How do I find the right balance between being too strict and too permissive?

[alivecream]

I believe that if it is desirable for children to be kind, appreciative, and pleasant, those qualities should be taught--not hoped for.

[dannno]

[DamianTV]

First of all, understand that you need to have Many Goals, not just ones that suit what you want. That is usually the hardest thing to do as a parent.

The way that many of the lessons that achieve the goals is often very counter intuitive, and will go completely against your instincts as a parent. Thats the basic idea of Reverse Psychology, but when that label is not clearly understood, efforts to try to apply reverse psychology can easily backfire. I am sure that you dont want to see your kid fail at all. Most parents dont. But, at the same time, most parents set their kids up to fail because they have become over protective and not letting the children learn how to cope with failures. It is one of the most important lessons any person can learn in life. Its also why there are theories out there that say that the A Student often works for the C Student. The reason for that is the C Student is used to things not working out perfectly, and having the tenacity to continue working towards a solution, while the A Student simply shuts down if things dont work out perfectly for them immediately.

One critically important factor is that you have to REJECT THE GRADES OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. I cant emphasize this enough. Everyone one is good at something. And not everyone is interested, or good at the things we are expected to be good at. Imagine yourself in school. You fail an Art class. Then you go home to your parents, and they tell you "its okay, not everyone is good at drawing or art". What that teaches is that Art itself as a focus is useless, and the level of interest you have is irrelevant because the demands of society comes first. Now, imagine you come home from school. Not your kid, but YOU. YOU failed math. You simply did not understand. You get your ass handed to you because it is considered a fundamental skill that you must excel at. The psychological consequences of this type of judgement are tremendous. It starts with creating a sense of self doubt which later leads to other major problems such as emotional dependency on authority as well as teaching that everything is hard. If you need to see the results of making children feel shame or guilt for getting poor grades in emphasized subjects, just look at the Youth of America today. Do you think they have any self esteem what so ever? Any confidence? Any ambition? A few do, but not enough to place the US as even a decent place to live any more. The Grades that your kid receives from ANY Public School MUST be taken into context of the School. Did your kid fail in school, or did School itself fail your kids?

Now, your kid is good at something. And not just at texting or posting selfies. But there are other hidden dormant underlying and often undiscovered skills your kid is probably an absolute genius at. Those are what need to be found and encouraged because of the secondary lesson of "if you are good at this, what else are you good at"? That type of encouragement builds Self Esteem, Self Worth and maintains a Healthy Interest in many areas they could potentially be great at. If you only focus on the bad stuff and only what the Professionals tell you, then you are setting your kid up for failure and teaching them to undermine any Self Reliance. Fish are great at swimming. But if you teach a Fish that it is stupid based on its ability to climb a tree, then the Fish will grow up and believe it is a worthless piece of $#@! for the rest of its life. And that is exactly what Public School does.

Your job as a parent is to offer as much incentive which turns your child into a confident and self reliant person. It is hard enough to do that, but, now that you know you have to resist the urge to accept the passing judgement of a system that sets your kid up for failure, you have twice as much work to do. We are always told to "think before we speak". That holds true even as adults. If you punish a kid for disobedience, what is the long term consequence of issuing punishment? Is the punishment that you are issuing a knee jerk reaction as a learned behavior you are practicing, or are you reinforcing the same judgement that a public school would issue? If the primary purpose of our educational system is to create Fixed Habits of Reaction to Authority, now that YOU are the figure of Authority, by issuing judgement, are you teaching Obedience, or Confidence?

A childs ability to learn to deal with failure is a major part of growing. Failure in learning is not failure as a person. Real learning requires experimentation, then application of logic to understand why something did not work as expected, and the real growth is learning how to overcome that failure. For the kids that are very obedient and only push the button, they are set up for catastrophic failure because once the button stops working, they immediately look to Authority to fix their problem instead of having the self reliance to ask how do I get the button working, or is this even the right tool for the job? The knee jerk reaction of turning to Authority is the goal of Public Education, it is the Fixed Habit of Reaction. For your kid to truly be free of this cycle of failure and dependency, you need to be free of it yourself. Teach them HOW to fail, encourage them to fail, but dont teach them to not learn. Im gonna break this on purpose, then we are gonna figure out why it doesnt work so we can take something that doesnt work and understand how to make it work. If I were working hard at inventing a light bulb, but wasnt quite there yet, I would tell you that I dont know how to make a light bulb, but I know a thousand ways to not make a light bulb, and that knowledge is critical in helping me succeed. Give a Straight A Student a task of inventing a light bulb and they will turn to whoever their boss is and expect the boss to solve the problem for them. Teach them how to fail and how to overcome that failure.

