reading him books that progressed from one-sentence per page stories to the magical Harry Potters.
One such night Harry gets into some trouble and Yasik said, “He should have just lied to save himself.” What does a formerly god-fearing, morals-valuing mother say to that?
With all the backbone of someone who hates conflict, I muttered that I didn’t think Harry lied.
Yasik came right back with, “Sure he does.”
Two pages or so later, Harry definitely lies and Yasik said, “See Mom.” There is no record in the journal of any morally-guiding comeback from me.
The Harry Potter movies started to come out when Yasik was around 12; about the same time, for whatever impressions Yasik had picked up, he had come to the decision that the nightly bed time book routine must come to a halt. Sleeping in a top bunk he shared on the weekends with our client on the bottom bunk, he had barricaded himself or snugged himself up there by draping blankets over the edge of the bunk’s sidings. He popped his head over his parapet to tell me I didn’t need to read to him anymore. And that was that. I accepted his decision with hardly a whimper.
Nightly bedtime stories with me were replaced, as was true for all his friends, with computer games, usually set up by his dad for him and for his friends. I noted in my journal that I wondered (with the bemused word ‘actually’ fronting ‘wondered’) if gaming is like whiling the hours away reading which suggests that however much I may have tried to shrug off Yasik’s gun toting and game playing, I did feel, and at times muttered to Dave, that it might be deleterious to a healthy moral upbringing.
It is less clear in the journal whether we showered Yasik with too many things; certainly he had everything any of his friends had, but was that not par for the course for a middle-class lifestyle?
So let’s go back to those ‘mutterings’. They might segue into a peek under the covers of our marriage. Which could be a somewhat misleading metaphor. Rather than where your mind might head if on auto-pilot, focus on the blanket covering our marriage bed, flopping about as the two individuals beneath each seek a don’t-go-to-bed-in-anger relationship and a good night’s sleep. This to say that if Permissive parenting style defined any part of our parenting, it was more often than not expressed by one or the other of us, not often by both of us together, ergo the image of the blanket covering marital tensions beneath it: Good Cop/Bad Cop parenting.
Starting right from that first hour as parents in the van. Even as Yasik was hitting and later biting, I was reluctant to say “Nyet!” Dave did say “Nyet!” when he thought Yasik was crossing a line. Within a few weeks, Dave felt he was looking like the bad guy and being rejected for “Nyet!” was coming from him more often than from me.
One evening in that first September as parents, we were taking a walk before bed. I was holding Yasik’s hand to help him balance as he goose-stepped on top of a small, stone property boundary. I was not paying much attention but perhaps I was letting Yasik stray onto private property. Dave was disturbed by it. In frustration he said so to me because once again saying “Nyet!” put him in a less favourable light with Yasik. That metaphoric marriage blanket settled into an uncomfortable silence.
Parents Under the Influence author, Cecile David-Weill, suggests that infants/children develop a “sixth sense” of their caregivers’ “state of mind” and “may feel responsible for the tensions around them”.[iv] Did Yasik sense the tension between his parents? Had he become adept at sensing tensions around him very early in life? Maybe, for when we got home to bathe him, he turned very specifically to Dave. And then they were checking out the wonders of Toy Story together before bed. The interactions within a family are five minutes of this and then, spin, and it is five minutes of something totally different. A fine line between fun and tension, yet something to take note of.
We were each pulling for our share of the blanket when Yasik needed to go ‘sikats’ on his own. I wanted to help that little penis point in the right direction but Dave felt Yasik was ready to practice aiming on his own. I think Yasik did figure out where to point.
It wasn’t all awkwardness or tension as Dave and I tugged for cover over permissiveness or strictness under the marriage blanket. There were funny moments too. Times like one afternoon. Dave had come skulking around when he felt I was being too easy on Yasik for an impudence or tantrum. All 40 some inches and 40 lbs. were trying to stand up to Dave and I. When it ended with Yasik crying, Dave turned and went back to the computer set up in the kitchen. I followed him and Dave, with his back still to me, said, “And I don’t care what you think”. Then he wheeled around and demanded, “What do you think?” Partly delay tactic, partly not knowing what to say and wanting to avoid conflict or feeling the moment was not right for talk, I returned with a confused, “I haven’t thought anything yet”.
