Bring Up Your Children The Right Way

If you try to bring up your child taking references from books, you may very often be confused. You will find that the behavior of your child is not uniform always. You cannot apply the rules of the book on the child uniformly because you do not know how the child will behave. You are never clear about it. But, it is true that such reference books will give you an overall idea as to how to handle particular behaviors of a child. You must understand the fact that every child is unique and even your own parents will not be able to tell you how you should bring up your children.

In general, if your parents have brought you up strictly, you may want to be a little liberal with your children. But, if your parents gave you all liberty and had been pampering you throughout your childhood, you may feel that it is not the right way to bring up a child and hence, may tend to be strict with your children. The problem is that every parent thinks that he or she is a perfect parent or at least, they may strive to be so in their own perspective. But, you must understand that the concept of a "perfect parent" itself is wrong. The child's behavior, temperament and activities play a major role in deciding your style of parenting.

Experts have classified the styles of parenting into three types. Let us have a look at them.

The first style is authoritarian and strict parenting. You may think that this style may be autocratic because there will be excessive control over the child. The child is not allowed to question your decisions and suggestions on any issue. The only criterion in this style of parenting is obedience on the part of the child. The child will not get any right to disagree with you.

The second and the most common type of parenting is the authoritative style of parenting. This is considered as a moderate style of parenting. In this style, though you set the limits, you allow your children to discuss with you and also to disagree with you. So, you work out solutions acceptable to you as well as the child. Since this encourages discussion, this style is very much liked by the children also. While they are getting their liberty, they also learn to have self-control because limits have been set. They are also taught why such limits have been set. When they learn the strong reasons for the limits, they will tend to go along with your decisions.

Permissive style of parenting is the most liberal type and perhaps, this is the result of the strict parenting style you may have experienced during your young age. Most of the children who are brought up with this style may get spoiled or may go astray unless they learn to have self-control on their own. If they do not have self-control, it is very difficult to control them because they may not have learned to set limits also.

Experts advise that the authoritative and moderate parenting style is the best because this style gives liberty to children and at the same time, have limits that should not be crossed. So, children brought up like this become well-adjusted and also learn to have self-control.

Another important aspect is that the health of the children is closely related to the style of parenting. While the children brought up with the authoritative and moderate parenting style tend to be very healthy, those who are brought up with the other two styles are less healthy.

Therefore, you are advised to use the authoritative and moderate parenting style but you should make slight modifications to suit your child's personality. You will definitely feel happy when the child grows into a great human being.