Psychology in general is the idea that human behavior is predictable. Our modern psychology has been weaponized to exploit the natural tendencies of the human mind that it can be controlled and manipulated and shaped to suit the desires of the rich and powerful, to have a class of obedient workers and consumers who are emotionally dependent on authority, not of thinkers and leaders who dismiss the constant negative judgements of a public education system that has been designed to create the exact opposite. Psych today does not teach us about our own minds in ways that is useful to us, but in ways that is useful to the rulers. Even people with PHDs miss the fact that they are dependent on their own bosses and certificates and conclusions of others that they have missed the fact that they are just cogs in the machine, and continue to reinforce ideas of accepting the passing judgement of all of society in all of its forms until the walls and obstacles they offer become self reinforced mental prisons.

Real Psychology is understanding how your own mind works, knowing why you react the way you do, and learning to question yourself before issuing a passing judgement on another thru the processes of learned behaviors to exclude any person that does not conform to the arbitrary standards. Those standards are NOT your own standards. When you set your own standards, Im sure that you see the tremendous difference between what their goals and standards are, and what your goals and standards are.

So here is an experiment for you to try. Define Self Confidence. Stop reading for a sec and just think about how you would define REAL Self Confidence. If you stopped, you might say that a person who is Self Confident appreciates the praise of others. If that is what you concluded, read it again, because that definition is the exact opposite of what REAL Self Confidence is. To me, Real Self Confidence is having as little emotional dependency on others as possible. Two examples of this are when someone tells you that you are stupid because of your inability to fly, you can tell them to go piss up a rope. But, that is only half of it. Real Self Confidence is knowing when to reject the praise of figures of authority. So someone tells you that youre doing a great job pushing that button, and you tell that person who is expressing praise to go $#@! themselves, that is REAL Self Confidence. The source of reward is internal, it comes from you, not external, not dependent, and not controllable.

As a parent, you have been taught that as a figure of authority, all praise should be accepted. And that just flat out wrong. The timing and levels are the critical problems. Issuing praise when a child begins to express Self Confidence teaches the child to not rely on their internal source of reward and instead, become dependent on authority for all reward systems. This is not always true, so you still do need to issue praise, just not as much of it. But to back that up, dont hide your goals from the kid. I want you to be self reliant and give examples of self praise and self reward so children can learn from your behavior, and not just a textbook definition. You need to do stuff that can free the minds of children and teach them in ways they genuinely learn. Teaching a kid how to fix a car is a perfect opportunity to practice multiple things. My car doesnt work. Lets go fix it! This is fun! Oops, that doesnt work, hmm, lets figure it out! Hey, this is fun! Yay! I fixed it Good job me! Im proud of myself! Then if the problem is easy enough, recreate the problem and have the kid take a crack at it. The student is learning multiple things in that situation. First is the freedom to do it yourself. It teaches self reliance. It teaches self confidence. It teaches mental attitude. It teaches through observation, practice, and comprehension. It does NOT teach that you will immediately be graded or judged by others on the quality of your workmanship. If you $#@! up, great! Keep going! It teaches dont quit! It teaches how to deal with failure.

One of the difficult things is that when kids start to develop real self confidence, there is a bit of a rebellious air about them. The knee jerk learned behavior that most parents have today is that if kids start to display that self confidence in the form of rebellion, parents try to shut it down immediately. Thats just wrong. And the way that you control your own reaction is based on your perception of it. When you tell a kid good job and they say $#@! you, know that the source of that $#@! you is true self confidence, which is one of the many Goals you have set. Achieving that goal can make you happy! The $#@! you may be disrespectful as hell, but instead of looking at it as a behavior that needs to be "corrected", know this is the PERFECT time to apply Reverse Psychology! That is when you smile big as $#@! and explain WHY you are rewarding them for rejecting your system of praise. Then flat out YIELD to them, let them experience what it is like to be in charge of themselves. That rejection of your praise is done so in favor of their internal systems becoming stronger, and with time that grows into Self Authority. Thats when you yield to their Self Authority and only offer assistance and guidance to them.

