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Are we raising our children right? Should they be strict with them? What to do with your child and do you need to put him to bed early if you yourself are a “night owl”? We have selected a few studies useful for parents.
Moms and dads who want to know if they are raising their children right are drowning in a stream of literature written by both professional educators and generalist demagogues. The common misfortune of most of these books is their reliance on Old Testament principles of pedagogy rather than modern research. We have selected 5 scientific publications in which psychologists confirm or, on the contrary, refute some common ideas about raising children.
1. Being a good parent is good for you.
Study done in 2013 year1, showed that parents who devote a lot of time to children, love them and often talk to them, feel much happier than chimera mothers and scoundrel fathers who live for their own pleasure and remember the child in commercial breaks between TV shows.
It is curious that this barrel of happiness that parents receive with the birth of their beloved child is truly bottomless: even those parents who cause ridicule of others by constantly caring for their children, for example, by wanting to call them ten times a day, are actually not so funny. . They feel the pleasure of life more acutely than parents who are more moderate in their manifestations of love.
“The more care and attention people give to others, the more happiness they experience and the more meaning they see in life,” say the authors of the study, social psychologists. “From this point of view, the more parents invest in the well-being of their children and the more “child-centric” they are, the more happiness they get.”
2. Strict parents harm their child
Even in the United States, where child abuse can easily become the subject of a lawsuit, about 90% of parents have at least once “built” a child with scolding, ridicule, or even violence. Meanwhile, strict discipline is not good for children.
Often parents believe that the child will forgive them when they grow up and understand that they were harsh out of love for him, but this is not so.
A study in which 967 American families took part2showed that harsh discipline can bring deplorable results in the future. If you yell at a 13-year-old to do his homework or stop hanging out, he might listen to you. However, in the coming years, he is much more likely to turn into a rebel than those of his peers whose parents do not strive to establish iron discipline.
“The idea that harsh discipline will not affect the future life of the child is wrong. Often parents believe that the child will forgive them when they grow up and understand that they were harsh out of love for him. However, in reality, no amount of parental love saves children’s behavior from these consequences of verbal discipline, ”conclude the authors of the study.
3. The daily routine affects the mental development of the child
But sending a child to bed on time, even if he doesn’t feel like sleeping at all, is not at all a whim of a harsh parent, but a vital necessity: the correct schedule affects the normal development of the child’s brain.
Psychologists studied 11 children aged 3 to 7 years and found the effect of the daily regimen on the formation of cognitive functions of the brain3. Those children who were allowed to jump around the room after midnight at age 3 tend to have markedly poorer reading, arithmetic, and even basic movement skills. This pattern was observed regardless of the sex of the child.
The researchers note that the age of three is especially critical for the proper development of the brain, and they advise accustoming the child to a certain daily routine as early as possible.
4. Singing along with your child is the best way to connect.
Children love it when moms and dads sing along with them. As psychologists have found, this is much more than just pleasant fun – boys and girls whose parents love this singing feel happier and feel a closer connection with their parents than children of parents who do not.4. In addition, choral singing helps to accustom the child to homework.
It is worth remembering that rhythmic collective actions – singing, dancing, and the like – underlie many rituals aimed at bringing a group of people together. Such rites are found not only among peoples at the prehistoric stage of development, but also in modern societies – let us recall the choral performance of the hymn, adopted at solemn events.
5. By removing the father from the child, the mother harms her psyche
After interviewing 180 women who have children under 5 years old, psychologists found that the presence of depression is closely related to their attitude to the participation of their husband in the process of raising a child.5.
Women who try to instill in their children the idea of “only mommy will take care of you” experience depression more often.
Mothers who realized that fathers are equally full-fledged participants in the upbringing process and the child should obey and love them no less than his mother, as a rule, did not suffer from depression and designated their level of stress as minimal. But those women who tried to instill in their children the idea “only mommy will take care of you” experienced depression much more often.
The desire to sacrifice for the sake of a child was often associated with this idea: women subconsciously forbade themselves to live their own lives and impoverished their relationship with their spouse, which destroyed the harmony in their families and caused them an increased level of stress. Taking care of a child, as we said above, is good not only for him, but also for your psyche. However, if you begin to perceive care as a sacrifice on your part, the matter will not end well.
1 C. Ashton-James, K. Kushlev, E. Dunn «Parents Reap What They Sow Child-Centrism and Parental Well-Being». Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2013.
2 M. Wang, S. Kenny «Longitudinal Links Between Fathers’ and Mothers’ Harsh Verbal Discipline and Adolescents’ Conduct Problems and Depressive Symptoms». Child Development, 2014.
3 Y. Kelly, J. Kelly, A. Sacker «Time for bed: associations with cognitive performance in 7-year-old children: a longitudinal population-based study». Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 2013.
4 A. Galovan et al. «Father Involvement, Father–Child Relationship Quality, and Satisfaction With Family Work». Journal of Family Issues, 2014.
5 K. Rizzo, H. Schiffrin, M. Liss «Insight into the Parenthood Paradox: Mental Health Outcomes of Intensive Mothering». Journal of Child and Family Studies, 2013.