This is the parenting style we are encouraged to strive after as parents. Why is it then, to actually affirm that as parents we are golden parents feels a bit uncomfortable, not quite politically correct or sufficiently self-deprecating? At least so it feels to me. Added to which, the preceding posts reveal, via example after example, and even accounting for natural self-deprecation, Dave and my stumbles parenting Yasik.
Can anything be found in my oracle, the journal, to suggest that we might have been parents guided by authoritative parenting skills? Did I, as any good reporter would, only write the breaking news that would horrify, sidelining or shrugging off the positive stories?
Wellll, hopefully not puffing our chests too unnaturally, we did skinny into Authoritative Parenting in the Parenting Skills quiz we tried back in in the post Introduction to Parenting Styles. Certainly, it was our ardent desire to be the best parents we knew how to be for this kid we loved. Had we been offered a lecture on parenting skills in the seminars we participated in pre-adoption, it would have been a no–brainer for us. Like every parent in the room, we would have recognized that Authoritative Parenting was the ideal way to raise a child.
If Goldilocks chose a bowl of just right porridge, did we too sometimes manage to hold the parenting teeter totter in a just right balance, not too permissive and not too neglectful? Incidentally, I have discovered that the Goldilocks metaphor and the ‘just right’ message are ‘go-to’s for many parenting writers. Dr. Aliza Pressman tells the reader[i]
Somewhere in the middle, there’s the authoritative parent – high on limits and boundaries and high on sensitivity. Developmental psychologist Dr. Stephanie Carlson calls this position “Goldilocks parenting” – the optimal balance…. Goldilocks parenting is associated with the most integrated child developmental outcomes – and more evidence that a middle-of-the-road approach gets better results than the rigid or extreme approaches.
We are aware that we need to teach our children that life is about sharing and caring for each other as they learn to take care of themselves while we as parents try not to be controlling yet stay in charge – to establish boundaries and maintain them, all with a warm, loving and supportive approach.
I begin by retelling one story but rearranging the perspective to look, not at the Permissive or Neglectful or Authoritarian aspects, but to suggest that some intuitive part came from the Authoritative parenting.
It is the story of accompanying Yasik to a school gym to support him as he was now being encouraged to join in more school activities. At the Christmas program the previous year Yasik was the one kindergartner allowed to remain sitting in the audience rather than being expected to join the rest of his class on stage. Now in his second year at the school, he would be encouraged to no longer sit on the sidelines. Entering the gym he went into automatic sideline mode. And as I recount in an earlier post, I went into automatic threat and bribe mode. The bribe worked enough to get Yasik on the trampoline but wasn’t enough to entice him into a second turn. I returned to threat mode and up he climbed again. This time I saw a mix of the struggle with fear and a shy enjoyment register on his face. He had conquered the worst of it. He was on his way. Between the first and second attempts there were tears on my neck to add to all this and, as I watched him get up and try this in front of peers who babied him still, I had to fight tears too. I was so proud of him and all he attempted and of his stubborn refusals too. He wasn’t following blindly – he was taking care of himself, and I was balancing the parental teeter totter somewhere between Permissive and Authoritarian.
What if that teeter totter could be balanced by one parent being the ‘demander’ and the other being the ‘warmer’? The journal acknowledges that Dave and I, while perhaps not able to articulate that we wanted to be Authoritative rather than any of the other three styles, would talk over our concerns: me being too permissive and he taking on the role of disciplinarian more often. (Don’t worry. I am aware that ‘Good cop/Bad cop’ can be read between these lines) We were trying to follow through on areas needing discipline and Yasik seemed happy with it – after the fact. The journal notes: “He bores easily- so it is a fine line between control and creativity. He needs support and control”.
We also talked about how to give Yasik more independence, holding our breath on the consequences. Case in point, Dave warning me off jumping into action when Yasik wanted me to help him go sikats (I am no longer certain that is the correct Russian word). Dave was firm that at five he should be taking care of this business on his own, whether the orphanage had prepared Yasik for this independence or not. The reality was no one was going to help him at school. He had to figure out how to wiggle up on a toilet with pants tying his ankles together and how to stay dry while managing all the steps to follow before making sure the toilet bowl was cleared of debris.
We had, after all, taken the age-appropriate step of putting him in school three weeks after he moved into our lives, society and country. It took several days of accompanying him to school, a situation the other children, having started a week earlier, had already adjusted to. Nonetheless, the moment came when his teacher decided it was no longer necessary for us to stay with him even though Yasik had peed his pants in class that morning, too shy or language-deprived to seek help with oncoming sikats. Later the school office called to say he had settled. The battle, my journal says, to accept attending kindergarten as part of his new life was over. Well almost or sufficiently. We were out walking that weekend and pointed out the school to Yasik. He wrinkled his nose and stuck out his tongue. But come Monday he went without a fight.
As much as there are risks evident in the Authoritarian, Neglectful, and Permissive parenting styles, there are risks in Authoritative parenting, not always fun to engage with, but sometimes…..
The first time Yasik wanted to drive, he and Dave were in the London Drugs parking lot with lots of others. Yasik figured he could manage it even though Dave warned him he would hit a car but he said, “No. I can drive.” He had seen Dave doing it a fair few times by then. He climbed in the driver’s seat, got the anti-theft steering wheel club off, and then turned to Dave to check on the next step. “This way Poppa?” Poppa Dave shrugged, reminding him that he knew how to drive. “Poppa says sorry, you are driving”. Yasik got the key in and Dave then asked him to think through his next move. “Look out the back window. You are going to smash that car.” “Nada, nada, me back. Me stop down there…… How do you stop? Tell me.” And then Yasik did think and handed Dave the key. “Nada. Poppa drive.” He figured he might smash the car. But he had driven cars in video games, soooo.
Learning to ride a two-wheeler bike without training wheels was another of those independence initiatives that surprised me as a parent for its significance. After beating the symmetry out of the training wheels, Yasik made an appeal to Dave to get them replaced. Big mistake. He should have addressed his appeal to me. Dave knew it was time to remove them, not replace them, to trust biking without these sidekicks. He took them off and dumped them. Yasik was decidedly disconcerted, thinking that was the end of biking for him. Dave coaxed him back on the bike, with a moment of hand steadying. With that moment of support, just as any kid with access to a bike, Yasik sensed that internal wonder that, Yes! he could handle this balancing act. And he was off, maybe holding a bit to a grudge that he had to move to another level, but rounding back to show off to me, singing a garbled ABC song.
And then it was September again, several years later: our routine, a tight weekday schedule of university for Dave, elementary school for Yasik and teaching high school for me interspersed with happy holidays and weekend relaxation was fairly established. We were once again shedding the happy summer freedom and preparing to buckle into the school regime. Dave had already driven off to his school; I needed to get Yasik to his school before catching the bus to my school. Only the second day into this regime and I was already falling into ‘Rush, rush, we gotta go’. Yasik hadn’t yet made the ‘Rush, rush, we gotta go’ adjustment. Still holding on to his slow go, he planted a shaky flag: “You can’t run my life.” I planted an opposing flag: “Yes I run your life until you are 18 and then you run mine”. Any hint of Authoritative, warm but demanding, open to opinion on family decision making here?
The rush to the tantalizing year 18 speeds up when puberty is activated. One day Yasik found himself confused by the advances of a neighbourhood girl, telling Dave, “I don’t know. I am not a girl” when Dave helped him extricate himself from said girl’s teasing. Months, weeks, days, nanoseconds later, (I don’t remember nor am I holding tightly to the journal on this one), Yasik was thrilled when a girl from his school called to say she liked him. Yasik was still naïve enough to leave the phone on speaker. He had been to a birthday party she had invited all their class to, but it seems he was singled out by the birthday girl. When we picked him up after the party, face all aglow, Yasik asked us if we liked this particular classmate on a scale from 1% to 100%. We had merely been introduced to her at one recent school function, yet we went with 100%. He said, “Me too”. Another day, she invited him to her home; he arrived to find he was the special and only guest. While her mother thought this arrangement was a viable babysitting option, in our hot tub that night, we stewed over possible problems, arguing heartily for varying positions. At the same stage, Dave’s mother was still hauling him out of parties, and my religion managed to keep me in the land of zero personal experience. We decided that if and when Yasik planned a return invite to his home, we would put in an if/only clause that at least one other classmate be invited as well.
For the spring break of Yasik’s last year in elementary school, the school hosted a 3-day camp for the students as long as each student was accompanied by a parent or caregiver. Whether Dave volunteered or not, he was that parent. At the camp Yasik worked toward and received a babysitting certificate. Word of his new skill traveled down the road and soon he was offered a babysitting job for a neighbour, at $5.00 an hour. No longer did he have to work at home for a piddling $5.00 a week. “Fine”, says parent Dave but, “If you want work done for you then, it’s work for work or pay for it”. I don’t think that was how Yasik initially understood the world of family expectations versus the world of external employment. We conferenced says my unblinking journal and that seemed to work out some misunderstandings.
But there was still lots of fun with Lazer tag, big paint ball tournaments and Dave and Yasik building a paintball web page, sitting down first to pull together a business plan.
Footnotes
[i] Pressman, Dr. Aliza. The 5 Principles of Parenting: your essential guide to raising good humans Simon Element, 2024, 102
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