FERRETING FOR MERITING AND INHERITING VIA PARENTING
Raising a child from birth to independent adulthood may seem fascinating only if we, the parents facilitated their upbringing through all the stages of development. It’s associated with fulfilling the parental responsibilities that accompany child raising and in a nutshell it's without doubt, caring and nurturing the child.
Diana Baumrind, a developmental psychologist University of California at Berkeley relates to the following parenting styles; Image making, Nurturing, Authoritative, Interpretive, Interdependent, and Departure. Baumrind noticed that pre-scholars exhibited distinctly different types of behaviour and each type of behaviour was highly correlated to a specific kind of parenting. This theory posits that there is a close relationship between the type of parenting style and children’s behaviour; different parenting styles can lead to different child development and child outcome.
Different types of parenting feature the outcome in the ways they are handled, for example; Authoritative parents, who have high expectations for achievement and maturity, set rules and enforce boundaries by having open discussions, providing guidance, and using reasoning, their confrontative disciplinary methods are reasoned, negotiable, outcome-oriented, always concerned with regulating behaviours. These affectionate parents support and respect their children’s autonomy, provide them with a lot of freedom and encourage independence on top of allowing bidirectional communication.
Parenting usually involves biological parents but is not confined to them. We, the teachers chose to manage and fulfil parenting tasks with our children authoritatively, and the outcome, following our 5Cs of confidence, creativity, critical thinking, communication, and concern for the community, has maintained us on top as our children are cherished, appear happy and content, are more independent, are more active, develop good self-esteem, interact with peers using competent social skills, have better mental health, less depression and anxiety, express less violent tendencies, are securely attached and therefore achieve higher academic performance. We also realized that the importance of parenting arises from its role as a buffer against adversity such as poverty or delinquent influences or mediator of damage (as in child abuse).
My fellow parent, once you and I keep in mind that we are obliged to protect our children from harm, providing food, clothing, shelter, financially supporting our children, providing safety, supervision and control, and providing an education, we will be achieving the outstanding steps to more effective parenting which involves among others, boosting our children’s self-esteem, catching kids being good (positive responses), setting limits and being consistent with our discipline, making time for our kids, being good role models, (friendliness, honesty, kindness, tolerance), making communication a priority, being flexible and willing to adjust our parenting style, showing that our love is unconditional, which will lead us to know our own needs and limitations as parents.
Remember, the prominent component that can impact the outcome is the distinction between parenting style and parenting practices. This is when we may differentiate the emotional climate and control in which we, the parents raise our children from the specific actions that we the parents employ in our parenting. Given the fact that we are in the right positions of managing these innocent souls, let’s keep in mind being agents of positive change, it starts with you!
HAMZA MUGENI
TAIBAH INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, JUNIOR