There is a lot that goes in deeper in the mind than just this single system, but in my eyes, it is preferable to the consequences of being too Strict, hopefully, that balances out with knowing when to be Permissive, as was asked in the original question. Lot of timing, lot of altering perspectives, lot of doing things that go against all your own learned behaviors. And it is okay as a parent to make mistakes too. Children learn from how you overcome your own mistakes. Not just in certain subjects, but as a Parent. If you show a bad attitude any time you fail as a parent, they will learn that when they fail, they should also have a bad attitude. Forgive yourself, and learn how to fail for yourself. Your failure is an opportunity to learn as you have learned something VERY important, how not to practice parenting.

Now, personally, I still think that Public Education is your greatest adversary in being a Parent. School for your kids is very different than when you or I went, even if its just 10 years ago. It is getting progressively worse. Another good thing to do that I would recommend is to look at sources of information on why our school system is failing our entire society. People like John Taylor Gatto tell you what is wrong, and your challenge as a parent is to overcome each of those obstacles that schools manufacture. Trouble is, if you arent gonna teach your kids like that, there tends to be an absence of what it should be replaced with. This information can be found if you know where to look for it, so look for things like Authentic vs Inauthentic Learning. Hopefully those will branch out, and teach you and your kid(s) how to get the most positive mileage out of your own minds.

[euphemia]

If you have a faith tradition, go to those teachings and train your children accordingly.

[DamianTV]

If you have a faith tradition, go to those teachings and train your children accordingly.

I am not sure if that is a good idea because it replaces one system of brainwashing with another, and both achieve the exact same thing, fixed habits of reaction to any figure of authority. I think his best chance is to eliminate the instruction of others, including either of us, and do it for himself.

[euphemia]

DamianTV, all due respect, a true faith is not brainwashing. God is there and he has a standard to which he wants his children to live. Kindness and truthfulness are not natural attributes of humans. They are attributes God wants his children to have, and he empowers them to be obedient. If they were natural attributes, they would not need to be codified into law.

And to the Christian, God's word has power of itself to change a heart and transform a life.

[Ender]

I believe that if it is desirable for children to be kind, appreciative, and pleasant, those qualities should be taught--not hoped for.

Accept your child for who they are.

Allow them to make mistakes.

Always show love for them, under any circumstances.

[CaptUSA]

From my observations dealing with other parents, I've noticed that the most important trait you can display is consistency. Many parents feel unsure of themselves which causes them to waffle back and forth between being strict and permissive, weak and strong, mean and nice depending on the circumstance and where they are at in their current day-to-day life. I've noticed that this leads the kids to be unsure of the responses to their actions. So, they "test" the waters to gauge the temperature. Eventually, they push it too far and the parents over-react in the opposite manner. This seems to cause the kids to have low confidence in their decisions over time.

The best parents are incredibly self-confident and consistent. This translates itself into their children. In other words, no matter what you do, do it consistently and never waver. And make sure your partner is on the same page as well. Then, your kids will know the expectations and can have confidence in your responses. If you want them to be well-adjusted adults, give them consistency.

[ghengis86]

How many of you have raised multiple children, from birth to adulthood, especially those who’ve offered an opionn?

[William Tell]

I am not sure if that is a good idea because it replaces one system of brainwashing with another, and both achieve the exact same thing, fixed habits of reaction to any figure of authority. I think his best chance is to eliminate the instruction of others, including either of us, and do it for himself.

I think you can teach your beliefs and critical thinking at the same time. Kids learning things on their own is often the best, but parents have the chance to teach them the most important things they themselves have learned throughout their lives. Things that they think will help their kids to live a healthy happy life. Things that they wished they knew when they were kids instead of figuring them out at 35. That might include lots of things, how to change a tire, to not eat yellow snow, the importance of personal freedom. For some that may include the opinion that religion is bunk, even a lot of Christians will say that organized religion as we know it is a joke. For me though the most important thing in my personal journey has been coming to the belief that there is a God and he is knowable. Whether that sounds weird or off the wall is not my concern, I'd share it with anyone. I just honestly agree with Jesus when he said seek and you shall find, I hold that I have. I don't think sharing that is brainwashing though because I don't tell anyone they should believe because I do or the book I read says so. I would just tell the kids to look for truth themselves.

