Permissive Parenting Is A Parent's Attempt
To Be A Friend And Not A Parent,
To Indulge A Child’s Every Wish, And
To Avoid Conflict At All Costs

Permissive Parenting is exactly what its name implies.

Permissive: Lacking firmness or control; to be lax or indulgent; to tolerate or grant permission.

This is a Parenting Style that has Parents seeking to relate to their children as peers or friends and not as a Parental authority figure.

It should come as no surprise that Permissive Parenting does not work well to raise healthy and responsible children.

Contrary to Natural Parenting or Active Parenting, Permissive Parenting seeks to please children and cater to their every whim, with Parents seeking to avoid conflict with their children at all costs.

Permissive Parenting makes up one of the three major styles of parenting, the other two being the Authoritative style and the Authoritarian style of parenting.

Authoritative Parenting holds high expectations for child behavior, sets rules and expects compliance with the same, and encourages an open and honest dialogue between parent and child.

Authoritarian Parenting also holds high standards and expectations for their children but do not explain the reasoning behind the rules and boundaries, and do not allow for an open discussion between parent and child.

Permissive Parenting seems to me to be a contradiction in terms, as Parenting requires proactive effort and the setting of Family Rules and Rewards to help discipline and mentor children towards adulthood, while being permissive, or overly indulgent, in our Parenting Style is neither proactive nor helpful to the proper nurturing and care of our children.

This Parenting Style simply does not work to raise healthy, happy children who will become healthy, happy adults.

That being said, there are aspects of this Parenting Style that are wholesome and worthwhile, such as being accepting, affirmative and non-punitive with your children.

Yet used alone and without other Parenting Styles thrown into the mix, Permissive Parenting harms our children as it places few demands on them to be responsible and accountable for their attitudes and behaviors, and does not sufficiently motivate them to adhere to common standards of conduct which their peers are accepting as standard operating procedures within the normal framework of life.

Parents who want to appear as their child’s ally or ‘best buddy’ at the expense of proper guidance and accountability are actually retarding their child’s attempts to grow up and act responsibly.

Permissive parents are often overprotective parents, and that further hinders a child’s competency and growth.

That is not to say that we should not be friends with our children, but if that friendship comes at the expense of being your child’s Parent and mentor and taking your needed and rightful place as the ‘enforcer of law and order’ within the family unit, then you just gave your child one more friend and left them with one less Parent in the world, and that is never a good trade for parent or child to make.

Permissive parents are so afraid to have conflict with their children that they err on the other side of the spectrum, resorting to bribes, gifts, and basically allowing their children to call the shots while the Parent jumps through childish hoops in an effort to keep the peace, and the childish tail ends up waging the parental dog.

The result is that children often have few if any rules to govern their bedtimes, mealtimes, homework routines, TV time or anything else worth regulating and limiting in the life of a young child who needs this regulation more than they could ever know.

This lack of regulation produces spoiled children who expect their peers and the rest of the world to cater to them just as their over-doting parents cater to them, resulting in few if any friends willing to put up with that nonsense and attitude for long.

Spoiled children also have a distorted view of the way the world really works and inevitably have a rude and difficult adjustment when their Permissive-Parenting-induced-fantasy meets the real world realities.

If you need help dealing with a similar situation in your own home, you can try this simple, step-by-step program to help Fix Your Child’s Attitude quickly and permanently.

Permissive Parenting is like being a “Yes” man or woman to your child.

Let’s review some of the wonderfully talented and capable people who surrounded themselves with ‘YES Men and Women’; people who refused to tell them ‘NO’ every now and again, and let’s review how their lives ended up:

• Elvis Presley

Such a great talent and wonderful human being, and yet when surrounded by people too afraid to tell him ‘No’ he ended up overweight and addicted to drugs which led to a diminished quality of life and to an early death

• Howard Hughes

A wealthy and daring pioneer of aviation and the silver screen, who surrounded himself with people so afraid to tell him ‘No’ that he spiraled into mental illness, a form of self-imposed and later a not-so-self-imposed house arrest, and an addiction to drugs which led to a diminished quality of life and also to an early death

• Michael Jackson

Do I really need to repeat the obvious here?
Please see the comments above as they will all apply.

Have you noticed a pattern forming here?

Are you a Permissive Parent who just can’t seem to say ‘NO’ to your child?

How well do you think that kind of Parenting is going to work out for your child in the long-run?

And finally, have any of you seen the delightful movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?

Baruka Salt was and is the ultimate ‘poster child’ for Permissive Parenting Gone Wild.

Would you like to be the parent for Baruka Salt?

Are you unwittingly creating a Baruka Salt of your very own??

Parents Obey - © Daquella Manera

Does it make any sense to you for Parents to get the call to ‘OBEY THEIR CHILDREN’?

Is this not a confusion of the way things are meant to be?