In sum, Dave and I concluded that he expected too much and I expected too little; this was probably in terms of differing priorities because I suspect that while Dave wanted Yasik to learn to behave appropriately and respectfully, I wanted him to do well at school. Depending on which priority was being tested by Yasik, one or the other of us donned the cop uniform we felt necessary for the moment concerned. Sometimes Permissive, sometimes Authoritarian?
But all this high-minded talk of priorities can get very personal and somewhat less the look of child-centered parenting. At the time it felt to Dave like the two of us are siding against him. When Yasik and Dave were on the computer, I felt like I was left out. But did we see more clearly what the problem and solution were? Not really – we weren’t able to step outside ourselves to look at the problem. The journal suggests I did realize I had a husband who was fascinated with how things work and what they lead to when they work; at that time, it was the computer which combines technology and art potential and it kept one step ahead of him. Besides which he was learning things we all needed to know. I got a chance at a good education later in life and I valued it as one of life’s highest gifts. We also had a young son who wanted our attention most of the time even if his emotions degenerated into hitting out in over excited play or anger, responses that should not be excused or ignored.
John Brooks and his wife Erica dealt with angry outbursts from their daughter and came at this struggle in ways similar to Dave and mine:
Feeling like miserable failures. Erica and I turned on each other. We came from very different parenting models. Erika’s immigrant parents had always been strict and controlling, like their parents, whereas mine were fairly laid-back, like Ward and June Cleaver. Erika accused me of being too easy on Casey while I felt that Erika needed to give her a longer leash. She believed firmly-and rightly so- that we need a united front in complete alignment against such a willful child and she was ever watchful for any threat to the alliance.[v]
Was he getting spoiled as Dave suggested? How is ‘getting spoiled’ even defined? Amy Anderson came from a family of 10 while her husband, Chip, was ostensibly an only child. They started their life together with only his step-son but later added two they produced together. To Amy allowing their children choice in school lunches seemed overkill whereas Chip couldn’t see what the big deal was. So one kid wants a choice of mustard, pickle or cheese and the next one doesn’t? Not an issue unless there wasn’t time or resources for that kind of choice when 10 lunches needed to be made. [vi]
The one explanation that cannot be countenanced in a question of becoming spoiled by our Permissive parenting is the accusation that a child is being manipulative. One evening when Yasik was a few years older, my journal says ‘Last night after Yasik worked on manipulating me by saying, “You guys never play with me.” I agreed to play a board game with him. Dave came in to say, “No, we should teach him not to say ‘Never’ and guilt trip us. He should know to just straight out ask to play”.
The common thought, most of my adult life has been that children are capable of manipulation. Recently I have noticed writers take a paragraph or two to caution against that assumption for a child needs a developed pre-frontal cortex to manage the executive function I suggested he was employing, something not operating until the child is no longer a child. Check out the addresses in footnote #vii for more on that inappropriate accusation of a child’s tantrum, a tantrum being the child’s way to express frustration.[vii]
Dave and I have always been determined not to give up and close the door on trust of each other so after some stewing time we would talk about issues of expecting too much or too little and how to give Yasik more independence because we do believe in not taking our disagreements to bed, lucky for the blanket.
So what did we have in the end? A tenderhearted man who was frustrated by feelings of guilt and fear of being left out, a son who was just being a kid, playing with those he loved, and a woman who struggled between a daydream and reality, wanting to enjoy picture perfect and knowing there are realities, some of which I accepted and some I didn’t. Work and school’s priority I understood, but Dave and Yasik wanting time on the computer to play computer games, not so much. Dave understood playing on computer but a kid having a tantrum, not so acceptable.
Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to underline the following characteristics you identify in the narrative.
Δ High Responsiveness: warm, loving, non-controlling, accepting, relaxed, indulgent, affirmative, involved, but not in a traditional way. In carrying out their responsibility for their children, these parents are more likely to treat their children as friends rather than acting as authority figures with their children who need discipline. They communicate openly, are highly involved in their children’s lives, going to great lengths to fulfill their children’s desires whenever possible, sometimes at their own expense.
