Episode 28: Can We Talk?

Are you doing these critical things to help your child succeed academically? Take the quiz now to find out the important actions you can take to enhance your child's education. Go to my website, liberationthrougheducation.com quiz and take the quiz today. Foreign welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustration frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as the micro discriminations that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I'll be discussing the implications of a recently observed parenting style. Laissez Faire Parenting have you ever observed how exasperated some parents are when their young children, meaning children between the ages of 2 and 6 years old, is displaying an unwanted behavior? The child just seems to be having a meltdown, a tantrum. Do you feel empathy or annoyance at the parents reactions? I was casually talking with a young mother the other day and she was describing a situation in which she saw a young child being disobedient. She said that the mother of that child stated, I hope she grows out of that behavior. The young mother that I was speaking with was perplexed by the parents response because she was of the mind that a child needed to be taught and disciplined in order to correct behavior. When we finished our conversation, I wondered if parenting styles had changed since I raised my kids. Is there a new parenting style that's becoming more prevalent? I pondered this question and wondered whether it was true. I was curious about what this new parenting style could be and its implications on future generations as they grow into adults participating in this society. I explored a little bit of the research to discover whether this was a topic on the radar of researchers. It is laissez faire. Parenting is a thing and it is not highly regarded. I discussed what I was able to glean from just a sampling of the research and provide my insights as well. In this episode. Let's dive in. Let's begin with the basics of what parenting is. According to the Journal of Humanities and social science in 2016, parenting is basically the process of developing and supporting the physical, emotional, social and intellectual development of the child from infancy to adulthood. The quality of parenting that a child receives during the early years affects their cognitive potential, social skills, and behavioral functioning that very often determine their overall success in life. Parenting practices around the world Focus Focus on three main goals. 1 ensuring the child's health and safety, 2 preparing a child for life as productive adults and 3 reinforcing cultural values. The major factors affecting parenting include the maturity of the parent, the stability of the relationship between parents, the parent's motivation for having a child, and the child's temperament and physical attributes. The research indicates that when poor parenting practices are in play, children with challenging temperaments or behaviors tend to lead to negative outcomes. Parenting style, on the other hand, usually describes normal variations in parenting. It captures two critical elements of parenting parental responsiveness and parental demandingness. Parental responsiveness involves displays of warmth and supportiveness in which parents intentionally foster individuality, self regulation, and self assertion by being attuned to the child. Parental demandingness is often referred to as behavioral control and it involves supervision, disciplinary actions, and the willingness to confront the child who disobeys. These two parenting characteristics lead to four different categories of parenting indulgent, authoritarian, authoritative and uninvolved. I grew up in an era when most parents were authoritarian, meaning that they were very rigid and strict. When my parents rules were not followed by punishment and or discipline was instantaneous and exerted in such a way as to promote future obedience. If you dared to question authority, you were given the stern eyed look or the typical statement because I said so. My parents could have cared less about my feelings or my siblings feelings and emotions. It was all about expecting us to accept their judgments, values and goals without questioning. Authoritative parenting style tends to rely more on positive reinforcement and the infrequent use of punishment. In this parenting style, parents are more aware of their child's feelings and capabilities and support the development of their child's autonomy within reasonable limits. Parents with this type of parenting style tend to be more open to give and take with their children and to provide greater use of explanations. Indulgent or permissive parenting in a family setting is where parents are undemanding, exert little to no punishment, and tend to be highly responsive to whatever the child wants at that moment. There's no expectation regarding achievement and behavior. Laissez faire parenting or uninvolved parenting is basically neglectful parenting. Parents in this parenting style are often emotionally absent and they have little to no expectation of the child. They don't demand anything of them. As far as their behavioral expectations are concerned, they provide the basic necessities for the child to survive but have very little engagement. There's little to no communication with the child which places this child at risk of being a victim to another child's deviant behavior. These children also tend to rely on external controls rather than self regulation. They have low cognitive and emotional empathy development. Research further focuses on two parental styles and that is active parenting style and laissez faire parenting style research that was undertaken by the University of Cambridge in 2021. In Rao and Renee's