3 Parent Types

Tonight we hosted a parent training meeting at the little brick house.  I offered the use of the place to my dear friends at South Elementary that work with kids that have special needs.  Last year I attended their meetings at the School and asked them about the training meetings for this year.  They did not have anything scheduled but have had a couple of requests so they put it together.  They offer some great insight to parenting strategies and ways to do things.  I know that I learned a ton from them last year as I attended the meetings and tonight was no exception.  We had three teachers and three parents including me).  Though the numbers were few the discussion was excellent and certainly caused me to reflect on what kind of parent I am.

They introduced three different parenting types.  The first is what is called the helicopter parent.  This is because they are always hovering around and protecting their children from just about everything imaginable.  Rather then allowing their child to make their own decisions and to learn from both good and bad experiences or choices they constantly intervene.  The hovering parent can damage the self esteem of the child as they begin to adopt a mindset of not being able or good enough to do anything themselves. 

There is the drill Sergeant parent.  They bark out commands to their children.  They tell them what they are going to do and what they are going to like. 

The third parent type is that of consultant.  This parent recognizes the need for their child to make their own choices but they do so within a set of boundaries like what is expected and what is unexpected. 

I may have over simplified this but you get the point.  As I look at the different parenting types I see that there are times when I may hover a bit and then there are times when I act more like the Sergeant.  I think there are times when we may need to hover and there are times when we need to make something happen.  Anyhow, that is a little of what was shared.  Probably not real clear but gave me some things to think about and to work on.