Δ Low Demandingness: offer limited, inconsistent guidance or direction, have a hard time setting limits with the children, usually with minimal expectations, structure or rules either not set or rarely enforced giving in against their better judgment when their children get upset so as not to disappoint or upset the children, non-punitive. These low levels of expectation seldom result in using discipline. The children are allowed to exercise full autonomy, being left to explore the world all by themselves and decide for themselves. Not wanting to say “No” or disappoint their children, they support their children almost blindly, allowing them to push boundaries and “get away with” poor behavior. Children can avoid punishment by begging because permissive parents are lenient and forgiving. This can be the result of the parents having grown up with an Authoritarian parenting style in their own household and not wanting to put their children through it.
The parents are often liberal, middle-class professionals, thus are rewarded for taking initiative, being self-directed, and assertive in their jobs. These parents encourage their children to have those qualities as well by rewarding independence and self-reliance.
Sites referred to for the definitions are in footnote #viii[viii]:
What do my collection of the experts say?
Good Cop/Bad Cop
Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents Deborah D. Gray deals with it early on in the book for it may lead to an unhealthy parent-child relationship which might feel good to a child initially but may lead to a sense of insecurity in the child.[ix]
Some parents find themselves replaying the “good cop, bad cop” style that their parents used…. But for parents having a hard time connecting with children, playing a role as the mushy confidante can seem appealing… In portraying one parent as the “bad cop”, parents are telling their child that one parent is insensitive, unfair, and inadequate…. The logical conclusion for the child is that the tough parent is not safe for attachment. At the same time, the parent who is the “soft touch” does not seem strong or effective to a child. If children … know that they are themselves in charge, not their parents… [t]his makes them anxious.
Bribes/Threats/Manipulation
When Is a Child’s Reward Actually a Bribe? Reinforcing motivation and self-esteem versus manipulative behavior.[x]
Rewards are a positive consequence for your child’s behavior that has already occurred…. Bribes, however, are persuasion-based offers of something in advance of the moment to stop your child’s current negative behaviors. Rewards are meant to encourage motivation and reinforce positive behavior. Bribes, on the other hand, can undermine a child’s intrinsic motivation and lead to entitlement or manipulative behavior.
Manipulative Parents[xi]
In most cases, manipulative parents refer to parents who use covert psychological methods to control the child’s activities and behavior in such a way as to prevent the child from becoming an independent adult apart from their control.
Emotional manipulation by parents: love withdrawal, guilt induction, silent treatment, gaslighting.
Fear exploitation: coercion, humiliation, social comparison, financial manipulation
Permissive Parenting Pros and Cons
Permissive parenting: An evidence-based guide[xii].
Permissive parents don’t present themselves as authority figures or role models. They might use reason or manipulation to get what they want. But they avoid exercising overt power (Baumrind 1966).
The positive and negative effects of permissive parenting
…[O]n the positive side, children with permissive parents are better off than kids whose parents are uninvolved. In addition, kids raised by permissive caregivers tend to have high self-esteem, and they may be more resourceful than kids raised by uninvolved or authoritarian parents (e.g., Turkel and Tezer 2008; Rothrauff et al 2009; Lamborn et al 1991)….
But, on the negative side, there is also a lot of research supporting the claim that “indulged” kids tend to be less self-disciplined and less responsible than are children with authoritative parents….
But there are exceptions.
For example, on the one hand, it’s not clear that permissiveness is always inferior to authoritative parenting. Several studies, conducted in Spain and Latin America, have reported no differences between teenagers raised by permissive or authoritative parents (e.g., Garcia and Gracia 2009)….
Why do different studies report conflicting results? It may be that parenting styles have different effects depending on the local culture (Chao 1994). But it’s probably also a question of methodology….
So by using different screening tools, researchers are, in effect, defining “permissive” parenting very differently. Is one definition better than the other? Not really. It doesn’t matter how we label people — not as long as we understand each other’s definitions….
I think the important takeaway from all studies is that “ignoring bad behavior” is generally linked with suboptimal child outcomes. By contrast, being very controlling or bossy — like insisting that a teenager do every task in a specific order — isn’t associated with the best child outcomes….
In defense of permissiveness
… Baumrind’s permissive parents don’t sound like people who routinely let their kids get away with antisocial behavior — not, at any rate, behavior that I find objectionable, like deliberate rudeness, or violations of other people’s rights and feelings.
