Sylvia Rimm on Raising Kids by Dr. Sylvia Rimm

Q. Do children respond best to an authoritarian style parent?

A. Diana Baumrind is a well-known researcher who described various behaviors through which parents are either demanding or responsive to their children and classified this into four main styles of parenting: authoritarian, authoritative, indulgent and unengaged. Based on her research, the authoritarian parenting style is not the most effective approach to parenting. Children respond best to a more balanced parenting style described as authoritative, rather than authoritarian. Authoritarian parents are demanding, but not responsive — which means that children have to follow lots of rules that don't necessarily consider their needs or wishes. Indulgent parents are not sufficiently demanding of children, but are very responsive. These children live in permissive environments where they usually get what they want, when they want it, without expectations of responsibility. Unengaged parents are described as neither demanding nor responsive and children neither learn responsibility nor get their needs and wants met by parents. Authoritative parents are both sufficiently demanding and appropriately responsive. Children learn about boundaries and responsibilities, but their parents take into consideration children's input and are concerned about their special needs and wishes. Thus authoritative parenting has been found to be the most effective style for raising happy, achieving children.

You can see that either extreme of parenting causes children problems, but in authoritative parenting, while the parents are definitely in charge, their decisions are made with consideration to children's input, thoughts and feelings.

A developmental analogy I use in my book, "How To Parent So Children Will Learn" (Great Potential Press, 2008), is the V of love.

When children are young you can view them at the base of the V with little power, little freedom, few choices and few responsibilities. As they mature parents gradually increase their power, freedom and choices, matched with increased responsibilities. Children thus feel gradually empowered as parents back off to treat them in a more mature fashion.

In our culture today, many children are brought up with the inverted V —thus having too much power, too many choices, and too much freedom before they can manage responsibility and project the future. Consequences alone are insufficient for learning that they've made mistakes. This early overempowerment often leads parents to punish children more severely as they get into trouble, thus taking power away that they've given too early. By the tween and teen years, these children often feel powerless and are angry and rebellious, thus causing adolescence to feel like a constant battle. The tweens and teens feel powerless only relative to the overempowerment they wielded too early. Unfortunately, alcohol and drugs temporarily cause them to feel empowered and they're very vulnerable to addiction and serious high-risk behaviors.

For free newsletters about Dr. Rimm's book, "How to Parent So Children Will Learn" or on "From Overempowerment to Underachievement" send a large self-addressed, stamped envelope to P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI, 53094, or read more about her book at www.sylviarimm.com.

Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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