My Parenting Style---According To Tickle Test

Type I parents are good at setting rules, making them clear, and seeing to it that their children stick to them. By doing this, you teach your children to value work, tradition, and respect for authority. While some parents allow their children's missteps to go unnoticed, you prefer to call them out with swift punishment. This way, your children learn to abide by and honor agreements, whether written, spoken, or simply understood. This is a valuable skill they will carry into their relationships with other people.

Yours is a very direct style of parenting, as opposed to a suggestive approach. By acting in this way, you establish relationships with your children that revolve around unwavering demands to comply with your requests. The suggestive approach might seem too soft to you. When you leave children to make decisions on their own, you might feel they are more likely to go astray. After all, they don't have the experience and knowledge that you do. That's why giving them rules and expectations as guidelines probably makes more sense to you.

All in all, your direct method of parenting is often highly effective. You, more than other parents, are likely to see more immediate results with your children since the boundaries you set are so clear. They know what to expect, so they know how to adapt their behavior accordingly.

Positive Effects of Your Parenting Style
Children of Type I parents tend to become capable, confident, and socially competent adults. They often have a strong sense of self and well-developed notions of personal boundaries. They tend to posses high levels of self-esteem, a positive outlook, and a high level of self-confidence.

As a result, they tend to naturally steer away from bad habits, such as destructive drug use and excessive drinking. Those behaviors in particular are socially linked to the search for identity and acceptance.

Cross-cultural research has also linked your parenting style with children who excel in academics. If Type I parents not only encourage their children to stick to the rules, but also to be creative, then this parenting pattern can further inspire motivation and competence in academics.

In fact, some research suggests that the level of parental demandingness is positively associated with levels of social assertiveness on the part of children. That is, if parents enforce a strict set of standards, then their children will likely internalize these standards and hold themselves to them as they grow older - even in situations where peers are acting in ways that violate these rules. Basically, many children reared by Type I parents are less willing to succumb to peer pressure, and are thus somewhat inoculated against taking part in dangerous behaviors. On a less dramatic level, this style of parenting can even lead children away from relatively minor infractions, such as skipping class.

Negative Effects of Your Parenting Style
The biggest red flag for Type I parents is to make sure their rules and emphasis on obedience doesn't overshadow elements that all children need to thrive — elements such as providing a nurturing environment, forgiveness, and acceptance. These ingredients are of equal importance in the parenting game. Strict standards coupled with harsh punishments can lead your children to follow rules when they are supervised. There is a risk that when unsupervised, children who feel too yoked in by rules will rebel. And this could have some unfortunate long-term results.

Also, if rules are applied inconsistently, with excessive emotion, or too severely, children might also turn their backs on them. Being a demanding parent is not a bad thing, but your children must understand the logic behind your demands. Think of the rules that you follow — even simple ones, like stopping at 4-way stop signs. You're compelled to stop not because it's the law, but because you understand the importance of being a courteous driver and the reciprocal nature of taking turns. You can apply the same logic while coaching your children on how to interact with others.

If you demand a lot from your child, be ready to return a lot. Attentiveness, open ears, and support must counterbalance your perceived strictness. Otherwise, your child might be compelled to follow these rules only in order to avoid punishment or to seek your approval.

The "strict discipline" approach to parenting, when not coupled with a warm and affectionate way of interacting with the child, creates a one-way parent-child relationship, wherein the parent acts as dictator while the child has no say in what goes on. In this way, this Type I parenting style can lead children to be less spontaneous, independent, and curious than their peers. It can also lead children toward being more socially withdrawn, with low self-esteem and low motivation for academic and intellectual performance. In these cases, obedience comes at the expense of a child's long-term creativity and competence — qualities a child obviously needs in order to succeed in future academic and business settings, not to mention personal relationships.

Suggestions:

Go to great lengths to make your relationship with your child a two-way street. Enforce your rules, but make sure you make clear the reasons behind them and the personal benefits that your child will reap by following them. Keep in mind, however, that research has demonstrated that the most effective punishments are moderate, rather than severe, and always associated with a positive reinforcement. That way, your children learn not only what they should not do, but what to do as well.

Punishment tells a child, "Do not do this." The vacuum created by a "Do not" must be filled with a "Do." Make it clear to them what they should have been doing at the time they were breaking a rule. That way, they will learn the "correct" behavior while simultaneously unlearning the "incorrect" behavior