The Role of Parenting in Childhood Development (Research Paper Sample)

Childhood Development
Name
Institution
The Role of Parenting in Childhood Development
All children go through a serious of developmental stages (infants, toddlers, preschoolers, middle childhood, young teens, teenagers and adolescents) from infants to adults. The development of such aspects as physical, emotional and social occurs during the developmental stages (McCartney & Phillips, 2004). The role of parenting takes the first place in childhood development because parents are those people who should provide support and encouragement. Moreover, they should remain the best teachers throughout life. The primary role of parents is to expose a child to appropriate challenges in order to develop necessary abilities and skills.
Lots of parents believe that parenting should go naturally and that parent education programs are unnecessary. These parents often claim that their parents didn’t resort to any parent education and brought up smart children. However, in fact, parenting is a very complicated process that requires a prior preparation. In other words, successful parenting, perhaps is the most challenging and rewarding task on the planet. Some parents are not able to develop their children into successful adults due to the lack of knowledge or experience. Therefore, all parents should know all aspects of child development in order to better understand all complexities and challenges of parenting and be able to handle with them. In this case, parenting classes or workshops are useful since they can help to receive valuable advices on child development and effective parenting techniques.
A few people would start a complicated task without some training or education. For example, similar to parenting, building a house is considered to be a complex task. It requires substantial knowledge. Thus, to start building a house without the necessary knowledge is not a wise idea, as well as to start raising children without learning the essentials of parenting. Acquiring the necessary knowledge about child development and parenting styles and techniques will increase the chances of successful parenting. According to statistics, the majority of Americans have a low-level knowledge of typical developmental stages. Parents who know the basics of normal child development and understand the fundamental elements of parenting can choose appropriate behavior-modification techniques for particular age groups and apply them in practice. These parents do not make such gross mistakes as the majority of those who have not been educated on parenting because they understood the essential role of parenting in childhood development. For example, experienced parents know that blaming a child for misbehavior cannot help to stop it.
Preschoolers
A child between 2-5 years is called preschooler (Neaum, 2010). The child involves from an awkward toddler into a curious explorer during preschool years. This developmental stage is also called the Wander Years. Each child gains new experience at own pace. Some children go ahead in their development, and others may lag behind. Learning what is typical for children of a certain age can help parents to raise their kids successfully and early reveal deviations. Being a parent of a preschooler is both exhausting and exhilarating. All parents feel mixed emotions. Learning effective parenting techniques is an important part of improving parenting skills. The Wander Years is the time when children learn how to control emotions, mind and body and how to engage with the world. Therefore, parents should take into account emotional, cognitive, physical and social aspects of child development in order to lay a fertile foundation for the entire childhood.
Parenting Styles
Although each parent has own parenting techniques, psychologists have distinguished three major parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian and permissive (McCartney & Phillips, 2004). Most experts claim that authoritative parenting works best both for children and parents. Collaboration is the basis of this parenting style. Parents negotiate problems with their children and try to find a solution together. In other words, they encourage two-way communication. Authoritative parents raise self-confident children who able to respect others and demonstrate a high level of self-control. Furthermore, kids raised by authoritative parents are less rebellious and more goal-oriented than those raised in other parenting styles. An essential element of the authoritarian style is an immediate obedience. Authoritarian parents have a strict code of conduct. They enforce their rules through yelling and spanking. Children have no opportunity to speak their mind. As a result, kids obey because of fear. These children possess a range of self-esteem-related problems. Permissive style does not stipulate a lot of rules. Parents allow their children almost all they want. These children become aggressive, impulsive and self-indulgent.
Parenting Techniques
Kids between 2-5 years only start acquiring their habits. It depends on the parents whether their children become naughty or turn into organized and self-disciplined individuals. Responsible parents resort to a variety of parenting techniques. For example, parents who adopt an everyday schedule with regular bedtime and meals to their preschoolers know that this will...