What Is Authoritative Parenting?
Authoritative parenting is one of the best parenting styles that your kids would love to see in you. Your parenting style can affect everything from how much your child weighs to how they feel about themselves.
It is important to ensure your parenting style is supporting healthy growth as well as the development because the way you interact with your child and how you discipline her will influence her for the rest of her life.
Kids that are raised with authoritative discipline tend to be happy and successful. They’re also more likely to be good at making decisions and evaluating safety risks on their own.
The good news is, everyone has the ability to become a more authoritative parent. You can match authoritative parenting strategies to your child’s unique temperament.
How to Implement Authoritative Parenting
Bare in mind that it is best to ensure that you aren’t using a cookie-cutter approach to parenting. Here are ten strategies that will help you become a more authoritative parent:
1. Become a good listener to your kids.
An authoritative parent will welcome their kids’ point of views. They are a good listener to their kids, especially whenever the kids feel like sharing something with their parents.
Authoritative parenting is far different from authoritarian parents who believe children should be seen and not heard.
So whether your child is telling you the same joke for the tenth time, or he is sharing a long-winded story, just be a good listener.
Giving your child positive attention goes a long way toward preventing behaviour problems. Throughout their growing days from a kid to a teenager to an adult, they will still find you to share everything.
2. Upholding your child’s emotions.
An authoritative parent recognize their kids’ point of views. They assist kids with marking their feelings and they instruct them to perceive how their feelings influence their behaviour.
Whenever your kids are vexed, oppose limiting your kid’s feelings by saying, “It’s not a problem,” or “Quit crying”.
To him, it may be a serious deal. Approve his feelings by saying, “I realize you are extremely down at this moment.”
Correct his behaviour, not his feelings. Disclose to them that “It iss OK to feel furious”, yet you will give him the consequences for hitting.
The other way round is, you can also say, “It is OK to feel energized, however running inside the supermarket is NOT”.
At that point, put your vitality into showing him socially satisfactory approaches to manage his emotions.
3. Support their self-discipline.
Authoritative parents will never want to control their children. In exchange, they seek to teach kids to control themselves.
Never rush to your kids and calm them when they are upset. Teach them how to calm themselves down. Also do not nag your child to do his chores. Instead help him become more responsible for getting his work done on his own.
Create a behaviour management plan that focuses on teaching life skills. Impulse control, anger management, and self-discipline will serve her well throughout her life.
4. Use their mistakes as a learning opportunity.
Authoritative parents don’t embarrass kids for making mistakes. Instead, they help them figure out how to turn those mistakes into learning opportunities.
So when your child makes a mistake, explain why their behaviour was a bad choice.
Say something like, “Taking things that don’t belong to you is wrong. It hurts other people’s feelings and can cause people to think you are mean or that you don’t tell the truth.”
When your child hurts someone, help her make amends. Insist she gives her favourite toy to her sister after hitting. Or, help her apologize to someone she offended.
If your child is a repeat offender, try solving them together. Discuss with them on what will make them stop behaving that way.
5. Freedom with a balanced responsibility.
Authoritative parents expect their kids to be responsible and they set them up for success.
Here are few examples of how they might do that:
- A child often forgets to pack all of the items she needs for school. Her parents create a checklist for her. Before heading out the door in the morning, they ask her to run through the checklist.
- A child struggles to get ready for school on time. His parents create a schedule to remind him what time he should be getting dressed, eating breakfast, and brushing his teeth. They remind him to look at the clock and stick to his schedule.
If your child is struggling with something, create a behaviour management plan that will support your child’s efforts to become more independent.
Provide extra support initially, but make sure that your child isn’t becoming more dependent on you to tell him what to do. Over time, he should be becoming increasingly self-reliant.
6. Make a first and the last warning for minor issues.
Authoritative parents give immediate consequences for rule violations. If a child hits, he may be placed in a time-out or he may lose a privilege.
But for minor issues, they offer a warning. They tell children what the consequence will be if they don’t change their behavior.
So don’t waste your time saying meaningless things like, “Don’t make me tell you again!”.
Instead, say, “If you don’t stop banging your fork on the table you won’t be able to play video games today,” or “If you don’t pick up your toys now, you won’t be able to go the park after lunch.”
Show your child that you say what you mean and you mean what you say. If he doesn’t listen to your warning, follow through with the consequence.
The first warning and the consequence should stick to your kids mind for the rest of his life. Which make him to think twice before even repeating the same act.
Avoid offering multiple warnings. Repeating yourself trains your child not to listen the first time you speak.
7. The right consequences for a lifetime lesson.
Authoritative parents would not beat their kids up or ground them from everything for their mistakes. They do not prefer shaming their kids as well.
There will never be a guilt trips or saying things like, “Daddy feels very disappointed with you”.
Instead authoritative parents helps their child see the bad choice he made, without putting them in the bad person place.
Consequences are often logical in nature. So a child who refuses to shut off his video game may lose his video game privileges for 24 hours.
Create consequences that will help your child learn to do better in the future. If he hits his brother, don’t beat him.
Instead, take away a privilege. Then, focus on teaching him better anger management or conflict resolution skills.
Ask your kid how they prefer to show that he is upset without hitting a person. Then, talk about his options and teach him alternatives to hitting.
Make consequences time sensitive too. Instead of saying, “You can have your tablet back when I can trust you again.”
Try to say “You can use your tablet again once you can show me that you’re responsible”.
“You can show me you are responsible for completing your chores and getting your homework done on time every day this week.”
8. Reward for well being.
Authoritative parents use rewards to motivate their children. That doesn’t mean they shower kids with lavish gifts, however.
Instead, when a child is struggling with a specific behavior problem, they use incentives to help a child get back on track. Here are a few examples:
- A preschooler refuses to sleep in his own bed. His parents create a sticker chart and he earns one sticker each night he stays in his own bed.
- A 10-year-old is slow to get ready for school in the morning. His parents set a timer every morning. If he is ready before the timer goes off, he earns the opportunity to use his electronics that day.
- A 12-year-old has been forgetting to bring his homework from school. His parents begin monitoring his work more closely. For each work he brings home, he earns a token. Tokens can be exchanged for bigger rewards, like a trip to the park or an opportunity to get a greater gift.
Consider how you can use rewards to teach your child new skills. A simple reward plan is a fast and efficient way to change your child’s behavior.
Make sure the reward you are planning to give them are very much up to their age and what they will be needing.
9. Authoritative parenting and their clear rules.
They make sure kids know their expectations ahead of time and they explain the reasons behind their rules.
So rather than saying, “Go to sleep because I said so,” say, “Go to sleep so you can help your body and your brain grow,”.
When your child understands the underlying safety concerns, health hazards, moral issues, or social reasons behind your rules, they’ll develop a better understanding of life.
He’ll also be more likely to follow the rules when you aren’t there to enforce them.
10. Include your kids in any discussion.
Children’s consideration is very important for authoritative parenting. That doesn’t mean that your child gets an equal vote. It would constitute permissive parenting.
Show your child that you are in charge, but make it known that you care about how your decisions affect everyone in the family.
So if you’re planning to go for a vacation, ask your kids how they feel about the vacation plan. But don’t ask him if he is OK with the place you choose for vacation.
Kids lack the wisdom and experience to make major adult decisions. They feel more secure when they know adults know best.
Instead of that, you can share the great things that you kids will explore in the vacation place if they didn’t show a positive sign at first.
These are the 10 most efficient authoritative parenting methods that are being used by people to have better growing kids.