Authoritative Parenting: A gospel-centered way to raise your children

I always love general conference weekend (and not just because I love wearing pajamas for a whole day). This general conference, however, had some significant impact on me spiritually because it confirmed my intellectual knowledge.

As you may already know, I am currently a Human Development major at BYU in my senior year. This means that I have learned over and over again different principles of parenting & communicating with children of all ages. I have learned many wonderful things and consumed large amounts of research in many areas of parenting.

This conference weekend, I was able to draw parallels from what I have learned in my classes to many of the talks given. This confirmed to me that Heavenly Father really is all-knowing. The men giving the conference addresses didn’t get their information from a text book or from recent child psychology research. However, the research of the world did, in these cases, match up with the spiritual advice given by the Lord’s servants.

My favorite example of this was given in Larry Wilson’s talk during the Sunday afternoon session. He talked about the importance of parenting in righteous, not unrighteous, dominion and letting your children feel your confidence in their decision-making abilities. Everything he mentioned fell right along the lines of authoritative parenting.

Authoritative parenting is thought to be the best style of parenting. These are the type of parents who are warm towards their children and clearly show love, but also have specific rules and expectations for their children. Authoritative parenting focuses on teaching children to be autonomous as early as possible.

Larry Wilson’s example of his soccer playing daughter was the perfect example of this. In their daughter’s time of indecision, he and his wife did not just enforce the family rules and tell her she HAD to tell her soccer coach no to playing on Sunday. Instead, they stepped away, confident that she could make her own decisions, and she was able to learn more from that.

I know that I am not a parent, and I don’t understand how difficult it can be to watch your children make mistakes that, if they just would have listened to you, they would not have made. However, let me tell you what research says about children who are raised by authoritative parents. Children raised by authoritative parents:

1. Will be resilient in times of trial

2. Will do well in school

3. Will be confident in themselves

4. Will have strong problem solving skills and know how to communicate with others

5. Will be more independent and capable adults

6. Will be empathetic toward others

7. Will be curious and creative

8. Will cooperate well with others

9. Will know how to delay gratification and have more patience

10. Will be quick to forgive others

I don’t know about you, but this to me sounds like the kind of child that Heavenly Father would want parents to raise.

I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have been able to obtain at BYU, but I am even more grateful for the spiritual education that I receive by being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

If you want to know more about authoritative parenting, let me know. I can give you a list of resources.