What an interesting world we live in. For about a year now I have been hearing about Attachment Parenting. Recently I saw a news story about Free Range Parenting. These two styles of parenting are certainly opposite ends of the continuum. For today and tomorrow I want to write about each. In truth, neither of these has to do with raising teenagers but I found it interesting so thanks for indulging me.
As the free range parenting people say when we were kids we could take off on a Saturday (if our chores were done) and had to be back before dark. (Or some variation of the arrangement) They say that when children are more responsible for problem solving, they develop self-confidence. They say that when they are overscheduled they use computers, video games etc. to entertain them. They feel that as more and more parents were both working they provided scheduled activities for their children to have them supervised and to assuage their guilt for being gone. As a result our societal norms have changed to feeling that children even to older teenagers and young adults need parent supervision to be successful and safe. In these later cases we worry that our kids will not get things done unless we are in charge of it.
The proponents of this style of parenting do not believe in throwing their kids into the pool and it is sink or swim. They have guidelines they incorporate before giving their child increased freedom. WebMD in their article Free-Range Parenting It's a new, hands-off approach to raising kids. Should you give it a try? This article provides some guidelines for this decision process.
- Does my child have the disposition to handle the activity?
- Can he or she follow rules?
- Does my child know what to do in case there is a problem?
- Does my child know from whom it is safe to ask for help?
- Does my child have a sense of how to reach out to parents, use a phone, and distinguish between police officers and other people?
I see merits of this style of parenting but nothing is perfect. The WebMD article says actually he crime rate has gone down since the mid-90s and children are actually safer that in the 70s and 80s. For parents of latency age children this would be such a big jump this may be too unstructured to incorporate in to parenting.
Tomorrow we will discuss Attachment parenting. Think about this and let me know what you think. Sherri
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