Tag Archives: parenting

Family

What You Should Know About Emotional Maturity and Parenting Styles

Parenting is a task that is highly underrated in terms of difficulty and maturity levels. If being a parent was a job, most parents would be underpaid because nobody would be able to pay for the problems you have to deal with.

Remember being young and wanting to have your own kids? How you envisaged the whole thing, I bet you even mapped out a plan on how you would raise your kids. Things are quite different now, aren’t they?

Kids are lovely creatures, at the same time, they could be a major source of worry for parents. You have to worry about their health, their attitudes, their growth, as a matter of fact, you worry about them more than you get to think about yourself.

In dealing with these kids and the issues that they face, you would need a good level of emotional maturity or you would end up getting things wrong and getting yourself misunderstood.

What is Emotional Maturity?

Emotional maturity simply means your ability to guide and have a good level of control over your emotions. How do you respond when you’re anxious, what do you say when you’re sad, what do you do when you’re angry? Do you appropriately think about your actions before you display them?

Considering the above questions, if all of your answers directly relate with good control, then you can say you are emotionally mature, otherwise, you might need to work on that.

Emotional maturity is what helps you ensure that you give the appropriate reaction to the actions of your children. So many parents probably don’t even know that their emotional maturity is what determines what parenting style they use.

What is Your Parenting Style?

As mentioned earlier, most parents don’t actually sit down to decide what their parenting style would be, as a matter of fact, there is no assurance that choosing a particular parenting style would work for you. The simple reason for that is, our emotions usually always come to play in our decision making and taking strict guidelines for training your kids may not be easy.

Nonetheless, here are some parenting styles that you may already be using without even knowing.

Authoritative: This is an authoritative parent is one who sets down rules for the kids, makes the kids aware of what the rules are, gives them some freedom of expression, and also enforces the rules, making sure that adequate punishment is meted on defaulters.

Authoritarian: This style of parenting leaves only very little freedom for the child with very strict rules which aren’t even properly explained to the kids. This kind of parent expects the child to know what is right or wrong from the punishment they previously received. They also expect so much from the child.

Permissive: Some parents may decide to use this method sometimes for their children when they want to study the behavior of the child. A permissive parent gives the child so much freedom and little strictness. The kids are able to completely express themselves even to their parents and peers.

Uninvolved: This parent has little to no time for parenting. They don’t care about the behavior of their kids and they don’t care how their actions affect the children. The children are allowed total freedom to do whatever they want. No form of discipline is involved, nothing.

It is important to know that your emotional maturity would help you with any parenting style you choose or are already using. The ideal parent is one that has control over their actions, especially when interacting with their kids.

Family

Does Parenting Affect Mental Health?

Being a parent has to be the most hectic long term job to do. Seeing these little beautiful kids grow from infants to adults, all the love, all the sweet times, and all of that has a positive effect on mental health, but the bad times may also make their mark.

It is not all rosy, because raising kids can be really big trouble sometimes. Living with somebody who doesn’t have the level of understanding that you have and trying to ensure that they grow up to be great is a task that should require a big salary. However, we are parents for the love of our kids.

A lot of parents do their best for their children, but not all of them have the knowledge and skills to raise a child in the way that his or her mental orientation isn’t affected. Parenting styles are different, and these styles may either make or mar a child in the long run.

What Parenting Styles are There, and How Does Parenting Affect Mental Health?

Your parenting style has to do with the ways you raise your child. Different parents have different styles, and most often times it is not because they chose the style they want, it is usually a reflection of their own personality.

Here are the four major parenting styles. It is possible that a parent combines one or more of these styles.

4 Common Parenting Styles

Authoritarian parenting: You know you’re an authoritarian parent if you train your kids with specific rules and ensure that they follow these rules to the letter. In situations where the rules are not properly attended, punishments follow.

Authoritarian parents usually don’t give so much room for the children to express their emotions, as the communication is usually one-sided. The child has little freedom and flexibility and is expected to do exceptionally great.

Now, different kids have different mental receptiveness; some may grow up okay and strong, and others may develop several social and mental disorders if this style is overbearing.

Uninvolved parenting: Unlike the authoritarian, uninvolved parenting affords the children way too much freedom to do whatever they want. Some parents do this deliberately to study what their kids would do if they had total freedom; others do this because they don’t even know what to do.

Uninvolved parents mostly don’t care what their kids do. They are not bothered and they don’t train the kids, they just let them live whichever way they want. This might result in serious social issues.

Authoritative parenting: This is a more educated and self-aware authoritarian parent. They set their rules, let the kids know the laid down rules, and give their children an adequate chance to express themselves, while at the same time giving the appropriate punishments when rules are disobeyed.

Permissive parenting: This type of parent is a tiny percentage of authoritativeness and hugely uninvolved. With this style, there are no rules or regulations; however, there may be punishments once in a while. Sometimes the punishment may not be calculated well enough and kids may get punished for what they didn’t even do.

Choosing the appropriate parenting style would most definitely help your child grow into what they should become and not what you decide. Remember that in order to become the ideal parent you can choose a combination of one or more of these, as long as it is what works for you and your child.

And when it comes to mental health for parents, try all-natural nutritional supplements for mood health from Pure Encapsulations’ NeuroMood Pure Pak and BrainMD Serotonin Mood Support.