Being a parent is one of the best feelings in a human’s life. As a parent, it takes a lot of patience, courage and skills to understand your child and shape their life.
From the beginning of the pregnancy when the near and dear ones come to know about the ‘Good News’, the would-be parents start getting advice on parenting. And this creates more anxiety and cautiousness towards parenting. Naturally, parents start understanding the toughness of the greatest job, parenting.
Most of the parents try to become ‘Super Dad’ or ‘Super Mom’. And to ensure this, they try out different parenting techniques to raise up their children in the best possible manner. In spite of this, some unprecedented and unwanted events or decisions create tensions in a family which ultimately affects the child’s life drastically. Undoubtedly, this kind of situation needs attention from experienced and professional counselors.
How do different Parenting techniques impact kids?
Parents unknowingly use different types of parenting techniques. The four most visible and impactful techniques are:
- Authoritarian
- Authoritative
- Permissive
- Neglectful
All of these have separate characteristics and effects on kids. Read more about various parenting styles: https://www.parentingforbrain.com/4-baumrind-parenting-styles/.
Whichever parenting technique is chosen, the style will have some kind of impact on the children. It is important to remember that parents most often do not use these styles consciously. When one child can show a good response to an authoritative style, the other child may not do so. So, there is no ‘One style fits all’.
Parenting styles or techniques can have a distinct impression on children’s psychological and physiological minds. Some aspects of the impact can be:
- Behaviour in youth and adulthood: Depending on the parents’ behavior towards them, children can get more active with others. They may show more kindness and respectful behavior towards others. But if parents don’t show respect towards their own kids or do not give attention to them, children may get more introverted or can not raise their voices when they want their rights as adults. When parents behave in a lenient way, children most often show impulsive behavior.
- Relationships: Parenting style can highly affect childrens’ thoughts towards relationships with their parents, relatives, friends, or simply anyone. If the parents show trust and honesty towards their kids, their kids also show and expect the same thing from others. In contrast, when parents try to show that their kid is not trustworthy, this creates a drastic impact on the child’s mind and they also grow suspicious towards others.
- Physical health: Many times it happens that parents start do not create any rule-based environment for their kids or there are too many rules, children go in a wrong way and get addicted to drugs/ alcohol. This affects their health.
What is Parent Counseling?
It is always rewarding to be a parent as parents get to watch their children grow from tiny toddlers to established elder people. From falling while walking and throwing tantrums while eating to going around the world – parents get to see it all. But being a parent is not a cakewalk. Parents have to go through a lot and figure out the way to give the best to their children and how to nurture their children.
Parent Counseling is one of the spectrums of Family counseling. This counseling service tries to give advice, suggestions, guidance, and tools to the parents seeking counseling based on their situations, family issues, and culture. Parent counseling takes care of the feeling of the parents and the effects that can be brought by the changes in the parenting style.
Parent counseling helps to understand the current parenting style of parents and bring back harmony among the family members.
Who should go for Parent Counseling?
It is not like if there is some unhealthy environment inside the family or some issue among the child and parent only then parents should go for counseling. Parents can go for counseling even when they just have become parents or maybe when they are pregnant for the first time and have no clue how to go with the flow.
Though every parent should go through counseling at least once, the parents who are going through the following should take parent counseling as an immediate necessity:
- If the communication among the parents and children has become harder than ever and mostly they are talking when it is a necessity
- Parents who are showing extreme emotional reactions like anger, sadness, fear, etc,
- If parents facing marital issues and preparing for separation or divorce
- Health issues, mainly related to mental health can stop parents to cater to their needs and showing adequate affection to their children. In such a situation, parents should go for counseling.
- When one parent is extremely abusive or violent towards the children, the other parent can surely go for counseling because otherwise, this can create fear, aggression, or depression in the children at home.
- If the parents/children going through any traumatic experience they can seek counseling. This may happen because of someone’s death or separation.
- If there seems to be a behavioral change of children at home or outside
- Substance abuse problems can cause serious issues in the family. Whether parents substance use or children’s both have a severe impact on children’s minds.
How does Parent counseling aid Parents and their Kids?
It is always better to take advice and guidance from a professional consultant than some over-friendly neighbors. Parent counseling is beneficial for parents and children.
- To understand your parenting style: The first thing that a counselor can assist you with is identifying your parenting style and letting you know the effects of such style on your children. They can guide you to know whether it is suitable for your child or not.
- To be closer to your child: As a parent, you already know how the children go through during their youth or post-teen years. You have gone through those phases. If you are not close to your child, they will mostly ignore you and hardly tell you what they are going through. If you are close, then also they will take time to open up. A counselor can help you with proper guidance on how to get access to your child’s lie, how to start a conversation with them on such crucial topics.
- To gain trust and confidence: It is really important that family members have each others’ trust and they have a bond that gives them confidence in tough times. But because of several issues or lack of communication merely this trust remains there. So, here a counselor can come to the rescue and by sharing your thoughts with the counselor, the counselor can better understand you and give you proper advice.
- To get your child on the right path: It is very vital to get back your child from the wrong behavior. You may have seen your child not doing classes properly or there are increasing complaints from his/her school, this can be symptoms of your kids’ unruly behavior. Upon discussing this with a counsellor, you can better understand what is the root cause of your kids’ behavior and try to correct their disturbed minds or behavior.
- To better understand yourself and correct your behavior: Generally, parents believe it is the children’s fault always. But that might not be true. It can be parents themselves. As humans parents can also do mistakes that do not come to their minds. Maintaining neutrality and objectivity, a counselor can suggest your behavioral problems.
- To learn life skills: Through parent counseling, parents can learn several important life skills such as stress management, empathy, better communication skills which give them more confidence and better opportunity to reinforce positive values in the family and deal with the issues afterward.
When parents are going to counselors they think they have not been ‘Good’ parents or they have failed as parents. This notion needs to be eliminated from the mind and understand the value of counseling. ( Read more: https://www.docdoc.com/medical-information/procedures/parenting-counseling )
How does India look at Parent Counseling?
In India, parents are not so bothered about parent counseling. They have a belief that whatever they do or decide for their children is correct and they do that for their children’s better future. Although this is true, they often forget that they are also humans and can be at fault.
Most of them shy off from counseling because that might prove to society that they are ‘Bad’ at parenting or ‘Failed as parents’. They will keep on having moved with the same family and mental issues but will never talk about it with some professionals. Rather they talk to relatives or parents who keep them away from counseling and never let them engage in such fruitful activity, Parent counseling.
To solve this issue, parents in India need to understand that there are changes in family culture, conflicts, needs of children, their aspirations and start broadening their minds putting off the age-old traditional view of parent counseling. They should be more aware of parent counseling and its benefits.
Conclusion
Parenting is like another role that we take up, such as taking a new role in the organization. Before taking up any role or after newly joining an organization, we get training. Parent counseling is that kind of training to make you better able to develop your parenting skills. Needless to say, parents should not shy away from this great solution to their parenting issues.
