What Type of Parent I Will Be Essay Example for Free

What Type of Parent I Will Be Essay To be able to decide what type of parent I will be and discuss my issues I feel I may come across when the time comes; I first need to decide what style of parent I feel I will have. In order to do this I have researched Dr. Diane Baumrind’s three styles of parenting; permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian. (Baumrind, 1967). All three of these styles vary dramatically but the one I feel I would fit into the most would be the authoritative style of parenting. By Dr. Baumrind’s definition that is: a parent that attempts to direct the child’s activities but in a rational, issue-oriented manner. The parent encourages verbal give and take, shares with the child the reasoning behind her policy, and solicits his objections when he refuses to conform. Both autonomous self-will and disciplined conformity are valued. Therefore the parents exert firm control at points of parent-child divergence, but does not hem the child in with restrictions. The parents enforces their own perspective as adults, but recognizes the childs individual interests and special ways. The authoritative parent affirms the childs present qualities, but also sets standards for future conduct. They use reason, power, and shaping by regime and reinforcement to achieve their objectives, and does not base their decisions on group consensus or the individual childs desires. (Baumrind, 1967). When a person becomes a parent they will truly discover what style of parenting they will have. However, until that day comes, I chose the style of authoritative parenting based on how my parents were and how they raised me to be. I feel both of my parents fit into this category, therefore I have a strong background with this style. While I have been exposed to all three styles of parenting from watching my friend’s parents, my own brother as a parent and now my step mom as a parent, I feel the authoritative style is the one that fits my values, beliefs and issue concerns the best. For example, my step mom, who I feel has a very permissive style of parenting, doesn’t have much â€Å"control† over my step brother. There is one movie in particular that I feel displays the permissive style of parenting very well. Problem child 1 and 2. The child is adopted so the father wants the child to be as happy as possible and in turn the parent gets walked all over. My step brother is a 12 year old boy, who is a good child who listens for the most part has a terrible diet. This is because my step mom wanted to be his friend first and a parent second. She does not like conflict so she allows him to each the sugary starchy foods instead of enforcing healthy choices. On top of that his idea of exercise is playing video games. This may not present health issue at this very time, however, my concerns arise when he is older. What type of choices will he make diet wise, exercising and over all what type of lifestyle will he have? My mom on the other hand, fully enforced eating fruits and veggies at a young age and always made sure my two brothers and I played outside and did extra-curricular activities to get healthy amounts of exercise. Today at 25 years old, I can probably count on one hand the number of foods I don’t like. I also thorough enjoy exercising. A healthy diet and exercise are extremely important for the growth and development of any child. This brings me to one of my issues I am concerned with when I become a parent. Will my child enjoy and eat the healthy choices I make for them. I feel this all begins with infants. After reading a couple journal articles from an online nursing search engine breast feeding is where it all begins. I find it interesting that some mothers would choose not to breast feed. Breast feeding provides multiple benefits for both the mother and the child. The breast feeding processes represents an intricate bonding between the mother and child that is far greater than just nutrition. It creates an immune system, aids in building brain function, developing socialization and establishing long term health. (Godfrey. J Lawrence, R. 010) I feel this relates to one of my issues with being a parent because nutrition of my child is my most important concern. According to our textbook, nutrition is especially crucial in the first two years for brain and body development because they grow so rapidly. An infant’s energy needs are twice that of an adult. Breast feeding provides the correct balance of fat and protein, helps ensure healthy physical growth and protects against disease. (Berk, 2010). According to Piaget, infants think with their eyes, hands and ears. Therefore, I would want my child to be developed to the max potential and not held back for nutritional reason. Erickson’s theory of basic trust vs. mistrust in the first year affect the way a child socializes later in life also related to will the child be into physical activities. The trusting infant expects the world to be good and gratifying, (Berk, 2010) so the child feels confident about exploring and venturing into new things. I feel this related to children wanting to be involved in different activities with other children. The mistrusting baby cannot count on the kindness and compassion of others and therefore withdrawals themselves and protects themselves from other people and activities with other children (Berk, 2010). I feel perhaps this may relate to my step brother and why he plays video games all the time and is glued to the television, instead of playing outside trying to make new friends. As the child begins to grow and develop into the next phase of early childhood I will be faced with new concerns but still centered on nutrition. In this stage the body growth begins to slow down but the brain development from ages two to six increase by about seventy percent of its adult weight to nighty percent. In early childhood the skeletal part of the body also begins to change. Between the ages of two and six years old there is approximately forty five percent new growth centers, in which cartilage becomes bone. (Berk, 2010). According to an article posted in a sports medicine journal, the relation to calcium and bone development during this time is crucial. There is a correlation between calcium intake, physical activity and bone development at this stage. Although there are varying factors such as genetics, age and body type there is still a positive influence. This article discusses the importance of children in the early childhood to adolescent stage to have a calcium intake of 1000mg/day or more of calcium to help build stronger bones and increase the development of the femoral head. There are many different sources of calcium such as dairy products; most cereals have some amount of calcium as well. I feel that it’s important to give children in this stage a multivitamin as well to ensure the child is getting enough calcium. At this stage many children become picky