What is Your Parenting Style?

What is your parenting style? Really? You have six children? How do you manage? How do you do it? What is your parenting style? Are you strict with your children? The part - how do you do it - is the easiest part for us. Like the famous Nike motto, we just do it. How do you manage? That’s the hardest. Imagine the endless buying of diapers when my first child was born until my sixth child stopped wearing diapers. Those were sixteen years of non stop buying diapers of all sort of brands. From buying the most expensive diapers - for the first and second child, to the less expensive for the younger children. Either expensive or cheap ones, it serves its purpose, so we settle for obvious. Not because we love the younger ones lesser but because of the economic reasons since we have more mouth to feed. Same goes with the formula milk. But later, I found out that the best milk for a child is always the mother’s breast milk. I have been advocated mother’s breast milk ever seen. I guessed a lot of sacrifice in our part as parent for the sake of the children. When my wife and I started out to have a family some twenty years ago, I have no idea how to deal with children - let alone have any parenting style? There is always the questions throw at us, after friends and colleague realised we have six children. How do we do it? How do we manage? When we first became parents, I am more of an authoritarian style parenting. We set our rules on certain things like the curfew time and their attire when they go out. We will monitor on the food that they take and lay the ground rules on how to behave when we have a guess in the house. The three older children saw us as very strict parents. But now, as my wife and I grow a little bit older, our parenting style change. We became more of authoritative style parenting. We became more responsive to their reasoning and nurturing rather than punishing. We treated the children according to their ages. We are less strict now with the older children, age 16 to 19 years old, give them space to develop their character and still be assertive but not intrusive towards them. The younger ones age 9 to 13 years old, received more clear set of standard rules and the disciplinary methods are more towards corrective rather than punishing.

When we hanged down punishment, my wife and I have agreed, that only one of us will take action in carried out the punishment. We don’t want the children to sees us both as fierce and unapproachable. One parent will be the listening ears to the children if they feel the punishment seem unfairly to them. The older children laments that I has become too relax and lenient with the younger children. Not that I have change to the third style of parenting, that is, permissive parenting. I have just age. Apart from few stand off with the children, nowadays I will just asked them to stand against the wall when carried out the punishment. Asked them to keep quiet for ten minutes than later will asked them to read books aloud. Gone were the days of long rotan and folded newspaper as weapon of punishment. I will just confiscated their notebook and deprive them from using it for the day. That will cause much more pain and sorrow than a few stroke of rotan. We learned as a parent that the best parenting method is always reasoning and nurturing with the children. And of course, listen to them. Be it with their problems at school or with the sibling or just with their daily experience at school. Listening and talking to your children will always made you feel closer and appreciative towards God given gifts.