Instead, Baumrind’s permissive parents sound more like radical democrats. People who believe that parents and kids should exercise equal power.
… I wonder if the evidence against permissive parenting is really evidence against a relatively extreme, “anything goes” type of permissiveness.
… The adolescents who scored as being the best-adjusted — and the most supportive of prosocial values — were the ones whose parents rejected punishment and scolding as a means of disciplining kids (Garcia et al 2019). And as I’ve argued elsewhere, kids are more likely to develop as innovative, creative, critical thinkers when we let them experiment and tinker. If you want to raise a scientist, let your child ask offbeat questions, get dirty, and take things apart.
The Psychology Behind Different Types of Parenting Styles[xiii]
… [A] growing body of research suggests that parenting’s influence on the children’s psychosocial adjustment can also vary as a function of the cultural context….
[F]urther, research findings regarding change in the parental dimensions of warmth and strictness across generations suggest a tendency toward an increase in parental warmth and a decrease in parental strictness [43,44], although it is not clear which specific practices of warmth and strictness are changing across generations [38,42]….
The present study examines cross-generational differences in parental practices …. Overall, results showed cross-generational differences in parental practices [showed][t]he indulgent style (warmth but not strictness) was related to equal or even better results on psychosocial adjustment outcomes than authoritative parenting (warmth and strictness), ….
Nevertheless, findings from the present study do not agree with some evidence from other cultural contexts where parental strictness is a necessary component of parental socialization in order to obtain children with good psychosocial adjustment.
Respectful Parenting Is Not Permissive Parenting[xiv]
These parents might worry that their child’s spirit will be crushed or she’ll stop loving or trusting them if there is a conflict of will. They coax or distract their child into the behavior they want (or out of the behavior they don’t want) rather than risk being the mean guy who says “no”.
“Basically, most parents are afraid of disciplining their children because they are afraid of the power struggle. They are afraid of overpowering the child, afraid they will destroy the child’s free will and personality. This is an erroneous attitude. “ –Magda Gerber
Permissive Parenting Is Non-Intervention Because of Fear![xv]
- The parent’s own fear of not being loved!
- The parent’s own existential fear of being restricted and losing freedom
- The parent’s own fear of losing inner stability and peace of mind!
Humankind: a hopeful history Rutger Bregman makes a strong argument for unrestrained play, room for freedom and creativity. “[K]ids can be trusted with an abundance of freedom”.… The question is not: can our kids handle the freedom? The question is: do we have the courage to give it to them?”[xvi]
Hunt, Gather, Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans[xvii]
…our culture often has things backward when it comes to kids: We interfere too much. We don’t have enough confidence in our children. We don’t trust their innate ability to know what they need to grow. And in many instances, we don’t speak their language.
In particular, our culture focuses almost entirely on one aspect of the parent-child relationship. That’s control – how much control the parent exerts over the child, and how much control the child tries to exert over the parent. The most common parenting “styles” all revolve around control. Helicopter parents exert maximal control. Free-range parents exert minimal. Our culture thinks either the adult is in control or the child is in control.
There’s a major problem with this view of parenting. It sets us up for power struggles, with fights, screaming and tears. Nobody likes to be controlled. Both the children and parents rebel against it. So when we interact with our children in terms of control – whether it’s a parent controlling the child or vice versa – we establish an adversarial relationship.
Why parents shouldn’t always be ‘in sync’ with their children[xviii]
My colleagues and I carried out research which showed that brain-to-brain synchrony between parent and child can be helpful for children’s attachment, and tends to rise when a parent and child play, talk or solve problems together. Recently, however, we started wondering whether more synchrony is always better…. Our recent study, published in Developmental Science, suggests it can sometimes be a sign of relationship difficulties….
… For example, research revealed that for about 50-70% of the time, parents and children are not “in sync”. During these times, they may be doing separate activities, such as a child exploring something on their own or a parent working. They rather engage in a constant “social dance” comprising being attuned to each other, failing to do so and repairing this disconnect….
And it’s this flow of connection, disconnection and reconnection that offers children an ideal mixture of parental support and moderate, useful stress that helps growing children’s social brains….
… [P]arents and children constantly being tuned in to each other…. can increase stress on the relationship and raise the risk for insecure child attachment….