eaters and are very unpredictable. They can like a food one day and the next say they hate it. This is another reason why I feel it’s important to give children in this stage a multivitamin. I also feel that introducing a wide variety of different food to children at this time helps. Being an authoritative style of parenting I would have my child try everything at least once, encouraging these new foods and if they didn’t like it tell them they can always spit it out. This is a major developmental stage that I feel sets the tone if your child will be or become obese. This is an increasing issue with children today. Moms are becoming more busy with work and aren’t stay at home moms anymore. It’s quicker and easier to just stop at McDonalds and get your child a happy meal than it is to come home and cook a healthy meal. I do feel fast food restaurants are trying to incorporate healthy choices with children’s meals but in my opinion fried chicken nuggets are still fried chicken nuggets even if they come with apples. The apples are a healthy choice however those come with sugary caramel sauce to dip them in. There are many consequence of obsess children. Diabetes in children is one of the most common major issues. Diabetes type two is the type of diabetes that was once an adult disease has increasing become more common in younger children. Many of the signs and symptoms are asymptomatic I feel many parents over-see what is really going on. There are many risk factors for early onset associated with type two diabetes which includes: overweight and obesity, especially in the abdomen area, high or low birth weight and rapid increase of weight in early childhood, physical in activity or sedentary lifestyle (playing video games all the time) as well as consuming foods that are low in fiber and high in fats and sugars. (Schub. T Caple, C. , 2011) The sad part is many of this risk factors are modifiable but too many parents reward with sugary fatty treats. Unless the parent is health conscious it is very difficult to change these issues. The other problem that arises with this is many times parents see their child as being perfect and over-see what is really going on. In this stage of development according to Piaget the child has moved from the sensorimotor to the preoperational stage. This spans the years from two until approximately seven years old. The major difference in this stage is symbolic or representational activity. A major example of this change is make-believe play. Piaget believed that through this type of play children are practicing and strengthening newly acquired representational schemes. (Berk, 2010) I agree with Piaget’s views. I feel it’s important for children to have make-believe play but only to a certain extent. As a parent I want my child to be more interested in playing with other children in more real activities opposed to always want to play make-believe by themselves. An example I feel is acceptable is when girls want to play house together with dolls or babies. I feel I control this situation as a parent by encouraging interactive play with other children with play dates. Exercise in this stage is also very important. Involving your child in activities outside of school helps the child develop social skills by having to interact with new children in different situations. As long as this is followed by positive reinforcement by the parent I also feel this helps build confidence in the child. Vygotsky’s theory of sociocultural is another major factor in this developmental stage. Language at this stage is the important factor in Vygotsky’s theory. Children begin to talk to themselves much in the same way they do with fellow students. This increases their ability to think and their ability to control their own behavior. (Berk, 2010). According to a study published in a developmental psychology journal there is little correlation between private speech and problem solving process. Approximately half the subjects had private speech and those who did, did not utter very much. The article also discussed within a Vygotskian framework, private speech will tend to co-occur with failure in cognitive tasks because both private speech and the likelihood of failure increase with task difficulty. We also learned that in this stage children begin to remember. It’s not that they are just now building a memory; they now have the language skills to describe their memories. We had a discussion board regarding our earliest autobiographically memory and as the textbook stated, no one could really come up with a memory early than three years old. This is explained because we didn’t have an understanding of language to describe what we were experiencing. The third developmental stage that I feel I will have the most parenting issues or concerns is now the adolescent stage. I can only hope that by this point in time I have taught my child to make good nutritional choices and I have engaged them in other activities so they are confident in socializing and want to have active lifestyles opposed to sedentary. I feel this is going to be the most difficult stay to deal with. Now I am dealing with hormonal changes which create physical and mental changes but now I will also have to deal with social changes and sexual activity. During the adolescence stage children go through puberty. This can cause many different physical changes. I hope that I can teach my child to always have a positive body image of them. I feel by keeping them active will help with this issue. If I have a girl I am going to have to be concerned with eating disorders and the possibility of becoming pregnant. I feel the only way to have control over these issues is just being open with my child or children and make them feel comfortable talking to myself or husband (hopefully present) about anything as well as taking responsibility in my own hands to make sure my children are properly educated about things like safe sex and sexually transmitted diseases. I don’t want to be a naive parent and think â€Å"oh my child would never do that! † I know I was there age at one point and they are going to do whatever they want to do. I will also teach my children about peer pressure to help prevent them from making mistakes because of it. Through this entire paper I feel I have learned that parenting is no easy task. A lot of things are learned by trial and error. Also, just because these are my views I hope that I have a husband who shares the same parenting style otherwise we ourselves will be in a pickle. I don’t want my household to have one good parent and one bad parent I want us to be equal and on the same playing field. I want my husband and I to work as one, which comes down to communication. I also feel my parents raised me with many skills I with use while parenting. All I can do is try my hardest to teach my children the same ways and hope they are responsive to me and respectful and understand one day they will be responsible for the same thing.