Four Moms On Parenting Styles

We're answering a question today, and that question is "Do you have a particular parenting style you use, and has it changed as your family has grown."

I'm going to suggest that if you don't have time to read anything else this morning, you read this first.

And then this and this.

You don't want to miss what the other four moms have to say, either

• Smockity Frocks, who has learned to relax over the years.
• Raising Olives, who acknowledges that while the principles stayed the same, she too has relaxed in some ways over the years.
• Life in a Shoe, who also has relaxed in one important way, and has some outstanding advice.
• Common Room, that's me, and I'm skipping erratically through the forest of parenting with what I hope are useful notes along the way . As a postscript, in the wee hours of the morning I realized I'd come down with the flu bug that had downed other members of my family earlier this week, and I see why I had more than usual trouble focusing

We don't have a single 'style,' so far as I know, and we are rather eclectic. In some ways, we have changed over the years, sometimes growing more relaxed, sometimes tightening up. Parenting is not about the style of parenting you use or the system, or the guru you choose- it's about your children and your relationship with them.It's about having enough common sense to completely dismiss advice that doesn't fit your family even if it comes from a trusted guru.

And now, for something completely different, I think I'm just going to ramble through a free form, stream of consciousness sort of post on parenting in general, and sometimes, not so general.

Buckle your seatbelt. The oxygen mask is just over head.

In 1983, when I became a mother for the first time, I had a lot of opinions. Most of them have changed=) One of my opinions was that parents who had their children call adults Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. or Miss (did I get everybody?) Last Name, were authoritarian Victorians, and that parents who had their children say Yes, Ma'am and Yes, Sir, were arrogant, authoritarian drill sergeants.

Then my child learned to argue (concurrently with learning speech) with *everything* I said. And I discovered, serendipitously, that requiring her to say, 'Yes, Maam,' *first,* in any reply, was almost magic. Now, understand, I did not forbid discussion. I know I am not infallible and sometimes give orders without all the facts, or I may have all the facts but haven't considered them properly. My children can (almost) *always* say, "Yes, Ma'am, but..." Insisting on those two little words coming first ensures that whatever follows will be couched in a reasonable rather than a snotty tone of voice, and it surprised me how much "routine," arguing for the sake of arguing, it eliminated. For my child, arguing had become a habit, not something she did out of principle. I'd simply let her develop the bad habit of answering everything I said with, "Yeah, but..." Replacing the yeahbut bad habit with the "yes, Ma'am" good habit was not really very difficult, and it made life sooo much more pleasant for all of us.

One thing that has not changed is my comfort with being the parent. I don't know the source of this comfort, maybe it's just the 'lion' traits I have (from Gary Smalley's personality test), but I know that somebody has to have the final say, and it's not usually going to be a two year old.

We are a generation that doesn't want to grow up. Our children don't obey us because we are ambivalent about our right to ask them to obey. We don't feel like adults yet, and we don't want to. I imagine even that word, 'obey,' makes some readers flinch. But obedience is a safety issue, not just a control/power issue (incidentally, it's a spiritual safety issue as well as physical). It is impossible to child-proof the world. Accidents happen, emergencies occur, most of us do take our children other places besides home. And children are wonderful people, but they are inexperienced in reasoning, and the younger ones are developmentally incapable of some forms of reasoning, at certain ages I believe it is totally appropriate, indeed, beneficial, to expect obedience because we said so. Gradually, I expect my children not to need these external controls, and that has happened with my older children. And of course, the fact that I believe I have the responsibility and authority to require obedience also means I have the responsibility not to abuse it by issuing 'orders' for no other reason but to watch my child hop. This carefulness about why we issue the 'orders' we issue, along with consistency (no matter how much we desire to ignore unacceptable behavior just this one time) in consequences, produces trust as well, IMO.

But also, our parenting style varies with the age of the children, naturally. In general, what we do with our children when they are small resembles most that style of parenting known as attachment parenting. Our first baby was born in 1983, and I did not hear of attachment parenting until our seventh child was born in 1998, but that's essentially what we did with one significant difference. We do spank, although probably not nearly soon enough, and we do smack little hands that probe electrical outlets and such.

In some ways I have grown stricter since I first became a parent, and in some ways, I have loosened up. Jenny commented recently that I've grown more relaxed, while my husband has gotten stricter. I told her I thought that was because when he was all loosey-goosey, plus gone 2-4 months a year, I had to be the strict one, because otherwise- well, let's just say that my husband really, really missed his kidlets when he traveled, and was a doting Daddy, whereas I had to raise them, 24 and 7, and was better at seeing long term consequences of short-term unchecked behavior. Daddy's home all the time now, every night, and the painful heartache he endured when he was absent has gone.

