To help your child become an autonomous and resilient learner:
Adopt an authoritative, psychologically-wise parenting style.
A psychologically-wise, authoritative parenting style combines warmth, sensitivity and the setting of limits. Parents use positive reinforcement and reasoning to guide children and avoid resorting to threats or punishments.
When internationally-renowned adolescent psychology expert Dr. Laurence Steinberg delivered his 2001 presidential address to the Society for Researchers on Adolesence, he proposed a moratorium on further research on parenting styles because, as he explained, there was so much evidence for the benefits of supportive and demanding parenting that scientists could profitably move on to thornier research questions!
If your child would say the following things about you, you are on the right track to becoming a warm, respectful, supportive and demanding parent:
- I can count on my parents to help me if I have a problem.
- My parents spend time just talking with me.
- My parents and I do fun activities together.
- My parents believe that I have a right to my own point of view.
- My parents respect my privacy.
- My parents give me a lot of freedom.
- My parents really expect me to follow family rules.
- My parents point out ways in which I could do better.
- My parents expect me to do my best, even when it’s hard.