We all have goals for our children, even if these are things that we've never formally articulated and are ideas we've inherited from half-remembered bits of parenting books and blogs (and the occasional podcast) and the way we were parented ourselves.

But do you ever find that the way you're parenting in the moment doesn't necessarily support your overarching goals?  So, if you have a goal to raise an independent child but every time the child struggles with something you step in and "help," then your daily interactions with your child may not help your child to achieve that independence.

In this episode Dr. Joan Grusec of the University of Toronto helps us to think through some of the ways we can shift our daily interactions with our children to ones that bring our relationship with them (rather than our need for compliance) to the fore in a way that supports our longer-term parenting goals.

 

References

Coplan, R.J., Hastings, P.D., Lagace,-Seguin, D.G., & Moulton, C.E. (2002). Authoritative and authoritarian mothers’ parenting goals, attributions, and emotions across different childrearing contexts. Parenting: Science and Practice 2(1), 1-26.

Dix, T., Ruble, D.N., & Zambarano, R. (1989). Mothers’ implicit theories of discipline: Child effects, parent effects, and the attribution process. Child Development 60, 1373-1391.

Grusec, J.E. (2002). Parental socialization and children’s acquisition of values. In M.H. Bornstein (Ed.). Handbook of Parenting (2nd Ed)., Volume 5: Practical issues in parenting (p.143-168). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hastings, P.D., & Grusec, J.E. (1998). Parenting goals as organizers of responses to parent-child disagreement. Developmental Psychology 34(3), 465-479.

Kelly, G. A. (1995). The psychology of personal constructs (2vols.). New York: Norton.

Kuczynski, L. (1984). Socialization goals and mother-child interaction: Strategies for long-term and short-term compliance. Developmental Psychology 20(6), 1061-1073.

Lin, H. (2001). Exploring the associations of momentary parenting goals with micro and macro levels of parenting: Emotions, attributions, actions, and styles. Unpublished Master’s thesis. Stillwater, OK: Oklahoma State University.

Meng, C. (2012). Parenting goals and parenting styles among Taiwanese parents: The moderating role of child temperament. The New School Psychology Bulletin 9(2), 52-67.

Miller, P. J., Wang, S. H., & Cho, G. E. (2002). Self-esteem as folk theory: a comparison of EA and Taiwanese mothers’ beliefs. Parenting: Science and Practice, 2, 209-239.