L5 - Parenting

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 Objectives

• Understand and think of parental

responsibilities, motherhood, and fatherhood.

• Understand parenting style and the

consequences following each style.

• Understand and apply basic techniques to

manage children’s behavior.
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• “Being a parent, whether father or mother,
is the most difficult task humans have to
perform. For people, unlike other animals,
are not born knowing how to be parents.
Most of us struggle through.”

- Karl Menninger, psychiatrist

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 Bioecological Theory (Bronfenbrenner)

• Microsystem Effects
– Parents who have love and support from another adult tend
to provide more nurturance for child.
• Exosystem Effects
– Parenting challenges and successes influenced by
workplace (or neighborhoods) stresses and joys
• Macrosystem Effects
– The economy, government, political climate, tax laws, and
availability of services affect what parents can do for their
children.
• Chronosystem Effects
– Historical time periods affect parenting. 4
 Developmental Contextualism

• Parents and children have multiple roles in

the world.
• An understanding that parenting is a complex
system
– with variations in relational processes,
individuals, contexts, and time
– can lead to more effective social policies

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 Parenting

• Parenting is the process of raising and

educating a child from birth until adulthood.

• This is usually done in a child’s family by the

mother and the father ( the biological parents )

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 Brainstorm

• Regarding parental responsibility,

what should parents do for their
young children?

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 Parental Responsibilities

• Economic
– Parents meet the needs of children.
• Nurturance and Child Care
– Traditionally, mother is typically the primary
caregiver.
– Parents will have better parenting when they have
social support
– Parents choose child-care arrangements.
• Attachment and Socialization
– Parents nurture child’s psychological well-being
– Parents are child’s link to society. 8
 Parental Responsibilities

• Building and Maintaining Relationships

– Parents introduce others into child’s life.
– Parents include others in appropriate ways
• Character Education and Spirituality
– This may be through organized religion
– includes morality – teaching right and wrong
– a focus on meaning of life
• Collaborating with societal institutions
– Parents relate to societal institutions to help their
children (including early childhood settings).
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 Motherhood

• Mothering
– Monitoring – surveillance for safety
– Nurturing child for meeting the child’s dependency
needs
– Responsive caregiving – social partner to support
child’s sense of trust

• Food for thought: For child development, a working

mother is better, or a housewife is better?
• https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/children-of-working-mums-do-better-
at-school-20130928-2uktv.html
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 Fatherhood

• Fathering
– Roles for fathers have changed due primarily to
mothers spending more time in the work force.
– Father interaction has increased to 67% of time of
mothers on weekdays and to 87% time of mothers
on weekends
– Father availability is related to job stress and
positive work experiences.
– Father responsibility is related to fathers’
perspectives on importance of nurturance.

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__OVH9UnDVk
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(Redefining fatherhood)
 Parenting Style

Diana Baumrind (1927-...)

Two dimensions
- Acceptance/responsiveness - Extent
to which parents are supportive, sensitive
to needs, affectionate.
- Demandingness/control - How much
control over decisions lie with parent as
opposed to child.
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Parenting Style

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 Effects on Development

• Authoritative parenting style is linked with

children’s adaptive behaviors (Collins &
Laursen, 2004).

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 Effects on Development

• Higher parental warmth is associated with better child school

performance, better psychological functioning, and lower anxiety in
children

• Compared to the impact of equally involved authoritarian parents,

authoritative parents’ involvement in their children’s schooling has a
stronger impact on improvement in school performance.

• There is substantial evidence that emotional support can buffer

negative effects of life stressors for people of all ages, and this
protective function appears to operate when parents provide warmth
to children and adolescents who are exposed to academic stress.
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 Question

• Do you remember the 4 types of

parenting style?

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 Activity
Each group will deal with the following situations according to a
specific parenting style:
- The child is watching TV. The parents announce that it is time
for bed, but the child refuses to go.

- Group 1&2: If the parents are authoritative, what will they

probably do in this situation and what is the effect on children?
- Group 3&4: If the parents are authoritarian, what will they
probably do in this situation and what is the effect on children?
- Group 5&6: If the parents are permissive, what will they
probably do in this situation and what is the effect on children
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 Managing Children’s Behavior

Discipline vs. Punishment

- Discipline: techniques
used to teach appropriate
behavior.
- Punishment: techniques
used to eliminate
unacceptable behavior.

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 Physical Punishment
• Parents are more like to hit/spank if:
- They are young
- They were hit/spanked as children
- They are being hit by significant others

• Physical punishment links with child’s:

- Aggression
- Delinquency
- Antisocial behavior
- Abuse
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- Insecure attachments
 Positive Discipline

Emphasis on teaching rather than

punishing
- Manage situation
- Set clear rules and limits
- Praise good behavior
- Use explanations
- Remove privileges or use timeouts
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 Why Do Children Misbehave?

• Could you think of any reasons as

to why children misbehave?
• A misbehaving child is a
discouraged child.