In our new study, we actually observed that mothers who had an insecure, anxious or avoidant attachment type showed more neural synchrony with their children….
Great Myths of Child Development[xix]
Myth #48 – Rewards usually decrease the desirable behavior they’re intended to increase
…[W]hile decreases in desirable behavior can occur following rewards, rewards quite often are followed by sustained increases in desirable behavior. This increase is quite frequently maintained once the reward is faded out.
Myth #49 Praise undermines children’s ability to be successful
…Critics of praise often point to laboratory research showing that after children experience a failure, they respond differently to different types of praise…. Even the praise critics encourage the use of some praise; they just call it “encouragement” instead of “praise.”
Myth #50 Parents were not permissive when I was a kid
…people like to complain about the new-fangled problem of permissive parenting. Nevertheless, there have always been parents with high degrees of permissiveness, and there probably always will be. Indeed, there will also always be someone there to complain about them.
In chapter 4 of Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence, Dr. Nicole Letourneau with Justin Joschko look at studies of mice and the impact of both their genes and their environment in terms of how they came to deal with the worlds they found themselves in. When itty bitty mice born to “scaredy-mouse” mothers were then fostered by “tougher” mother mice, they showed a resilience not expressed by their bio-mothers.[xx]
Might tuck in here a reminder of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1798) and his theory of child raising that supported allowing children to be free and unfettered to learn from experience naturally, unrestrained by adult direction and books.
In How to raise an adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success, [xxi] Julie Lythcott-Haims offers an observation to parents from Stacy Budin, a psychiatrist: “You can’t have a healthy family life if you’re so focused on the kids that you lose connection with each other”.
Lythcott-Haim also offers this:
Kids- – particularly adolescent boys – often make poor choices as a normal part of development as humans; they’ve got an impulse to do the bad or crazy things but their prefrontal cortex is still developing, which means they can’t yet appreciate the danger involved and so can’t use what we would call “good judgement”…. Enforcing consequence for our own kids is essential.
Fish don’t climb trees: a whole new look at dyslexia[xxii]
… if a child wants to have a goldfish, and the parents are adamant that it will be the child’s sole responsibility, the child has to be willing and able to buy the fish food, feed the fish and clean the tank. That part is usually easy to establish. The parents now have to make peace with the idea of watching the fish tank getting greener and greener, and the fish dying in its watery dungeon, because the minute they give in and decide to change the state of the hungry fish, into a fed fish, they have assumed control. This means that there is now joint responsibility for the goldfish, and their offspring will not take the sole responsibility back.
Others’ parenting experiences, speaking to at least some aspects of the Permissive Parenting Style.
How to raise an adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success[xxiii]
… [W]hen it came to raising their two children, they couldn’t have been less like-minded about how to help their kids “make it”. Don’s wife wanted to help their kids as much as possible, which to her meant letting the kids enjoy their free time instead of doing chores, and hovering over them to ensure their homework was done. Don saw both of these seemingly helpful things as quite the opposite. “I’ve looked back at my life and I believe one hundred percent that the responsibilities I had taught me how to be self-sufficient, and that sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do but you suck it up and do it anyway, and that’s what teaches you humility, work ethic, responsibility, and follow-through.
“My ex felt like she always had to observe our son and daughter, tell them what to do, and remind them of this or that. And when they didn’t do the things she was constantly reminding them to do, she’d get frustrated and keep telling the kids, ‘You need to start your homework’ – nothing would happen- ‘You really need to start your homework’ – nothing would happen. These repetitive reminders and requests went in one ear and out the other. And there were no consequences”. …. “My child should be accountable for their work…. At work we call it micromanaging versus empowerment”.
Mom Who Tried To Gentle Parent Her 5-Year-Old Daughter Says She Raised A ‘Little Monster’ — ‘Everything Is A Fight’[xxiv]
One mother … was struggling with this internal battle with her 5-year-old daughter. Originally, she’d casually tried the “gentle parenting” technique, but quickly realized her daughter was growing into a “little monster.”
…Not only does her daughter expect her parents to do everything for her, but the mom admitted that parenting has been a constant battle.
…“I don’t expect her to magically be able to do everything,” she clarified, “just some small things like eat independently or put her own shoes on.”
