Children in Parenting Styles

By Hu Wo (Cuckoo’s Song)

In my teaching experience, I have encountered diverse kinds of students, particu­larly those who are in different parenting styles. Some children are pretty easy to teach, while others are quite difficult to edu­cate, strange to say. Of course, in Myanmar society, parents are often considered the first teach­ers who instruct their children for good or evil. Personally, as long as children are under the age of 18, their parents ought to take overall responsibility for their personal cases. In actual fact, parenting styles are the life of children’s all-round development for certain. According to psychologist Diana Baumrind, she suggested four types of parenting styles at home, namely authoritarian, authorita­tive, indulgent, and neglectful.

Firstly, authoritarian parent­ing style is assumed to be a kind of pessimistic parenting style in which parents are found to get in­volved with everything their chil­dren do, from food and clothing to talking and behaving in public. In my teaching experience, we often do not need much class control over children in an authoritari­an parenting style. Usually, such children stay silent or do not even answer back to teachers at class time, whether they pay atten­tion to school studies from their teachers. And hence, we are not required to teach them good man­ners in most cases. But on the negative side, children who are controlled too much by parents mostly remain so silent that they cannot even easily reply back to some simple questions frequently asked by their teachers. Worst of all, authoritarian parents tend to use their coercive power in their child control. Really, too much coercive power everywhere tends to retard or affect children’s intel­lectual development. Also, overly controlled children are prone to hesitate about not only asking for money for school-related finan­cial cases but also spending their pocket money at school.

Secondly, an authoritative parenting style can be seen to be a sort of optimistic parenting style in which parents seem to favour a close friendship with their chil­dren rather than a parent-child relationship as in an authoritari­an parenting style. Despite this, authoritative parents like to set some limits on the relationship with their children, especially meaning a give-and-take rela­tionship or sometimes maybe the carrot and the stick, which can be used in an authoritarian parenting style. In my teaching experience, children who are in an authori­tative parenting style discipline themselves at school; they are well-mannered or well-behaved children. In other words, these children have self-discipline, self-control and self-reliance. Unlike those in an authoritari­an parenting style, they feel free to say something important or be independent of their parents and teachers in decision-making and studying, respectively. But on the other side, if children in an authoritative parenting style are free from the control of parents on their actions, they may have intra­personal overconfidence, which can lead to failing the examination unexpectedly.

Thirdly, indulgent parent­ing style is found to be a type of negative parenting style in which parents are highly involved with anything their children are relat­ed to but impose fewer limits or restrictions on their behaviours than authoritarian and authorita­tive parenting styles. As always, indulgent parents allow their chil­dren to do whatever they want, beginning with what to wear, what to eat, what to say, and how to live. It does not matter at all if these in­dulgent parents are the ones who are economically advantaged. In my teaching experience, children in indulgent parenting styles are less expected. Additionally, they do not usually look interested in school subjects, yet they enjoy following trends and fads such as trendy clothes, smartphones or motorcycles. Their willingness to learn looks like a flash in the pan as usual. Sad to say, children of too indulgent parents don’t have a dog’s chance of passing the exam as often as possible. At the very worst, most children who are in an indulgent parenting style are badly-behaved ones with poor personality.

Finally, neglectful parenting style is known as a neutral man­ner of parenting style in which many parents are almost always busy making a meagre living or running their own business, so they can be uninvolved with their children’s several cases. This means that neglectful parents are unable to take good care of their children, whether they are rich or not, or if their children are good or bad. In my teaching ex­perience, many children who are neglected by their parents have a low expectation of education. That is, it will be okay for them even if they do badly in an exam. But on the other side, no wonder their parents stay mute about their academic achievement or edu­cational success; the parents have been unaware of their children since the beginning. As a result of parental ignorance, their children are prone to have no manners – they respond to whatever sit­uation they are facing either ag­gressively in a moment or moodily in ages. And sometimes, they may develop certain emotional prob­lems or meet emotional disor­ders like playing truant, smoking, drug or alcohol abuse, bullying, delinquency, risk of pregnancy, risk of sexually transmitted dis­eases, sexual identity, and even dropping out.

Actually, there have been four great influences on children: pa­rental influence, peer influence, environmental influence and self-control. Even though authori­tative parenting style is generally supposed to be the best among the four parenting styles, each of them has its pros and cons for diverse children. Some children could do with an authoritarian parenting style, while some thirst for an indulgent or neglectful parenting style. Whatever kind of parenting style it is, children can hardly refuse both their peer influence and their environmen­tal influence. Despite this, any child-friendly parenting style will protect children against the bad influence of their peers and the environment. Above all, self-con­trol is the most essential need for children’s allround improve­ment in whatever type of par­enting style. Only children with self-control will surely achieve self-directed learning through­out their lives, which is also the maximum educational goal for a student’s lifetime.