Parenting has become a smorgasbord of confusion. Reading through myriads parenting advice, you might find yourself confused about which parenting style proves most effective: gentle parenting, attachment parenting, or mindful parenting.  You might fly into the role of a helicopter parent or wander into the realm of free-range parenting. In search of the perfect parenting style, you might get lost in the jungle of life and find yourself a “tiger parent” or an “elephant parent.” (Although it has been around for a while, I only recently learned of “elephant parenting.”) Actually, each style has its strengths and potential weaknesses. Perhaps we can summarize some of the strengths that these parenting styles offers and you can utilize these strengths in your own journey as a parent.

• Effective parenting involves developing a warm, loving relationship with your child. This relationship forms the basis of a safe haven for your child. It helps them feel secure and allows them to turn to you for safety and comfort in times of struggle and distress. Warm, loving parents allow their children to express a full range of emotions and teach them appropriate ways to do so. They even encourage their children to express their emotions, validating those emotions, helping them to label those emotions, and exploring the values that underly those emotions. Warm parents also respond to their children. They listen and respond. They recognize needs as they arise and respond to those needs. Children develop a healthy sense of safety and security when their parents are present in a warm, loving manner. This sense of safety and security actually allows them to explore the world around them more freely.
• Effective parents also establish healthy, age-appropriate boundaries. Parents establish boundaries to protect their children, to keep them safe. It is important to note, however, that healthy boundaries do not flow from fear but from love. They do provide a level of safety for our children, but more importantly, they open the way for our children to experience themselves and the world around them in a safe manner. Healthy boundaries provide children the support and freedom they need to grow.
• Effective parents encourage their children to explore world (both internal and external) from the safe haven of loving relationships. They encourage children to explore interests. They provide opportunities for age-appropriate independent exploration of themselves and the world. At the same time, parents encourage a mindset that recognizes effort as the ingredient of progress and growth, and “failures” as information to help them learn.

Ironically, all the parenting styles mentioned above contain at least 2 of these ingredients if not all three. They may prioritize each ingredient differently, but they still practice each of them. Rather than getting overwhelmed and lost in the smorgasbord of parenting styles, implement the three ingredients above and watch your children blossom.