…“We’ve had something similar recently with our little guy,” one mom added under the post. “You have to call their bluff — their power in the situation comes from the fact that they think/know that you will ultimately dress them because you wouldn’t send them to daycare/school like that.”
Detachment: an adoption memoir [xxv]
“These kids seemed more like wild dogs who needed me to establish dominance over the pack, not exactly my strong suit”….
One of Mierau’s sons saw someone on a bus with a mohawk haircut and wanted it. Mierau edged past the request by temporizing that they might talk to mom about getting one. Later Mierau said, “I was scared that Bohdan would actually remember this conversation….”
When his kids wouldn’t go to sleep one evening while they were on a visit to his parents, Mierau “spent half an hour threatening, negotiating, cajoling them. In the end I said fine, do what you want, and fell onto my bed for a few hours of exhausted sleep”.
“’Peter, you have to go down the hill right now. Or else.” I had no idea what or else meant, …”
The Girl Behind the Door: a father’s guest to understand his daughter’s suicide [xxvi]
As time went on, parenting Casey often felt like breaking a wild stallion. They instinctively protect their space and dominate their handlers. Sometimes they have limited patience, lash out and bite. Only the most experienced handlers can train them. There is no single method of training that works, because every stallion is different. In each case, handlers have to project confidence and speak with authority to gain the stallion’s respect…. I wish I’d had a gift for understanding my own daughter. As infuriating as her behavior was we had no reference point to determine if this was normal, because we had no other children. Instead we’d allowed our child to manipulate us into giving her whatever she wanted in order to avert her tears. It had to be us. We were incompetent parents.
A perspective on Permissive Parenting specific to adoption:
What must also be considered is the impact of adoption on a child who struggles with self-regulation or has learned a regulation that may not work in the world he or she is in. Or is simply in the emotional upheaval of a new world, one that doesn’t usually deal with the emotional immaturity or lack of confidence or whatever the adoptee’s emotional, mental, etc. state is in face of the expectations of something like piano lessons. Yasik may have tinkered with a piano because he loved to listen to music and perhaps it had a calming effect but regular practice may have been a whole other, decidedly less calming aspect of music for him. What was the fight he was having with piano that we believing we had been given a young Mozart into our care did not understand?
Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents [xxvii]
Parents whose own parents were too rigid tend to see roles as either being rigid or unstructured. They like to choose the unstructured, since it feels loving. Of course, lack of structure does not bring out the best in children. It is a harmful parenting style for children who need a lot of structure to succeed. Almost without exception, children who are described in this book need high nurture along with high structure. If they want to assure themselves that they are parenting in a kind way, not a rigid way, parents can look hard at the nurturing they are doing along with their structure.
The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child[xxviii]
I’m sitting in my office, doing an intake for what looks like a very nice couple who are coming in because they are very concerned about their five-year-old adopted son. I listen to the facts that are sadly so familiar to me – two years of trauma with his bio-mom before his removal, a few different foster homes, and then adoption by this family who earnestly wants the best for him. But then they say the “M” word and I find myself nearly flinching.
“Everything he does is just trying to get attention,” the mom insisted. “He’s trying to manipulate me.”
…The truth is that children aren’t capable of manipulation until adolescence, because to be able to manipulate, you need a more developed prefrontal cortex…. [According to the dictionary] in order for one person to manipulate another, an action has to done to control another with clear purpose by unfair or artful means.
Most children that have been traumatized just don’t have the developmental maturity to be able to do this. Even typical children can’t do this until at least early adolescence (around nine or ten), and generally speaking, children with trauma tend to have developmental delays in the areas of emotional and social maturity.
So, if it’s not manipulation, what is it when a child does things to get certain reactions, leaving us feeling manipulated? These actions are survival strategies for the child; strategies that they’ve had to learn to survive very difficult circumstances. And when we as adults see these strategies, we often interpret them through our lens and ascribe adult meanings and motivations to the behavior….
One of the keys [to handling the behavior better] can be looking at it from the child’s perspective, and asking what need they’re trying to meet with the behavior.
