Aggressive Parenting: A Big 'No'

Every human being is different. We have heard this phrase time and again. As a parent, you are your child's first friend. Parenting is never easy, as a first-timer or even if it's one's second or third child. Understanding your child, their behaviour, desires, dreams and skills demands a lot of care, commitment and dedication. Moreover, as a parent, it is obvious that you would often worry about your child in all aspects of life.

Thoughts like whether they are staying away from degrading habits and practices, are your child's friends a positive company, are they picking up the right behaviour to survive in society, and the list that goes on makes a parent choose different parenting tactics.

In this case, aggressive parenting is a common behaviour that parents often tend to inflict upon their children. But aggressive parenting, although, looks like a short-term solution, can actually harm your child psychologically in the long run. It affects the way your child grows up and also makes them abusive and aggressive. They become victims of abuse which limits them from enhancing their full potential. Aggressive parenting is ineffective and incompassionate. Here are some ways in which aggressive parenting affects your child and how it can be changed.

Aggressive Parenting Comes Back: The foremost negative consequence of aggressive parenting is that by the time the child finally leaves home, they are already a victim of not knowing how to behave on their own. They choose aggression to keep their children away from negative influences of the media, the internet and certain peers. But the children fall prey to these exact problems once they are out. Effective parenting in this scenario would be to teach the children how to battle or maintain distance from these powerful negative influences on their own.

Authoritative over Authoritarian: Living under authoritarian parents is equivalent to living under a dictatorship. It is always effective to be authoritative instead of resorting to iron-fist and verbal dominance kind of punishments. Authoritative Parenting involves incorporating healthy boundaries by allowing the children to be creative and independent within the limits you set as parents. The next step is to firmly correct them when they step outside of their boundaries. Such a practice holds the children accountable when they mess up and facilitates forgiveness and coaching.

Break the Generational Faults: It is often seen that parents adopt parenting behaviour from their parents. However, people can change and so can parents. Aggressive parents who come out of their rigidity and learn effective parenting skills, find themselves in a better position to teach their children how to live and manage their lives comfortably and in healthy manners.

Incorporate Self-control: Some parents end up being aggressive unintentionally. Parents are often found losing their control. Consequently, they resort to yelling or screaming. If screaming and yelling were meant to work, all children would have been nice. It does not work like that. The urge to get their children under control immediately when a situation arises is what drives certain parents to go for aggression. The effective decision for a parent in a heated situation is to first calm themselves down and get themselves under control. When a parent reacts immediately with aggression, it involves an emotional reaction, which facilitates a child's behaviour to determine how the parent is reacting, when it is supposed to be the opposite.

Be what you want your child to be: Consciously or unconsciously as parents, you are your child's role model. They watch you all the time and your behaviour influences them. Parents often do not come to the realisation of the fact that their behaviour affects their children. Behaving rudely, being antisocial and showcasing abusive behaviour inside the house inflicts a lot of harm in the children. As a parent, it is very important for you to model and showcase the behaviour you want them to portray.

Also Read: Some same sex parenting challenges

Also Watch: