Positive Parenting: Between Ideal and Reality
Positive parenting has gained popularity in recent years as a compassionate and respectful approach to raising children. It advocates for active listening, empathy, and the reinforcement of positive behaviors while rejecting harsh punishments and authoritarian methods. Although this approach seems like an ideal to aspire to for many parents, it raises critical questions about its practical application and its actual effects on children and parents. Despite these criticisms, positive parenting also offers promising perspectives for rethinking the way we educate children.
The Promises of Positive Parenting
Positive parenting is based on the idea that children, like all human beings, need respect, recognition, and support to thrive fully. Instead of focusing on mistakes and undesirable behaviors, this approach encourages parents to value successes and reinforce positive attitudes. The goal is to create an environment where the child feels safe, loved, and capable of growing with confidence in themselves.
Active listening, empathy, and non-violent communication are at the core of this approach. By carefully listening to the needs and emotions of the child, parents can better understand the reasons behind certain behaviors and respond appropriately and constructively. This approach also aims to strengthen the parent-child bond, foster a climate of trust, and encourage autonomy and responsibility. For example, rather than punishing a child for a wrongful act, positive parenting encourages exploring the underlying causes of the act through dialogue and encouragement for personal development.
This approach is also founded on the belief that severe punishments can have long-term negative effects, such as anxiety, rebellion, or low self-esteem.
The Challenges of Implementation
Despite its principles of equality and positivity, positive parenting is not without challenges, which parents often face. One of the main challenges lies in its practical application. Indeed, applying the principles of positive parenting in daily life is not always easy. It requires great patience, constant emotional availability, and sometimes, a re-evaluation of the parents' own automatic responses and educational methods, often inherited from previous generations.
Moreover, positive parenting can sometimes be perceived as unrealistic or overly idealistic. With parents often pressed for time, juggling work, commuting, domestic responsibilities, and social life, it can be challenging to always remain calm and understanding when faced with a child in the middle of a tantrum. The risk is then to feel guilty when failing to apply these principles to the letter, creating a sense of failure in parents who genuinely aspire to do well.
Another significant concern relates to the potential impact on children. Many child development professionals and psychologists fear that the absence of strict discipline may lead to a lack of clear boundaries for the child or even make them incapable of handling frustrations and the demands of the outside world. Although these fears are often unfounded, they raise the question of finding the right balance between kindness and authority. It is inevitable to confront rules and learn to accept them and understand the consequences of transgressions in a society governed by laws and social justice, to learn how to live well together. Many draw a connection between positive parenting and the creation of "little kings," although scientific studies on the subject, which you can find in another article, do not support this.
Towards Realistic Positive Parenting
Despite these challenges, positive parenting offers interesting avenues for rethinking education. Rather than viewing this approach as a rigid set of rules, it can be constructive to adopt it as a flexible framework, adaptable to the realities and constraints of each family. As always, it is a matter of balance, as context cannot be ignored. Some children are more "independent," "rebellious," or "difficult" than others.
Realistic positive parenting does not seek perfection but rather the continuous improvement of family relationships. Parents are human, with their own limitations, and mistakes are an inherent part of the educational process. What matters is moving in the right direction, cultivating listening, empathy, and respect, while being forgiving of oneself and allowing room for not always meeting one's own expectations.
Moreover, this approach can be complemented by other educational methods, creating a balance between kindness and firmness, autonomy and structure. By combining the tools of positive parenting with an approach that does not neglect rules and boundaries, it is possible to create a family environment that is both warm and structured, where the child can thrive while learning to respect others and live in society.