And then there is this:
At the point of entry into the teen years, Yasik was almost as tall as I was. The 40” x 40 lbs. long gone. He was finding his way into manhood, hair as long as he could get it to grow and flipped outward in the front but wavy in the back. His acne was under control and he was smoothly tanned. He wore T shirts, boarder pants which looked to me like retro-fitted old men’s golfing pants. He had biked into town and bought them himself at a friend’s mother’s store, 2 pairs too big for him I thought, but his pants, his choice.
Footnotes
[i] https://www.childproofparenting.com/blog/threats-bribes Threats & Bribes: Two Sides of The Same Coin
[ii] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/child-psychologist-explains-4-types-of-parenting-and-how-to-tell-which-is-right-for-you.html A psychologist shares the 4 styles of parenting—and the type that researchers say is the most successful
[iii] Lythcott-Haims, Julie. How to Raise an Adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success. Henry Holt & Company, 2015, 99-100.
[iv] David-Weill, Cecile. Parents Under the Influence. Penguin Random House, 2019, 9,10.
[v] Brooks, John. The Girl Behind the Door: a father’s quest to understand his daughter’s suicide. Scribner, 2016, 64.
[vi] Anderson, Amy, “Counting on Cousins” from Rebecca Walker, ed. One Big Happy Family. Penguin Group, 2009, 63.
[vii] https://www.knoxvillecounselingservices.com/courtneys-blog/2018/10/25/al6ou5mqr2oip3tobptcw8bgg65tux https://raisedgood.com/toddlers-meltdowns-brain-development-ditch-traditional-discipline/
[viii] https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a26987389/types-of-parenting-styles/
https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/
https://openpress.usask.ca/lifespandevelopment/chapter/parenting-styles/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568743/
https://www.psychologs.com/7-types-of-parenting-styles-you-might-wanna-steer-clear-from/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/parenting/parenting-styles
https://parentingscience.com/permissive-parenting/
https://www.parentingforbrain.com/4-baumrind-parenting-styles/
https://www.positive-parenting-ally.com/permissive-parenting-style.html
[ix] Gray, Deborah, D. Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2002, 97.
[x] Bernstein, Jeffrey Ph.D. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/liking-the-child-you-love/202303/when-is-a-childs-reward-actually-a-bribe Posted March 22, 2023 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
[xi] https://www.parentingforbrain.com/manipulative-parents/
[xii] Dewar, Gwen, Ph.D. https://parentingscience.com/permissive-parenting/ © 2010 – 2022
[xiii] https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/
[xiv]https://www.janetlansbury.com/2012/09/respectful-parenting-is-not-permissive-parenting/
[xv] https://www.positive-parenting-ally.com/permissive-parenting-style.html
[xvi] Bregman, Rutger. Humankind: a hopeful history. Bloomsbury, 2020, 286 – 295.
[xvii] Doucleff, Michaeleen, Ph.D. Hunt, Gather, Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans. Avid Reader Press, 2022, P9.
[xviii] Vrticka, Pascal. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-why-neural-synchrony-between-parents-and-children-isnt-always-ideal
[xix] Hupp, Stephen and Jeremy Jewell Great Myths of Child Development. Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
[xx] Letourneau, Dr. Nicole with Justin Joschko Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence. Dundern Press, 2013, 62-76.
[xxi] Lythcott-Haims, Julie. How to raise an adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success Henry Holt & Company, 2015, 121, 64-65.
[xxii] Blyth Hall, Sue. Fish don’t climb trees: a whole new look at dyslexia. Friesen Press, 2020, 196.
[xxiii] Lythcott-Haims, Julie. How to raise an adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success. Henry Holt & Company, 2015, 122-123.
[xxiv] Slabbekoorn, Zayda. https://www.yourtango.com/self/therapist-explains-why-good-kids-spend-whole-adult-lives-recovering Written on Jul 27, 2024
[xxv]Mierau, Maurice. Detachment: an adoption memoir. Freehand Books, 2014, 101,145,153.
[xxvi]Brooks, John. The Girl Behind the Door: a father’s quest to understand his daughter’s suicide. Scribner, 2016, 62-63.
[xxvii] Gray, Deborah, D. Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents.Jessica Kingsey Publishers, 2002, 97.
[xxviii] Tantrum, Barbara Cumins. The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child. North Atlantic Books, 2020, 104-105.