What's Wrong With Strict Parenting?
Most parents assume that strict parenting produces better-behaved kids. However, research studies on discipline 
consistently show that strict, or authoritarian, child-raising actually produces unhappy kids who feel bad about themselves and behave worse than other kids -- and therefore get punished more! Why?
1. Strict parenting gyps kids out of the opportunity to internalize self-discipline and responsibility. Harsh limits may temporarily control behavior, but they don’t help a child learn to self-regulate. Instead, harsh limits trigger a resistance to taking responsibility for themselves. There is no internal tool more valuable for kids than self-discipline, but it develops from loving limits. Limits that aren't empathic backfire.
2. Strict parenting -- limits without empathy -- is based on fear. It teaches kids to bully. Kids learn what they live and what you model, right? Well, if kids do what you want because they fear you, how is that different than bullying?
3. Kids raised with strict discipline have tendencies toward anger and depression. That's because authoritarian child raising makes it clear to kids that part of them is not acceptable, and that parents aren't there to help them learn to cope and manage those difficult feelings. They're left lonely, trying to sort out for themselves how to overcome their "lesser" impulses.
4. Kids raised with strict discipline learn that power is always right. Later in life, they won't question authority when they should.
5. Kids raised with strict discipline tend to be more rebellious. Studies show that children raised with a strict parenting style tend to be more angry and rebellious as teenagers and young adults. To see why, simply consider how this works for most adults. Virtually all of us were raised with some degree of harshness, and we chafe at control to that degree -- even when we're the ones imposing it! That means we end up with problems regulating ourselves. Sometimes this shows in anger and resentfulness at any perceived limit or criticism, or by over-reacting when we think someone is trying to tell us what to do. Sometimes it shows up in rebellion against the limits we impose on ourselves. For instance, we may harshly starve ourselves with a new diet and then rebel by binging. Many studies show that kids raised with strict parenting are more likely to become overweight.
6. Because kids raised strictly are less likely to take responsibility, they are more willing to follow the peer group, or to dodge responsibility by saying that they were only trying to “follow orders.”
7. Parents who relate punitively to their kids have to cut off their natural empathy for their children, which makes the relationship less satisfying to them. Parenting also becomes much harder for these parents because their kids lose interest in pleasing them and become much more difficult to manage. So strict parenting makes for unhappy parents.
The bottom line is that strictness does not work in creating better-behaved kids; in fact, it sabotages everything positive we do as parents and handicaps our kids in their efforts to develop emotional self-discipline.
So does Permissive parenting work? Nope. Click here for the reasons permissive parenting is bad for your child.
And what does work? Many studies show that "authoritative" parenting, a happy medium between permissive and strict, works best. More recently, research has teased out exactly what the important components of that happy medium are. It seems that kids thrive on Limits and Age-appropriate expectations, but only if they're set with empathy. Here's how.