If you are supposed to be the parent of your children then you best begin to act like it. Not in a mean way or in a forceful, bullying way, but in a way that will serve you and your child in the best way possible.

What separates one parenting style from another is the degree of parental demands or control (how demanding a parent is of his or her children) and parental responsiveness or warmth (how responsive and emotionally supportive a parent is towards their children).

Permissive Parenting is highly supportive but not at all demanding of their children.

These parents make few if any rules for their children to follow while at the same time being highly supportive of anything and everything their children do.

The resulting children have high Self-Esteem that is based on fiction.

These children are in for a hard time and a rude awakening when their perceptions of who they are meet the reality of who they really are.

As was mentioned before, there are some fine and admirable qualities to the Permissive Parenting style of parenting, but balance is the needed ingredient to make it all work out.

Children need Parental expectations and reasonable limits to help mold and govern their lives, but those limits can and should be carried out with the love and sensitivity to our children that is a hallmark of Permissive Parenting everywhere.

Sugar is a good thing; one of my personal favorites.

Add sugar to chocolate and it becomes an even better thing.

Now only eat sugar for every meal for the rest of your life and you have lost the balance and sugar ceases to be a good thing under this all day, every day scenario.

So also is Permissive Parenting.

Keep all of the good and kind and sincere traits that motivates such a Permissive Parent, yet balance it out with respect for rules, obedience to limits, and an occasional ‘NO’ where needed, and now your Parenting Skills and contributions are taking on a healthy dimension that will actually benefit and not hinder your child as was happening before.

Nothing Too Much was a revered piece of advice much sought after in ancient Greece at the Temple of Delphi thousands of years ago, and it is still a true and useful principle to live by today.

Moderation, variety and balance are essential to successful parenting.

And with that balance MUST come a balance among and between the parents as well.

Never allow a child to play one parent against the other as a ‘Parenting house divided against itself cannot stand’.

A Permissive Parent can make the other parent look like a bad guy, when in fact it is the exact opposite that is really going on.

Permissive Parenting can and should be corrected for the sake of the children, and a parent trying to break the habit of being overly indulgent and accepting needs to ask for and accept the help of the stronger Parent in this equation and do the parenting as a united front for the sake and benefit of the family as a whole.

Taking the ‘easy way out’ is never the easy way out in hindsight, and your children can’t afford for you to be making the same Parenting mistakes over and over again.

There is a right way and an easy way in life, and the right way is never the easy way.

Change your parental direction while there is still time for it to make a difference in where your child is headed.

Father laughing, daughter crying - © Footloosiety

The child that was used to only hearing ‘Yes’ and always getting everything they wanted from a Permissive Parenting stand point is not going to be happy when things begin to change, even though they are changing for the better.

Discipline is an essential part of proper parenting and demonstrates Good Parenting Skills.

Parents should expect this reaction from their children and should be cheerful and of a happy countenance when this happens, realizing that the changes taking place in your Parenting world are for the best, and that a spoiled child’s tears of today will turn into the Thank You they offer you tomorrow (figuratively speaking of course).

Sometimes tomorrow feels like it will never come, but when you Parent properly, it always does come and usually with a broad smile on its face and the sun behind its back.

Though I am sure by now you are already convinced that Permissive Parenting as a stand-alone Parenting Style is not in the best interest of you or of your children, let me leave you with a partial list of the negative results that can and do occur if Permissive Parenting is left unchecked and uncorrected.

Negative Results of Permissive Parenting

• Children suffer a loss of self-esteem

• Children learn to manipulate their parents

• Permissive Parents feel resentful towards their children and also feel taken for granted and taken advantage of

• Children lack discipline and a sense of connectedness with family

• Children are more impulsive and lack self-discipline to control their emotions and actions

• Children have lower levels of academic achievement and higher rates of misconduct and drug use

• Children who do not accept responsibility for their actions

• Children who are immature and lack friendships and basic social skills

• Children who don’t understand why they can’t have everything they want

• Children who become defiant when they don’t get what they want

• Children who lack the ability or will to persist in challenging tasks and to see them through to completion

• Children who are more prone to act out on their aggressive and sexual impulses

• Children who lack motivation and seek for the easy way out

• Children who lack independence, ironically one of the characteristics Permissive Parenting is thought to foster in children

• Children who are selfish and demanding

• Children who later realize the results of and feel resent towards their parents for not helping them acquire the basic life-skills needed while in their childhood, and who in essence have to re-parent themselves as adults in many fundamental aspects of everyday living and social interactions

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Permissive Parenting; The desire to give our children the freedom to grow and learn, must be balanced with the responsibility needed to use that freedom in respectful and productive ways.

Parents must understand that catering to a child’s every want and desire actually deprives that child of the resistance needed to fully mature and grow into a healthy member of society.

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