Trustful parenting
Trustful parenting is the style that most clearly allows the self-educative instincts to blossom. Trustful parents trust their children to play and explore on their own, to make their own decisions, to take risks, and use natural consequences to help children learn from their own mistakes. Trustful parents do not measure or try to direct their children’s development, because they trust children to do so on their own.
Trustful parents are not negligent parents. They provide not just freedom, but also the sustenance, love, respect, moral examples, and environmental conditions required for healthy development. They support, rather than try to direct, children’s development, by helping children achieve their own goals when such help is requested.
This parenting style predominated through the long stretch of human history when we were hunter-gatherers. Trustful parenting sends messages to children that were consistent with the needs of children in hunter-gatherer bands, but are also consistent with the real needs of children today: You are competent. You have eyes and a brain and can figure things out. You know your own abilities and limitations. Through play and exploration you will learn what you need to know. Your needs are valued. Your opinions count. You are responsible for your own mistakes and can be trusted to learn from them. Social life is not the pitting of will against will, but the helping of one another so that all can have what they need and most desire. We are with you, not against you.
Hunter-gatherers who grew up this way usually became highly competent, cooperative, nondomineering, cheerful, valued members of their society. They contributed to their bands not because they felt forced to, but because they wanted to, and they did so with a playful spirit. Trustful parents today understand that today’s successful adults, likewise, are assertive and independent and that children today should be so trained—“trained” not by directing them, but by allowing them to guide their own development and make their own discoveries about the world.
References
- Gray, Peter. (2013). Free to Learn Chapter 10. TRUSTFUL PARENTING IN OUR MODERN WORLD (p. 294). New York, NY: Basic Books.
Metadata
Type:🔵 Tags: Psychology / Developmental Psychology Status:☀️