A Box of Chocolates
I have always described motherhood as being similar to a box of Milk Tray chocolates. You never know what flavour you are going to end up with especially when the box is passed around a group of people and you are at the tail end of this queue.
The metaphor of my chocolate box link is about how one’s parenting style is a mystery but one which unfolds from the minute your baby arrives. Till that minute, what you had in mind about how you would mother is only academic. The mystery and academic collide when reality hits. You have this little human in your hands and your first instinct is to wonder what you are going to do.
No Manual
There isn’t a manual handed to you when your baby arrives. Instead, you rely on books, other people’s advice and lived experience; and you bring your own beliefs and values system to mothering. The mother’s personality plays a big part too.
Types of Parenting
According to this article, there are four types of parenting styles . These are:
Authoritarian – Parents of this style tend to have a one-way mode of communication where the parent establishes strict rules that the child obeys.
Authoritative – This type of parent normally develops a close, nurturing relationship with their children. They have clear guidelines for their expectations and explain their reasons associated with disciplinary actions.
Permissive – Permissive parents tend to be warm, nurturing and usually have minimal or no expectations. They impose limited rules on their children
Uninvolved – Children are given a lot of freedom as this type of parent normally stays out of the way. They fulfill the child’s basic needs while generally remaining detached from their child’s life.
Then there is this
A mother, as reported in the media, is so strict that another parent reported her to social services for not letting her children watch TV. In itself, this doesn’t seem like a reasonable excuse for reporting someone but, on closer examination of the article, It doesn’t seem to be straightforward.
To put some context, while not fully explained in the article, the reason the mother was reported was because of her very strict mothering style which seems to involve a hark back attitude to those days when it was thought that depriving children would result in them being more resilient.
She pulls no punches when describing her mothering and is proud of how tough she is. It made me balk at times.
In the article, there are specific examples of how she will not go the extra mile for her children. For instance, she went as far as letting her son sleep in a cold tent on a camping trip without his sleeping bag because he had forgotten to take it. This mother wasn’t going to bail him out by driving home to get the sleeping bag.
What would you have done?
It’s all about ‘tough love’ but, in my opinion, there is more emphasis on ‘tough’ than ‘love’. As another example, when the children’s father died, her two-year old would climb into bed with her but she would insist that the toddler get back into her own bed so she that would learn lessons from a young age on how to self-soothe.
There is something jarring about the mother’s explanation as to why she mothers the way she does. She wants her kids to be self-reliant and to learn the lesson of hardship. As parents we all want our kids to learn these valuable lessons but where I part ways with her is the age at which you introduce hard lessons.
My daughter suffers from a combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia. She often forgets things. I have taught her organisational skills as a coping mechanism but, in the instance when she forgets something, I try and understand why it happened before using the incident as a way of teaching her a lesson. There are times when I will bail her out. This happens far less frequently because she is now 23 but I still motivate her by praising how she deals with stuff.
I don’t think that I let her self-soothe till she was about 10. Was I a soft mother? Maybe, but I didn’t want her growing up with the perception that she only ever has herself to rely on no matter what has happened in her life. That is not a healthy way for a child to grow up.
While self-reliance is paramount, it is not the primary lesson in life. What I taught her was to have a supportive network. Amassing people around you to help you through life’s tough times is part of being a connected human being. I don’t want my daughter to think that she has to be an island.
Which is your parenting style?
Going back to the four parenting styles listed above, mine would be a combination of authoritative and permissive.
Till my daughter turned 18 and started university, I was an authoritative mother but to a far less degree than the mother in the article.
These days I parent in a permissive way because she is an adult making her way in the world. She is entitled to shape her own expectations. From time to time my mothering does contain streaks of authoritarian behaviour. This flares up when I sense that my daughter is on the precipice of making a decision that she hasn’t thought through. I step in to point out what she MUST consider. The ultimate decision, however, is still hers to make.
Conclusion
As ever, the interesting bits in tabloid newspaper articles lie in the comments. Opinions are divided which isn’t surprising because tough parenting isn’t an unusual occurrence. The degree of toughness is probably what makes this mother, the article’s subject, a stand out. Would you/Are you this tough?
