A child comes to this world for love. He himself is filled with it and is ready to give this feeling to his parents. However, a jerky and absolutely incapable of life person often grows out of a curious and smiling baby. With what it can be connected? Psychologists answer this question clearly - with parental attitudes and parenting styles. Adults with their attitude to the little man exert a huge influence on him, fully forming all his ideas about life. Many do this unknowingly and in full confidence that they are doing the right thing. After all, their parental attitude and style of upbringing is formed from how their own relations with their parents once developed. Thus, we can say that, communicating with the baby, you not only here and now create his future, but also have a direct impact on the lives of your potential grandchildren. Foreign and domestic psychologists have created several classifications of parenting styles. Teachers very often use them in their work to better understand their students. Familiarity with the class often begins with the study of parenting styles at the parent meeting. This information is very important in order to get an idea of the nature of the child and help him find his place in society. Today we look at the styles of parenting in psychology and the impact that they have on still fragile young souls.
Parental love for the child and the role of the family in his upbringing
The subject of parent-child relationships is inexhaustible. Despite a good theoretical base and extensive experience, psychologists still consider it to be incompletely studied. So, on this topic we can talk for a long time.
It is known that love for your child should be required. Only a mother connected with a child by invisible bonds can give such a feeling even before he is born. Unconditional love not only gives the baby a sense of security and self-confidence, but also sets a certain framework within which a happy and harmonious personality grows. It is believed that a healthy mother should feel like a desire to be crumby, to help him, to instruct and not invade personal space, and to let her baby go when the time comes. We can say that any communication with the mother (physical, verbal or emotional) affects the mental and physical health of the child. In the future, this will affect his attitudes and successes in all areas of activity.
Parents ’love must carry supporting and developing functions. Only with this attitude, at the right time, the child will be able to calmly separate from his family, but will continue to feel loved.
However, not only the mother is responsible for the style of education and the formation of the identity of the crumbs. The growing child is affected by all family members and the relationship between them. The family should not only play the role of the environment in which all the personal qualities of the growing baby are laid, but also the place where he first gets acquainted with society and learns to take a certain position in it. Regularly observing various family situations and the ways in which adults resolve them, the child acquires his vision of this world and gets an idea of social roles. Warm and trusting relationships in the family become the key to the appearance of a healthy self-esteem in the baby, self-confidence and the development of schemes for overcoming difficulties. Families with a cold relationship have the opposite effect on the child. He grows up withdrawn, intimidated, incapable of taking responsibility. Such a person has a host of other qualities that prevent him from expressing himself in society. In recent years, American psychologists have written several works, which gave a scientific justification for the term "alienation." According to experts, it is characteristic of most modern youth and is due to the characteristics of education.
Features of education of the young generation
Psychologists believe that the modern family has a number of features leading to the formation of a special type of personality:
- Interest in career growth. For more than a decade, the tendency of combining motherhood with professional growth has reigned in society. Moms imposed on the idea of the need to develop, early to go to work and spend a lot of time on it. Often, not only five days a week, but the remaining two, which should be days off, children spend with nannies and grandmothers, and not with parents who devote their lives to career advancement. Because of this, they lose emotional and spiritual contact with the child.
- Increase in divorces. The number of single-parent families is growing every year, which often leads to psychological trauma for children, exacerbated by a decrease in material wealth.
- Achievements of civilization. Today, it is customary to surround a child with a variety of gadgets, new engineering ideas and technical devices designed to entertain him. However, this is precisely what nullifies communication between all members of the family, provoking that very alienation.
In the described conditions, a special type of personality is formed. Initially, it is characterized by indifference, unwillingness to act and take on any responsibility. Often this is accompanied by hostility towards adults, including their loved ones. In the future, a negative impact on the psyche of a child can transform into disturbances in mental processes. This is expressed in the impossibility of coherently expressing one’s thoughts, memorizing concepts and formulations, and manipulating numbers.
For many years of studying the relationship between parents and children, psychologists have come to the conclusion that personality formation directly depends on the styles of parenting in the family. They will be discussed in the article.
The emergence of the theory of educational styles and its development
Even ancient philosophers and scientists understood that the styles of parenting and the personality of the child are closely interconnected. Therefore, in the period of the formation of psychological science, experts have repeatedly addressed this topic. Around the middle of the last century, for the first time, they started talking about certain styles of parenting and what influence they have on the formation of the child’s personality and its psychological, as well as emotional state. Finally, this theory took shape in the seventies of the last century. During this period, Diana Bomrind identified and described three types of relationships between parents and children. Each of them was given a description based on several factors:
- The control.
- Communication.
- Emotional warmth.
- Maturity requirements and so on.
The psychologist characterized three styles of education. But after ten years, its classification has undergone some adjustment. Two well-known American psychologists substantiated that the basis of relations between parents and children are only two main factors. It is from the degree to which they are expressed that the interaction between adults and small family members is formed. Each of the factors has its own description:
- Parental control. All moms and dads control their children to varying degrees. Some build the educational process on the list of prohibitions. In such a family, a child is deprived of the right to choose and cannot do anything that he would like if this does not suit his parents. His opinion is never taken into account, and the number of duties goes off scale. Other parents let everything flow. Children have the opportunity to express their opinions and express emotions, and the restriction of their expression tends to zero.
- Parental adoption. This formulation is close to the concept of unconditional love. In some families reigns warmth, love, praise, support and a minimum of punishments. Where adoption rates are low, children are severely punished, constantly censured and disapproved, their undertakings are not supported, and complaints and requests are rejected.
The listed factors were presented as two intersecting axes, and parenting styles were located on them, which can be determined by the high or low level of parental control and adoption. This classification was taken as the basis that is actively used in the work of modern psychologists.