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 Misbehavior

• Is based on a child’s mistaken interpretation of how

to find BELONGING & SIGNIFICANCE!

• 4 main goals for mistaken behavior:

1. Gain attention
2. Power struggle
3. Revenge
4. Feeling inadequate

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Most common reason for misbehavior:

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ATTENTION
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OTHER BEHAVIORS
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0
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 Solution to All Misbehavior:

Spend special time

with the child each
Day!

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 Solution to Attention Problems:

• Ignore if possible.

• Give attention when the child behaves well.

• In this way, children’s behaviors are likely to

be redirected. They will understand the
logical consequences of their behaviors and
how to gain attention.
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 Power Struggle
• A power struggle is when a child refuses to do something and
the parent continues to insist on the child “Do it now.”

• The ongoing banter can become a battle of the wills as the

parent says, “Yes,” and the child says, “No.”

• The longer this argument carries on, the more difficult it

becomes to get the child to comply.

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 Solution to Power Problems

• How to solve this power problem?

• In other words, when you want your child
to do something, but your child
continuously says no, what would you do?

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 Solution to Power Problems

Pick Your Battles

• Consider allowing your child to face natural

consequences. Sometimes, stepping aside and letting
nature run its course is the best thing you can do.

• For example, if your 10-year-old is refusing to put on her

jacket before she plays outside, it may not be worth
arguing about. Unless it is dangerously cold, you might
consider allowing her to go out without a jacket and the
natural consequence is that she will be cold.
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 Solution to Power Problems

Engage Kids in Problem-Solving

• Look for a mutual agreement upon solution that will end the
power struggle.

• For example, consider a parent who insisted their child’s room

be cleaned daily. However, the child felt it was unreasonable to
clean the room daily and they argued about this issue almost
every day. Eventually, they problem-solved together and
reached a compromise. The mother agreed to keep her child’s
door shut during the week and the teenager agreed to clean
her room every weekend. It stopped the fighting and their
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relationship improved.
 Solution to Power Problems

Offer Choices

• There are steps parents can take to increase the effectiveness

of their instructions. For example, state your expectations
clearly and make your requests calmly.

• When possible, offer two choices. Just make sure you can live
with either choice.
• For example, if you want your child to put his clothes away and
he’s watching TV, say, “Would you rather put your clothes away
now or do you want to wait until a commercial break?” Either
choice will get the job done. 32
 Solution to Power Problems

Provide a Consequence
• Sometimes it’s necessary to provide a negative consequence.
Instead of arguing or trying to force a child to do something, stay
calm and issue a single warning.
• Don’t provide multiple warnings or repeat your instructions over and
over. Simply make it known: “You can comply, or you can lose a
privilege.” Then, leave the choice up to the child.
• For example, instead of arguing or begging your child to go to bed,
provide a warning. Say, “If you don’t go to bed now, you will lose your
toy bear for 24 hours.” If your child doesn’t go to bed, she loses her
toy bear and there’s no arguing about it.
• Don’t threaten to take away anything that you wouldn't follow through
with doing. If you make idle threats and don’t follow through, you’ll be
teaching your child that you don’t mean what you say. 33
 Solution to Revenge Problems:

• Withdraw from revenge cycle

• Persuade child
• Solve the problem
• Take away items they could destroy
• Apologize if needed

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 Feeling Inadequate

• One reason that children misbehave is because they are feeling

inadequate, like they aren’t good enough.

• They may act out passively by withdrawing or avoiding, like

refusing to complete a requested task or participate in an event.

• When children experience these feelings, they might feel

unworthy or inferior to others. In order to avoid these
uncomfortable feelings and the vulnerability that comes with
them, children often act out by displaying withdrawal behaviors,
a pessimistic attitude or by putting themselves down.
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 Solution to Inadequacy Problems

• Be responsive and present. Presence and

proximity are powerful when it comes to parenting
children. 
• Build them up. Remind children why they are so
special, important and loved.
• Accept them. No one is perfect, so when we set
very high standards for children, they inevitably fail to
measure up.
• Try to create small success.
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 Time Out
• Time out is a discipline technique that
involves placing children in a very boring
place for several minutes. 
• Time out really means time out from any
attention.

• The traditional time out is when a child is

told to go somewhere (like a chair or facing
a wall), alone for a determined number of
minutes. Often parents are told to withhold
attention and ignore any cries or requests
from the child when using a time out.
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 Time Out

What should parents do when using time out

technique?
• Remain clam
• Do not lecture, scold, or argue.
• Do not accept any excuses.
• Do not talk to children on the way.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-tCCF8I-w8

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 Time In

• When a child who is having a

difficult moment is kindly invited
to sit somewhere, near by a
caregiver to express their
feelings and eventually cool
down.

• During the time in, parents are

encouraged to empathize with
the child’s feelings and often
just quiet connection is all that
is needed until the storm has
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passed.
 Food for Thought

• Which technique is better, time out or

time in? Why?

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