I strongly agree with Phyllis McGinley's take on being a casual mother:

"I remember...the wistful voice of a woman sitting next to me in the park not so long ago.

"Mother wishes you wouldn't," she was repeating monotonously to her frail four-year-old. "Mother doesn't *like* to be hit in the head with a dump truck."

The casual mother would have seen the dump truck coming and calmly confiscated it. Even I, in my benighted day, owned one abiding faith - that I was brighter and a great deal stronger than any four-year-old. If anybody got bruises from lethal toys around the house, it wasn't going to be me." (p 229)

I love that, not least because I recognize the wistful woman at the park.  True story- I have been there when the child was swinging a cat around by its tail and the mother was merely saying, "Now, that's inappropriate."  We heard this so often that 'inappropriate' became the family joke for wildly horrific behavior.  As in, "I read here that Johnny Jones set his school on fire, burned it to the ground, and was arrested while trying to paint the principal blue and paste price tags all over his person.  Tsk, tsk.  How inappropriate."

So... most like attachment parenting for babies and toddlers, growing into something with a little more mmph to it when the babies reach the defiant stages, attempting to be a casual mother, a mother who is comfortable with rule setting, with authority, a consistent mother, and a mother who tones down her tendency to sound equally over-earnest and passionate about things like white bread, dog hair on the floor, the importance of nursery rhymes, and the necessity of avoiding all forms of fornication.  And the Progeny reading this are likely saying, "Whew, if that was toned down...!"

  Naturally, I've made a lot of mistakes and I'm not done making them. I am a messy, imperfect human being, so is my husband, and so are my kids. 

I know there are other parenting styles. I don't know what they all are.

I could never be a Gentle Mother because I'm too loud, too passionate, and too straightforward, plus, a few run-ins I've had with self proclaimed Gentle Mothers left me rubbing balm on my lacerated soul as I found them anything other than gentle.

I'm not a huge fan of the Pearl's, although I've been told by my daughters that Jumping Ship is much better than their more commonly known book (which title escapes me just now).  However, I do know several families who love the Pearl's methods and they are families with lovely children, and I think it counts for much that their children are still in close relationship with them.

We like Jonathan Lindvahl, especially what he's had to say about peer relationships and peer dependency, but we don't and never did intend to follow his approach lock, stock and barrel.

I really loathe Ezzo's methods and have been known to hide Babywise in thrift shops.

I used to love James Dobson's Dare to Discipline, The EC tells me she thinks I should reread it before recommending it again, it's rather stuffed with psychology and some of it is just wrongheaded.


For many years people would recommend ATIA (Bill Gothard's group) to us, thinking that we already looked like an ATIA family from without, so it would be a great fit.  We wrote them once for information and were so put off by what we received (in part, a contract we were supposed to sign- we didn't actually plan to do anything different from the things in the contract, but we strongly objected to the authoritarianism inherent in requiring a contractual obligation to use their materials).   We weren't an ATIA family on the inside, where it really counts.=)

And, of course, we love Proverbs.

And don't lose sight of the individuality of your children and your relationship with them.  For illustration, let me tell you about two parents- one, years ago, told me how when her son misbehaved, she presented him with Bible verses for him to copy that addressed his behavior.
Another told me never, EVER to use the Bible in that way because it would make the child loathe the Bible and it should never be used for punishment.  Well, that kind of made a bit of sense if you ignore the fact that God himself says His work is profitable for reproof and correction (among other things).  And the child of the first mother actually told her he loved it when she showed him those verses because then he knew his mom wasn't just making stuff up, she was showing him what God asked of him, and he loved it.
But very likely, the second family had some personality dynamics that would have made the same successful approach family A used, a total disaster for family B.

I said I was going to ramble, didn't I?  I hope you read the three posts I shared up above.  Here's the context:

REally, we just have never been that big on gurus, especially when it comes to parenting. After all, gurus are all too often changing their minds, and then where are you?

One of those posts above was prompted by reading this article by Reb Bradley.  As a parent, these are traps you should really avoid. It's not that he's writing anything new- I have books a hundred years old which advise parents not to live vicariously through their children, to be humble, to let their children take their own path, etc.  But we can always hear it again.


Now it's your turn.  What parenting styles did I miss?  What's yours, and why?  What favorite resource would you suggest to a new mom?

Or ....?

Oh, and coming up in future Four Moms Thursdays:

• September 22 – Q&A
• September 29 – {surprise}
• October 6 – Keeping up with housework in the midst of homeschooling