What Kind of Parent Are You?

If you’ve ever read Barbara Coloroso’s books you’re familiar with what she calls “back- bone families, jelly-fish families and brick-wall families.”

Brick-wall families raise children to basically do as they say and not as they do. They’re rigid in their thinking and place heavy demands on their children. There is a high expectation to do well in whatever activity they undertake. Children raised in a brick-wall family comply out of fear. Parents use a lot of idle threats and bribes.

She quotes from John Broadshaw’s book: “Homecoming”

“Children need parents who model self-discipline rather than preach it. They learn from what their parents actually do; not from what they say they do…When parents rigidly discipline (and don’t walk what they talk), the child becomes overdisciplined. The overdisciplined child is rigid, obsessive, overly controlled and obedient, people pleasing, and ravished with shame and guilt.”

A jelly-fish style of parenting is one where consistency is lacking, both in terms of love and care as well as discipline. Children raised in an environment with little or no structure become insecure and feel that the world is unpredictable and ungiving. Barbara says that jelly-fish parents often come from a brick-wall family and resolve never to raise their children the same way. The other kind of jelly-fish parent comes from a family where they were either physically or psychologically abandoned.

Back-bone families don’t demand respect but rather demonstrate and teach it. They don’t come from any particular background, race or religion. Children learn that they can question authority that seems unfair and their thoughts, feelings and ideas are listened to and considered. Consequences for undesirable behavior are either natural or logical. Affection is giving freely and mistakes and seen as tools for learning.

What kind of parent are you?