research, who were the researchers at the University of Cambridge who wrote this journal article, they noted that laissez faire parent types spoke directly to their child 0.2% of the time as compared to active parents who spoke to their child 91% of the time. These researchers also depicted the graphical representation of an interesting phenomena from the data. Mothers with high school or less education tended to be of the laissez faire type. Mothers with some college education tended to be more evenly distributed between laissez faire and active parenting, and mothers with a college degree tended to be more of the active parenting type. These researchers also discovered that parents with more than one child tend to be less likely of the active type and the probability of being of the active type appears to increase with maternal age and education. Another study in 2007 correlated mastery goal orientation with parenting style and involvement for the authoritative parenting style. Because of their democratic, firm and communicative style with their child, as well as providing a nurturing and supportive environment, these children tended to have better and higher mastery goal orientation. They just seem to enjoy learning. On the other hand, this research provided findings that indicated a negative relationship between students who reported having parents more of the laissez faire parenting type and they had less mastery goal orientation. Students who perceived their parents to be of the authoritative parenting style believe themselves to have more autonomy when pursuing their schoolwork, whereas children with laissez faire parents tended to be less independent and poor, less self reliant. Their parents provided little guidance and the children weren't encouraged to master new information or develop self efficacy standards for achievement. Being involved in a child's life is critical. However, there should be a healthy balance between excessive and insufficient parental involvement. Students may be less likely to be motivated to pursue their goals or even complete their homework if their parent is either too involved or not involved enough. This also depends upon the age of the child as less parental involvement in hands on school work is necessary as the child progresses from elementary school to middle school and then to high school. The reason that the focus on parenting style is so important is because children are expected to be our future leaders. It is the parent who makes the choice in his or her approach to child rearing. According to Mansager and Volk in the Journal of individual psychology in 2004, most often parents feel as if they're either going to be parents like the way that they were raised or they avoid that method at all costs. Sometimes the parents determine that they will use a blend of how they were raised along with methods that they feel most comfortable. A balance has to be established because a parent may adopt looser policies because of their bitter experiences that came from their own childhood, or they may lean towards stricter discipline if they felt that their parents were too lax. The caution in doing this, though, is that doing the opposite of what their parents did may cause error just as much. Laissez faire parenting style is characterized by low authority and high indulgence. In this type of family setting, the child frequently shows little respect for the parent because the child knows that the parent will disregard disruptive behavior and end up giving the child whatever is demanded. The child often uses temper tantrums to control the parent whenever the parent's actions frustrate or challenge the child's desires. From the parent perspective, the parent in the laissez faire parenting style avoids the child's temper tantrums at all costs and avoids fights. This becomes a guiding principle of interaction with the child. It seems as though the parent needs the approval of the child or the parent seeks to to avoid the child's disapproval. Laissez faire parents tend to see limit setting and application of any consequences as if they are cruel and unusual punishment. Even in their most logical and natural forms. These parents often feel baffled and outraged thinking that they provide nurturing for less authority and if they do that, then they should have earned more respect and better behavior from the child. Child rearing is a multidimensional endeavor, including the maturity of the parent, the parent education level, the parents nurturing and disciplinary approaches, their encouragement, support, motivation and goal setting strategies, as well as cultural infusion. Suffice it to say that laissez faire parenting is not new, it just seems to be more commonplace. I'm not sure that we can explain away this parenting style due to current pressures of modern society, because those pressures have always existed, perhaps in a different form decades ago, but nevertheless those societal pressures still existed. Quite often it seems that the amount of commitment necessary to raise the child doesn't seem to outweigh the inconvenience of having one. Raising children requires commitment. There's no shortcuts and no two ways about that. It requires a long term view because the generation that is currently being raised is being looked at as our future leaders, active, participating, successful members of society. This is not a short game. Disruptive and disobedient behavior must be addressed in order for self discipline, self advocacy, and self governing characteristics to be developed in the child. To teach a child that disruptive behavior is okay in order to get what they want is not realistic. We don't always get what we want in life, that's just the reality. But we can be taught the skills necessary to manage ourselves when we fail