I hadn’t heard of this term before. My curiosity led me to look at the various parenting style labels used since I was a hands-on father, knee-deep in diapers with a two-year-old son and newborn twins.

Many of my readers are probably out of the diaper stage, but you might still be doing hands-on parenting or supporting the next generation of new parents. It’s never too late to take a step back and get a different perspective for reflection.

I’ll start by describing some of the more common labels.

1. Helicopter Parents – tend to hover over their children. I remember having a job interview with one of these young people when her mother entered the interview room and sat down to join the process. I’ll let your imagination wander as to how that went.
   
   
2. Bulldozer Parents – try to remove all obstacles from their children’s path. No wonder these kids grew up with low self-confidence in their ability to identify real obstacles and strategize to a solution.
   
   
3. Tiger Parents – push their children to be successful, particularly in academic pursuits. This includes pre-school and kindergarten to university.
   
   
4. Jellyfish Parents – were very lenient.
   
   
5. Apple Watch Parents – focus on their wellness, often to an obsessive degree.
   
   
6. Sharing Parents – use social media to inform the world about every twitch, rollover and first gurgle that could have been Mama, their child, performed for them.
   
   

Finally, we get to Lighthouse Parents. They are described as calm, stable, and able to balance guidance with safety.

In each era, these various labels presented were thought by many as the best parenting approach, the ultimate parenting style for generations to come. Ah, to be young again…

I think the real value is clearly and concisely capturing different parenting styles. This opens the door to discussion between parents so they can explore their default styles. In my experience, both personally and professionally, consistency in approach is very important.

Before I was married and as we parented our children, we discussed what we would do in different situations. Reality always won out, but we were practicing having an open discussion of what to do next as parenting challenges unfolded around us.

The biggest challenge was to not fall into adopting approaches based on our upbringing without making a conscious approach.

Please give this a bit of a think. What is your parenting approach? What label would you give that captures it in a word or two? If you have older children, what do you think their approach will be or currently is? When you ask them the same question about parenting style, what label do they give it?

Start the discussion. It is never too late.

I am curious about your thoughts. Please comment below with your bit of a think.

Photo by Paulius Dragunas on Unsplash

If you enjoyed The Blog, please share it with others. Thanks.

And my thanks to St. Albert’s 50+ Activity Centre for making this Blog possible.

Volunteer Blogger

glenn.walmsley@icloud.com