The Textbook Identified Four Parenting Styles

As the oldest of six children, I've spent a lot of time around kids of all ages growing up. I began babysitting as a fulltime job during the summer time when I turned fourteen. I was always strict with the kids I watched, making sure rules were followed and respect was shown towards authority and their peers. No matter how many visits to the corner they might have had, at the end of the day they all knew how much I loved them.

When I got married, I became an "instant parent"; my husband had a three-year-old from a previous marriage. He lived with his mother at the time, but was still at our house frequently. I was pregnant with our daughter at the time we received orders to move to California. I will admit, I was excited because I knew this meant our visits with my stepson would be considerably less than they were at the time. He was only three at the time, but he had some pretty serious behavioral issues. I had babysat children with ADHD before, but this was not like that at all since he was incredibly violent; I feared for my unborn child because I never knew what was going to fly across the room and hit me.

We had a few months before we would move and my stepson was kicked out of five daycares in three months, I often had to pick him up early when he was in daycare. Since I was pregnant and we were about to move, I wasn't working at the time; you can guess who that left to watch him during the day when his dad and mom were both at work. Unsure of what to do with him, I put him on a very strict schedule. I made a chart of our day and would go over it every morning with him and stuck to it the best we could. I also added a rewards program for him, splitting the day up into morning and afternoon. He could earn a sticker's for good behavior and depending on how many he earned, he could choose a weekly reward (McDonalds play place, trip to the park, movie, new toy if he got them all).

He began to improve when he was at our house; it wasn't good behavior but based on how he had been acting, it was an improvement. He was still showing the same violence toward his mother and it wasn't long before she came to us and asked us to take him with us when we moved. I had pretty mixed emotions about this but agreed to it since we were making some progress.

Since then, he has suffered abuse at the hand of his stepdad and we have full custody of him. We fought his diagnosis and putting him on medication at first because of his age, but when school began it was clear we had to do something. He is now nine years old and has faced one hospitalization and many suspensions at school.

Our reading this week discussed four different kinds of parenting, authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved. In my experience, a combination of both authoritative and authoritarian is what works the best in my home. I think all kids are different, just as all adults are different. They have little personalities and what works for one child, may not