12.3: Finding the Balance between Control and Freedom

With all of this variety and diversity of development and growth, how can parents plan for and properly perform their parenting roles? The answer is to find a handful of parenting paradigms and approaches that will work with children. There are a few core approaches that originate from the classical and contemporary parenting scientists. Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) shows one useful model created from many research studies using a number of parenting paradigms. This model leads to an ideal outcome of having raised children who are independent co-adults.

Many families have a tradition of just surviving the traumas, addictions, heartaches, and tragedies that preceded them in their upbringing. The base of this model presents the two strategies of first, urging individuation and second, avoiding enmeshment with your children. Individuated children can distinguish between the consequences of their own behaviors and consequences of others.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\). An Ideal Parenting Approach for the First 20 Years of Life

An individuated child develops his or her own taste in music, food, politics, etc. This child sees their family as one among many social groups they belong to (albeit one of the more significant ones). An example would be an individuated child fully realizing that the a drugaddicted brother has made his own choices and must live with them and that brother’s behavior may be embarrassing at times, but does not reflect the nature of the rest of the family members. Individuated children have also developed enough independence to strike out on their own and assume their own adult roles.

It is very wise to avoid relationship patterns of enmeshment. Enmeshment between parents and children occurs when they weave their identities so tightly around one another that it renders them both incapable of functioning independently. Many parents create this pattern in their relationship when they assume that their child is an extension of themselves. Enmeshed parent-child relationships often have very weak boundaries and unhealthy interdependence that lingers into adulthood. Think of spaghetti noodles over-boiled to the point that they form one large gooey mass of paste. They would be considered enmeshed or entangled with one another.

Parents who allow their children to make most of their own choices give their children opportunities for growth and development which contribute to high individuation and low enmeshment. Examples might include "Which t-shirt do you want to wear for school today?" "What would you like to drink with your dinner?" Or, "let's sit down together and set some guidelines for how to be safe on a date." Children of all ages respond well to parental attempts to promote independence, individuation, and selfsufficiency. They may not understand it while young, but parents who allow the individuality of their children to develop and who avoid seeing and treating their children as simply extensions of themselves, empower their children to move out on their own and accept adult roles.

Many studies have focused on how much support and how much control children should be given by their parents. Generally speaking, parents with high levels of support for children and their interests will find the most favorable outcomes. If parents want their children to grow up healthy, accomplish individual goals, become a contributing member of society and avoid delinquency, then supporting those children in as many ways as possible is a good idea.

However support alone is not enough; children need guidance and control. They need their parents to set healthy limits and enforce consequences when these limits are exceeded. They need parents involved in their lives enough to be very specific about limitations and rules. They need parents to be in charge. There is a generational effect that relates to this support and control approach.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\) shows another issue related to high support and moderate control-caring for the next generation. Many parents grew up under circumstances limited by emotional, financial, or unmet social needs. Where abuse and addiction were involved they too often grew up as caregivers rather than dependent children. When this happens, the children grow into adulthood with childhood deficiencies. \({ }^4\)

Thus as adults these individuals enter the ranks of parenthood looking to have their childhood needs be met by their children. This can create a parenting legacy where the children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren are nurturers and caregivers to their parents, grandparents, and even great grandparents (look at the red arrows in Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)). Even if a parent was not raised in a highly supportive and moderately controlling home and even if he or she has unmet childhood needs, the essential task at hand is to provide for and nurture their own children and grandchildren (see blue arrows in Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)).

The challenge is to break the chain of counter-caregiving. Parents who seek professional counseling often learn that unmet childhood needs are like water, long-passed under the bridge, which cannot ever truly be recaptured; however, their approach to filling their children's needs and supporting and controlling in a healthy manner can actually provide some healing for the parent and ultimately reverse the unhealthy pattern or tradition.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\). The Healthy Way To Nurture Down the Generational Lines: Fill the Cups of Your Children and Their Children

---

Footnotes

4. see Abraham Maslow's Pyramid of Hierarchy of Needs