Question

Write a 500 word essay. Prompt: For this week's assignment, you are to write an essay in which you explain your stance/perspective on a topic such as parenting, or adoption.

Answer 1

Here by writing an essay on my stance/ perspective on topic - PARENTING.

According to my opinion parents exert enormous influence on their childrens development, in every aspect of the development as in physical , social , emotional and mental . Now this is a huge responsibility over parents to raise their children into independent and responsible adults.

Parenting plays an important role right from child's early developmental stage. Children come into the world with their own innate temperament and it is parents job to provide an interface with the world that eventually prepares a child for complete independence.

I will first like to opine on why is parenting important?

Parenting is essential for:-

1.To care and protect children, care encompasses promotion of emotional as well as physical health.

2.Protection further involves setting and enforcing boundaries to ensure children's safety in all activities.

3. Development of child involves optimising child s potential and maximizing the opportunities for using it.

Being parents is a challenging job. No parents can be perfect parents with set guidelines or rules to be followed. According to me parenting a child is an art that is to be learned and mastered over a period of time during your child's development. Every child is born with unique abilities and temperamental traits so every parent has to know and study their child very well. To become a good parent is not very easy task but it's not at all impossible.

Before highlighting how ideal parenting can be achieved let me introduce most common parenting styles as given by Diana Baumarind ,a developmental psychologist. According to her parenting styles are categorised based on two dimensions of parenting behaviour:

1. Demanding , refers to the extent parents conrol their children's behavior or demand their maturity.

2. Responsiveness ,refers to the degree parents are accepting and sensitive to their children's emotional and developmental needs.

Based on this parenting styles are-

1. Authoritative : This style includes warm and responsive parents ,they set clear rules, have higher expectations ,they value independence. This kind helps in achieving good outcome in the form of higher academics performance,good self esteem,better social skills in children and low delinquency.

2 . Authoritarian - In this parents are unresponsive to children's needs, have strict rules,high expectations and they expect blind obedience which may not have good outcome. Due to pressure of high expectations child may not perform well academically, have low self esteem,poorer social skills more prone to mental illness.

3. Permissive parenting- In which parents are extra warm and responsive,have no or few set rules ,indulgent and excessively linient where in child can take parents forgranted and show defiance,poorer social skills,have problematic relationship.

4. Neglectful parenting- parents being cold and unresponsive ,having no set rules can lead to increase delinquency,impulsive behavior, since parents are uninvolved and indifferent child may get involved into drug use and abuse and later develop mental illness.

So in my opinion authoritative parenting is better in which parents should set rules and set boundaries and at the same time give freedom and democracy to the child to choose best for him which can help in making the children more independent and self sufficient, also they develop high self esteem. These kids achieve higher academic success and also have better mental health.

Authoritative parenting may be one of the best but it's not the most ideal ,that can fit all , actually there is no one right way to raise a child.

In today's growing competitive world it's seen that parents are being over indulgent and overprotective,they keep on hovering over their children and supporting them even when there is no support needed. Such kind of helicopter parenting in these times is just making the children more labile, they don't develop reselience that is required to cope up from growing stress levels with growing competition.

Ideally as your child develops ,the challenges will change, your styles to parenting may change according to child's behavior,but your approach may, it be any ,should be consistent,firm and loving.

Help your child be open to new experiences and learn through experience. Make them learn to take efforts on their own to tackle their challenges,which help children to build confidence and improve self esteem.

As a parent one should caliberate ones expectations about what your child is capable of doing independently, do not judge a monkey by it's ability to swim.

As a good parent one should bring the best out of your child with limited abilities he or she has, one should sharpen their skills, and make children ready for challenging future.