Does the permissive parenting style work? Learn more about the practical side of this parenting style and its potential risks and pitfalls.
Is there ever a time when a permissive parenting style makes sense? The answer is a bit complicated. Some studies try to suggest that the permissive parenting style can be helpful to your child’s development.
Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
However, scripture and most statistics point to a higher likelihood of various issues in your child from a permissive parenting style. Here are some of the risks a permissive parenting style creates:
The permissive parenting style involves high levels of sensitivity and warmth with minimal to absent levels of boundaries or limits. In other words, no training up of a child. With a youth mental health crisis upon us, I have noticed more parents carrying the false and damaging assumption that easing up on limits and demandingness leads to a healthier mental health in their children.
Proverbs 15:31 says, “The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise.”
Proverbs 10:17 says, “Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life, but he who rejects reproof leads others astray.” The wisdom from Proverbs emphasizes the life-giving role biblical and intentional instruction and guidance can play in a child’s development.
Throughout more than two decades as a family therapist, I have discovered four types of permissive parents:
One common theme for permissive parents is that their main goal is for their children to just “be happy” and to pursue their own deserved happiness. Commercials and cultural messages seem to affirm this worldview even though happiness is subjective and illusive.
Happiness usually comes because of healthy relationships, healthy decision-making, and a healthy perspective. But how can kids learn what is healthy without training, guidance on boundaries or learning the difference from right and wrong? Or without learning how to consider other people’s emotions carefully and attentively. Not to mention how to handle their own emotions beyond their own feeling of happiness.
I love what Proverbs 12:1 says, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.”
Discipline is truly a loving act from a parent to a child. Proverbs has many other passages that emphasize the importance of discipline, guidance, instruction, and direction.
The following are some examples of great goals to train a child in the way they should go (and go beyond happiness).
As a result, even though high levels of warmth and sensitivity that are found in the permissive parenting style are foundational to attachment and relationships there is a key foundation missing – direction and training.
Your child needs loving biblical guidance, demandingness, and boundaries to mature and grow in their character, resilience, and healthy prosocial behaviors. This is training a child the way they should go, so they will not depart from it.
Scripture and research consistently point to high levels of warmth and sensitivity balanced with high levels of demandingness and boundaries as the most ideal parenting style, which is the authoritative parenting style and the 7 Traits of Effective Parenting.
Interestingly, permissive parenting can be effective in some cases, but mainly after parents have first used a consistent authoritative parenting style (the 7 Traits) throughout their children’s early developmental years. In this case, children have learned through guidance and within boundaries and limits how to reach for the better thoughts and make healthy decisions so they can be trusted and given freedoms as they get older.
Children in this scenario are providing the necessary boundaries themselves rather than adults or others needing to put the boundaries on them and are displaying evidence of training within their character.
Go here to learn more about the permissive parenting style and the other three parenting styles. There you can also learn more about the 7 Traits of Effective Parenting, which are based off the extensive research on secure attachment and the authoritative parenting style.
Dr. Daniel Huerta is Vice President of Parenting and Youth for Focus on the Family, overseeing the ministry’s initiatives that equip moms and dads with biblical principles and counsel for raising healthy, resilient children rooted in a thriving faith.
He is a psychologist, a licensed clinical social worker, and the author of 7 Traits of Effective Parenting. For many years, he has provided families with practical, biblically-based and research-based parenting advice on topics including media discernment, discipline, communication, mental health issues, conflict resolution, and healthy sexuality in the home. He is passionate about coming alongside parents as they raise contributors, instead of consumers, in a culture desperately in need of God’s kingdom.
Dr. Huerta has been interviewed by various media outlets including Fox News, Fatherly, Christianity Today, WORLD Magazine, and CBN, and he is a frequent guest on Christian radio stations across the nation. He’s also written for publications, including The Washington Post, on various topics related to marriage and parenting. He participated in the development of Focus on the Family’s Launch Into the Teen Years, a resource to help parents prepare their kids for adolescence, and he speaks regularly at retreats, conventions, and online events.
Dr. Huerta has maintained a private practice in Colorado Springs, Colorado since 2003 and has served families through Focus on the Family since 2004. He and his wife, Heather, have been married since 1997 and love being parents to their three teen children, Alex, Lexi, and Maci.
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