Clinton – parenting styles and brain development

One of the beauties of the science of early childhood is really offering people a solid knowledge base of how the brain works, what are effective practices.  So what we know from the science is that the most effective parents are not the jellyfish parent who says “oh, don’t do that, don’t do that, don’t do that – oh, ok go ahead and do it.”  “Don’t put the cat in the microwave, ok honey, ok?”  So there’s lots and lots of love but there isn’t a whole lot of structure.  The other kind of family that’s worrisome and that’s because of longitudinal data that shows that families who are predominantly ‘brick wall’ “Do it now because I said so.”  “You just wait until your dad comes home.” Those brick wall, cold, coercive parents we know that doesn’t work well in the long-term.  That the best outcomes for kids are the backbone parents who are more authoritative.  So they’re more democratic. They have lots of love but very, very clear expectations and high expectations.   

So what’s the difference in the brain of children who experience that kind of parenting.   And for me that’s linked in to the stress system that when you have a parent who is brick wall, punish it, punish you, do it this way – what that generates in the brain is mistrust. What that generates in the brain is anger. What it does is it makes your limbic system, your emotional system be the one that’s taking the most charge.  Whereas, when you’re authoritative, when you’re a backbone, then you are connecting with the child first of all, you really want to go to that dance, but you know our family don’t really approve of eight-year-olds dressing like that and going to that kind of a thing.  It really makes you angry, I know, I know.  So what that is doing is connecting to the thinking part of the brain, making the connection and building the pathways between the limbic, emotional part of the brain but the thinking planning, organizing part of the brain.  So that being connected makes all the difference in the world.