Wired Child by Richard Freed

Author:Richard Freed
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781503211698
Published: 2015-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

KIDS NEED AUTHORITATIVE PARENTING

I suggest that you take your rightful place as your kids’ leader by using authoritative parenting strategies at home. How can we provide our children responsiveness and demandingness in this frenzied digital age? It’s less about what we say to our children and more about the environment we provide.

While it’s great to tell our kids that we love them, taking actions that limit distracting technologies and provide kids a strong family connection are hallmarks of responsiveness (See Chapter 1 for reminders). To provide demandingness, take the steps provided in Chapter 3 including setting up a home environment that limits playtime devices. The good news is that it’s never too late to start using authoritative parenting.

While sitting at the top of the home hierarchy, authoritative parents don’t simply lay down rules. They make an effort to explain the reasoning behind their rules in a developmentally-appropriate fashion. Authoritative parents also listen to their children’s viewpoints, especially as kids grow older, and consider adjusting the rules based on their kids’ concerns, although parents maintain final say.

Authoritative Parenting in Action

What does authoritative parenting look like in real life? The following examples show how authoritative parenting is used to address typical technology issues.

Scenario 1: A nine-year-old boy complains to his parents that they don’t allow video gaming during the school week.

Authoritative parent response: “I know many of your friends game during the week, and I understand that you feel the rule’s not fair—if they can, why can’t you? Well, lots of scientists have found that too much gaming hurts kids’ schoolwork, so we need the rule. I am willing, however, to negotiate with you about having a friend over once or twice during the week.”

Authoritative principle applied: Parents set high standards for children and explain that rules are set in the context of those standards.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.