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What Parenting Style Best Suits You?

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There has been a lot of talk lately about different ways to parent your children. Each way of parenting has been assigned a name. Here are the most popular styles with an example of each one:


Helicopter Parenting - A parent who hovers over their child like a helicopter. Basically the parent or guardian is ultra protective of their child and makes decisions for them instead of having the child learn for themselves. The term has become so popular, it is even in the dictionary.


Example: Susie is super sensitive so you pick play dates for her based on classmates who will least upset her.


Attachment Parenting - Parents want an immediate and continued bond with their child.Attachment Parenting International is an organization that offers resources and outlines this time of parenting. They state breastfeeding and co-sleeping help foster and secure these bonds. Pediatrician William Sears, MD. is a proponent of this parenting philosophy.


Example: Billy misbehaves at school. Instead of punishing him, you talk through the problem he had and find out together what led up to the incident and how to correct it in the future.


Tiger Parenting - Children are children and adults are in charge of guiding all their decisions. This includes: no television watching or play dates so there is an undivided emphasis on excelling at school. Amy Chua coined the term in her book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. In her book, she talks about being raised by her strict Chinese immigrant parents and utilizing the same philosophy with her own children.


Example: Mary wants to play games on her tablet after she finishes her homework. Instead you have her complete new math problem-solving worksheets to further strengthen her skill set.


Free Range Parenting- A term coined by Lenore Skenazy after she let her nine-year-old child ride the New York subway alone. While she thinks safety is important, she believes in letting children play outside like kids in the 80s did and taking a more common sense approach to parenting.


Example: Jimmy wants to ride his bike home from school by himself. He has a helmet, no cell phone, but knows his way back home so you wait at home until he arrives.


Going to Coin A New Parenting Style, "Back to Basics 2.0" - The way I parent is a way in which I think a lot of guardians parent. As much as some of these parenting styles do not want to admit it, the world has changed. The Internet, lack of privacy and "being in the know" is here to stay whether you embrace it or not. You can't let your children wander outside until dark anymore, but you can raise your kids to think for themselves, explore different interests and make mistakes. When they fall, you can be there to guide them, but their successes and failures will be theirs and theirs alone. Isn't that what life is about? Learning and growing?


What is your parent philosophy? Do you adhere to one of these or have your own unique style?

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