Advice for Parents: Be a Mentor, not a friend

Nurturing Young Minds

Edited by Dr Ramesh Manocha & Gyongyi Horvath
To read the full chapter go to Volume 2, chapter 14, pp. 211-221.

Authors

Tena Davies

Psychologist, Melbourne

Tena Davies is a Melbourne-based psychologist and cyber expert. She has recently completed a Clinical Psychology Master’s degree with a thesis on parenting the internet. She works with young people and families to help support a young person’s cyber wellness. Her approach to working with young people and families is to promote a balanced and practical approach.

Website: www.tenadavies.com

In my eleven years working with parents as a psychologist, one of the most common questions asked is which type of parenting is best for their child. When, as parents, we want to know what the best type of parenting is, we often turn to the internet for answers. This starts early in our children’s lives where we google it to find the answer, often gleaning wisdom from the experience of others. However, the answers on the internet can be confusing. There’s attachment parenting, helicopter parenting, tiger mother parenting, positive parenting … the list goes on. Given the varied and divergent styles, which is best? In the psychological research, the most commonly accepted and well-researched parenting styles are: authoritarian, authoritative and permissive, and each is associated with different outcomes in children. These styles can be categorised depending on their degree of warmth/responsiveness and control/‘demandingness’ displayed by the parent towards their child. The following is a description of these parenting styles.