at something or are disappointed by an outcome. Perseverance and persistence are important life skills. Without them there is no measure of success. I was not as prompt on disciplining my children when I compared myself to how my parents disciplined us. Yet believe me when I say my kids were disciplined and I think they appreciate that now that they are adults raising their own children. They may not have liked my methods, but that wasn't my goal. My goal was that they become self sufficient, self governing, self regulatory and persistent, knowing that the skills, talents and abilities that they possessed would serve them well in the future. My children are probably slower than I was at applying discipline. This is a generational observation that I've noted over the years. They may be less slow to apply discipline to their children, but they do apply discipline when necessary. They understand that raising children is a long game and that as parents, is your primary obligation and responsibility. There are things that are practiced in the short term that impact the long game. For example, consider these things and check off the ones that apply for you. How often do you talk to your child? Do you ask questions about their day, what they're doing, what they learned, what they saw, etc. Do you engage in active conversation at dinner? Do you even sit down together as a family for dinner? Are you actively engaged in interactions with your children or are you scrolling on social media? How much screen time are your children occupied with on a daily basis? How often do you read to your child? A plethora of research indicates that neglect in any of these areas impacts the social well being, the verbal and nonverbal interactions, and the achievement of children over the long term. Let's think about the impacts of children raised by lazy, fair parents, behavioral difficulties in school, lack of compliance to rules and regulations, difficulty socializing with others and their peer group, a disregard for authority, inability to take responsibility for their own actions, and lack of contribution to society. None of these things help further the betterment of society and in fact place a burden on it since the entire society stands to suffer from the consequences. When you observe these disruptive behaviors in some children, there is very little that you can actually do about it because of the natural protective instinct of parents regarding their children. You don't know what the parents are going through, the struggles that they are dealing with, etc. What you can do is explain to your own children what acceptable behavior is and what will be allowed within your family structure. You can limit your child's exposure to children who practice disruptive and disobedient behavior and reinforce with them the behavioral standards for your family. The key is being consistent. Consistency in applying discipline matters and even young children know when discipline is inconsistent. They look for that, play on that, and they test that. But doesn't consistency apply to pretty much every aspect of our lives? We have to be consistent in bringing our A game to our jobs and careers. We have to be consistent in the nutrition that we feed our bodies. We have to be consistent with our self care practices. We have to be consistent in moving our bodies and exercising on a regular basis. Lack of consistency in any of these areas shows up pretty quickly. Yes, consistency in applying discipline to children that you are raising is another area of consistency that you have to manage and it matters. You are responsible for raising this next generation. The time, the love, the encouragement and support, the discipline and the interactions with your children, if done with the highest intentions, will pay off in the long run. You chose to have children, which is a blessing unto itself. Now choose to be the best parent you can be. As is my usual format for these personal episodes in which I close with a quote or a clean joke, here are a couple of quotes for you to ponder. Parenthood. It's about guiding the next generation and forgiving the last By Peter Kraus the greatest gift a parent can give a child is self confidence. As stated by Stuart Stafford. We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing consequences. Give us the pain that motivates us to change by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend if this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this. Also, I'd love to hear from you. So please leave me a rating, a review, or a comment and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. I really appreciate it if you would recommend my podcast to a friend directly on Twitter and to mention my show in your tweet. Additionally, you can connect with me on Instagram and Facebook with the handle Kim J. Fields. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to discover and untangle. By the way, if you have a burning question about a current issue or a specific topic that you'd like for me to explore and discuss, shoot me a quick email@kimiberationthrougheducation.com to to let me know what your question is. Anyone whose question is selected to be discussed on one podcast episode will receive a $25Amazon gift card and be sure to stay tuned. On the next episode of my podcast, I'll be discussing the trend toward moving away from letter grades. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day. Foreign subscriber. You can subscribe for as little as $3 per month. Just go to HTTPs://forward/tinyurl.com forward/podcast support. There's no contractual obligation you can cancel at any time. If you choose to subscribe, I'll give you a special shout out thanking you in an upcoming episode. Remember, that's tinyurl.com forward/podcast support to subscribe.