If someone doesn't want to look for God, or says they tried, or whatever else I don't try to shove my beliefs down their throat. In fact I love hearing of their own journey over a beer no matter what it has been. Because I do believe in truth, if I am wrong my opinions should die with me. So many people don't see it that way.

Religious people often want others to believe in something because they do. This seems silly because of course it seems to the nonbeliever that the religious person just believes because someone else told them to. Atheists often mock those who do believe in something, and say only children believe in things they can't see. This seems silly to those who have had religious experiences, because the atheist seems to be saying that his lack of reasons to believe in a God means that no one else could possibly have one. Both examples show human arrogance, and clearly both can lead to teaching a child something other than the pursuit of truth. At the same time though an honest atheist, believer, or agnostic for that matter can both teach what they believe and a pursuit of truth. "Based on my years spent on this earth I believe/don't believe/ don't know/ don't care about X, here is why ____________, go out on your own and see what you find if it interests you."

[CaptUSA]

How many of you have raised multiple children, from birth to adulthood, especially those who’ve offered an opionn?

I have a 28 year old daughter, masters in nursing, very well put together.
22 year old son, still getting his act together, but he’s coming along. Has a decent job, but not sure what he wants to do with his life. (He got caught up in video games - I think it slowed his ambition)
9 year old son, kid is on the right track, ahead of his peers, and they recognize him as a leader on the playground. (We limit his screen time much more than #2)

Just be consistent and don’t question yourself. If you have confidence in your parenting skills, it will translate to them.

[Anti Federalist]

How many of you have raised multiple children, from birth to adulthood, especially those who’ve offered an opionn?

I have.

3 step children and two of my own.

They all have gotten their dings and dents and bruises in life, but all have turned out pretty much OK.

Now that's out of the way: there is no one answer to the OP's question.

I appreciate people that value consistency, and I agree to a point.

However every child is different, every one has a different personality. Some require very little correction, some require a very firm hand.

This can cause quite a bit a whining and "that's not fair, why does so and so get to do this or that and I can't???!!!"

The best response is something like: "Because I can trust so and so not to run amok and wreak havoc if they do so and so. You, on the other hand, have shown otherwise. And that's why so and so can and you cannot."

[dannno]

[brushfire]

Jordan Peterson talks about this topic in "12 rules for life".

Really - its summed up as:

Have as few rules as possible!
Deliver the minim punishment required to correct the action, if a rule is broken
Leave room for the child to experience and overcome their own challenges (leave the skateboarders alone)
Dont allow the child to do things you dont like (while really evaluating your expectations of others - perhaps your dislikes are your problem, and not the child's)
Discipline your child now, otherwise life will discipline your child for you (with much less compassion or care - the world will be very unkind with its discipline)


I would add to this - its is a pretty simple philosophy, but it becomes exponentially more difficult to execute when you have an authoritarian spouse, who has next to no self awareness or self discipline. Add to that a mother in-law that is always happy to interject with her sh!t advice, and all the drama that goes along with the two of them. This is a problem that would have to be addressed with partner selection - hopefully this was factored in before the children were born, otherwise it will be a really difficult ride.

<whistle>

Good luck

[Suzanimal]

Jordan Peterson talks about this topic in "12 rules for life".

Really - its summed up as:

Have as few rules as possible!
Deliver the minim punishment required to correct the action, if a rule is broken
Leave room for the child to experience and overcome their own challenges (leave the skateboarders alone)
Dont allow the child to do things you dont like (while really evaluating your expectations of others - perhaps your dislikes are your problem, and not the child's)
Discipline your child now, otherwise life will discipline your child for you (with much less compassion or care - the world will be very unkind with its discipline)


I would add to this - its is a pretty simple philosophy, but it becomes exponentially more difficult to execute when you have an authoritarian spouse, who has next to no self awareness or self discipline. Add to that a mother in-law that is always happy to interject with her sh!t advice, and all the drama that goes along with the two of them. This is a problem that would have to be addressed with partner selection - hopefully this was factored in before the children were born, otherwise it will be a really difficult ride.

<whistle>

Good luck

I agree. Keep it simple, be consistent, and remember - no one's perfect. Admittedly, I'm not uptight.