The other common approach is to follow a child’s lead. This is the opposite of leading and comes from the goal to build a child’s autonomy and independence, to help them learn to make choices, and to build their self-esteem. Following children’s lead has become the most common parenting style in the past decade. 

 

A month ago I stood in line behind a young mother who leaned over a stroller to her less than 3-year old to ask what her child wanted, including if the child wanted whip cream or not on her hot chocolate. Nothing wrong with this good communication. But I thought back to my own childhood during a time when adults made these decisions. Rarely would a child be given so much choice and say. Especially under five years old! 

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What’s the Big Deal?

 

So why are parenting styles important? Well, researchers have shown time and again that how you parent does matter. Whether you lead your child or whether you follow your child through daily routines impacts what the child learns.

 

Let’s be honest though, parenting is not easy! A funny quote I read once by celebrity model Chrissy Teigen who married singer John Legend summed up the challenges of parents when she said “Why is it so hard to put someone who is already sleepy to sleep?!” 

 

The good news is that today there has been a lot of research on parenting and I’m going to share one big tip with you here. And I’ll tell you what happened when I imitated the young autistic boy in England. 

 

It turns out that if you only ever lead your child, taking control, and making most of their decisions for them, then you won’t help teach them how to think through important decisions or how to manage their autonomy.  But on the other hand, on the other end of parenting, if you always defer to your child, asking them what they want, giving them a choice in every aspect of their life, then you might not expose them enough to authority for them to learn to follow another person’s lead. They might struggle in school being told what to do by a teacher for example. 

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Big Parenting Tip

 

Now here’s the big tip: There’s a third parenting style that I call “participation” that you can sprinkle into whichever parenting approach you currently fit into. Participation is not leading and it’s not only following. It’s doing something together, as equal partners! A shared experience in which we both have autonomy but we are also both helping each other. 

 

Here’s an example: Ivery common for a pre-school teacher to watch a student play with lego or bricks and to make positive comments like “Wow, you’re building a tall tower!”. This is the passive follower, observer style. A more useful approach would be to sit beside the student and to either build something beside them or to ask to help build the tower together. 

 

Here’s another example, you could ask your child to do a chore like empty the dishwasher or to set the table, or you could do it together. And by doing the chore together, you gain so many more learning opportunities. By participating in activities with your child or student, you build better social rapport, you have more opportunities for communication and for conversation, you get way more chances to practice sharing, turn taking, collaboration, and cooperation.  

   

Even more than leadership and independence, these social skills are critical for success on teams, including if your little one ever becomes CEO of a company or President of a country, they have to know how to work with others. 

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Reciprocity

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In my autism training with families and my online parenting tool called ThriveGuide,I encourage the development of something called reciprocity. Reciprocity refers to interactions that are back-and-forth: I scratch your back, you scratch mine; I’ll do one part of the activity, and you do the other part; Let’s collaborate; Let’s cooperate; We both need each other to play this fun game. 

The classic playground see-saw is a perfect example of reciprocity. Try playing on the see-saw by yourself… It’s impossible! 

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Gravity requires that you have a friend to sit on the other end of the see-saw to launch you into the air – and then you do the same for them. Two people need each other to get a mutual benefit. This is what we call reciprocity!

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And it turns out that reciprocity is at the heart of communication. Speech therapists have shown that the part of our brain that develops social reciprocity is intimately connected to the language center where we learn how to have conversations. 

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Reciprocity is also at the heart of play, and at the heart of learning from others, and at the heart of being a good member of a classroom or a community. Once the brain understands reciprocity, it can also understand cause-and-effect, and will trigger more empathy. 

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So this week, I encourage you to do less following and less leading but instead to create fun games that you play with your child – not supervising their play, but rather participating with them. Build the game to a peak moment of smiling and laughter. Sincerely have FUN! Look for opportunities to be a useful and value-adding part of the game. It is from within this playful dynamic that the momentum of language learning will spring forth. 

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So what happened when I joined in with the autistic boy’s back and forth rocking in England? Well, it took about 5 minutes or more, but at one point, he glanced up at my face. Very briefly, but he saw my friendly eyes. I felt really comfortable just participating with his human metronome swaying and I showed that on my face. A moment later he looked again at my eyes but this time with a smile. We weren’t talking, I wasn't leading him in a lesson, but we were building rapport! And when I felt that we had enough rapport, enough reciprocity, that was when he was focused with me, and I started to add my own personal touch to the swaying movement. He watched me and he smiled again. And as we both participated together, the game evolved a bit. We watched each other and smiled and imitated each other a bit. The game was definitely better together! 

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I hope that you too have fun this week as you enjoy more moments participating with your child that will definitely be better together.