Basic styles of parenting in the family
Psychologists claim that it is almost impossible to find a single parenting style in one family. Most often, mothers, fathers, grandparents raise a child in their own way. Some of them are softer, and some are too hard, so we can talk about a combination of styles. This is partly not bad. After all, the child learns to try on various roles. However, different parental attitudes and parenting styles can lead to excesses. These extremes already negatively affect the psyche of the baby. Therefore, it is so important to determine the parental parenting style that reigns in your family. As we said, there are four of them:
- Authoritative.
- Authoritarian.
- Neglecting.
- Permissive.
Each of them requires a more detailed description.
Authoritative
Among all the styles of family education (teachers always list them at parent meetings), an authoritative one is the most successful for personality formation.
It is characterized by a high level of control. Parents always know what is happening with their children and put reasonable restrictions on them. At the same time, mom and dad explain all their decisions to their offspring and can, if necessary, change them. Such an attitude forms a mature and reasonable behavior in children. They learn to behave correctly in any situation, which will help them to further establish relations in society with different representatives of it.
Along with control, parents also have a high level of acceptance. Moms and dads show their warmth and interest in the affairs of the child, encourage him to study the world and communicate with peers, teach social skills and support in all endeavors.
Children brought up in an authoritative style adequately perceive punishments and do not react to them with resentment. As a result, they form a true understanding of the world order, and in the future they achieve great success. Also, such children are balanced and confident in themselves, they can be responsible for their actions and are not afraid of responsibility.
Authoritarian
If we are talking about this style of education, then it is characterized by a low level of acceptance and a high level of control. Parents control their offspring in all areas and build an impenetrable wall out of prohibitions. Relations with children are based on orders that must be followed exactly. At the same time, parents never explain the motives for their behavior, which creates the basis for children's insults. Failure to comply with the order is followed by a punishment, often corporal.
The emotional attachment of authoritarian parents towards children is poorly traced. Even with infants, they are very restrained and do not seek tactile contact. Usually in an authoritarian family, children are overly demanding. They should study well, be polite with everyone, not show their emotions, always be in a good mood. Most often, this style of education leads to the formation of a closed personality with low self-esteem. The child grows passive, does not show initiative in business, cannot establish communication with peers, learns without interest.
It is noteworthy that in adolescence, children of authoritarian parents do their best to break free of control. This is more common for boys who have staged real riots. Often they go outside and fall into bad company.
Permissive
Teachers often call this style of parenting at parent-teacher meetings in schools liberal or conniving. It is characterized by the complete acceptance of the positive and negative traits of the child. Therefore, no framework is established for the offspring, and its behavior is not controlled. Moreover, he is not even given an assessment. Mom and dad do not care how much their child is successful in school, how his relationship with his peers develops, what he likes to do.
With this concept, emotional closeness with a child may not be. Parents practicing permissive parenting are often very cold towards their children, indifferent to them. But there is another option, when mothers and fathers adore their child, they show it in every possible way, indulging and indulging whims. Moreover, the parents themselves are always in a state of restraining their dissatisfaction with the behavior of the child. Even with his most ugly antics, they will look calm and balanced.
In such families, aggressive children often grow up who have poor relationships with peers. Also, they do not know how to build relationships with adults, because they grow up with the thought that everything is allowed to them. Parents with a permissive parenting style raise children who do not know how to behave in society. They are often socially and emotionally immature, they require a special attitude to themselves in any situation.
Neglecting
Teachers at school parent-teacher meetings, the style of parenting, characterized by a low level of control and adoption of the child, is called neglect. It most destructively affects the formation of personality.
In such families, parents are only occupied with themselves. At the same time, outwardly, the family may look quite safe: having a father and mother, high income, intelligent manners and indulging all the monetary needs of the child. However, in fact, he feels himself useless and abandoned. Parents do not meet his emotional needs, do not give love and affection. Often, this dysfunctional style is also practiced by dysfunctional families, where there is an acute shortage of money, and one of the parents (or both) is abusing alcohol.
Most often, children, experiencing a lack of love, begin to lead an asocial lifestyle. They grow very aggressive towards peers and adults, do not strive for academic success, completely reject any rules. In adolescence, children raised in this way can leave home and wander for a long time. This is also characteristic of a child of well-to-do parents.
Defining parenting style
Many parents do not think about the style in which they raise their child until they get to the first school parent meeting. The parenting styles in the family are usually determined by the psychologist. He does this through communication with parents and children. Often, in order to determine how a child is raised, a few meetings with a specialist are enough. Similar work is being done together with the teacher in the first months of study. Further, in a personal conversation with parents, the conclusions made are confirmed or disproved. Clarified styles of family education are not included in the minutes of the parent meeting. They are information that is not subject to disclosure and is intended only for the work of a teacher and psychologist.
Specialists use different methods when communicating with moms and dads. Most often, a special questionnaire is used for the style of parenting of the DIA of Eidemiller and Justickis. For several decades now, it has been the best way to get the right information about family relationships.
A few words about the questionnaire
This technique was developed about fifty years ago. Practicing psychologists worked on it, well versed in all the nuances of raising children and deviations from the norm in this process.
The DIA parenting style questionnaire should first show how a child is brought up. He also gives some suggestions why parents chose this style for their family. At the same time, the questionnaire allows you to understand what parameters in education are observed excesses and deviations from the norm.
The essence of the method is that parents must answer “yes” or “no” to the one hundred thirty questions posed. The answer "I don’t know" is also allowed. The questionnaire consists of two parts. The first is intended for parents of children from three to ten years old, and the second reveals the secrets of educating adolescents up to twenty-one years. . . . - , , . .
Today, the questionnaire can be found in paper and electronic versions. The first is used by experienced psychologists, and the second is suitable for self-testing, as it provides a complete and understandable interpretation of the results.