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Bullying: How an ‘authoritative’ parenting style can help

April 19, 2013 By Anne Leave a Comment

When my friend and colleague Jason Brand, a Berkeley, Calif.-based family therapist, points an article out to me, I pay attention. He and I were discussing resilience as a protective factor in children’s use of social media, and Jason pointed out an article in Scientific American by psychologist Abigail Baird at Vassar College. She wrote it in 2010, when emotions around the tragic case of Massachusetts high school student Phoebe Prince’s suicide were running high, so I needed to get past the first part to see what Jason found useful, and – whether or not you’re a psychologist – I think you will find this informative too. He zoomed in on what fosters in kids the resilience that reduces the impacts that bullying and cyberbullying can have on them: “authoritative parenting.”

Pointing to a study in the Journal of Youth & Adolescence that looked at what connections teens around age 15 made between bullying and self-harm or suicide, Baird writes, “The authors found that ‘authoritative parents’ … can make a difference.

“Authoritative parents are good listeners,” she continues. “They are able to provide comfort and guidance when their children encounter stress, and help them forge appropriate responses. Adolescents of authoritative parents feel respected by their parents, and in turn respect the limits set on them. Their parents are involved in their lives to the extent that they know who their friends are and where they hang out, but are not overly enmeshed in the adolescent’s life [this includes the digital/online part]. Among the participants in this study, this parenting style significantly reduced the negative impact of bullying,” which we know from the research includes cyberbullying.

Baird points out another key part of resilience: self-control. Young people who have learned how to give themselves time to control their emotions and reactions rather than act on impulse are less affected by the meanness or bullying of others (please see the article for more on that).

If parents wonder what all this looks like “on the ground,” at home, in everyday life, among the Comments below Baird’s piece, a self-professed authoritative parent took the time to describe her experience with “a gifted child who was painfully shy when he was younger. He got bullied pretty badly at a few points, and together we solved the problems as they arose.” See that comment for how they did that.

Related links

  • Parents who subscribe to the authoritative style might consider how it resonates with “positive parenting.” If you’re interested, see this: “What Is Positive Parenting? A Look at the Research and Benefits” at PositivePsychology.com. Its “underlying assumption…is that ‘all children are born good, are altruistic and desire to do the right thing’,” writer Heather Lonczak quotes parenting consultant Deborah Godfrey as saying. I agree!
  • “All About Parenting and Parenting Styles” at TheBabbleOut.com
  • More on the authoritative style of parenting in About.com
  • “Cyberbullying & peer victimization: Clearer terms, better communication”
  • “More signs that what works offline works online too”
  • “Cyberbullying: What I’ve learned so far”
  • “Of fearless parenting in this unmapped landscape”
  • “Study on long-neglected factor in Net safety: Resilience”
  • “Does tracking our kids’ every move make them safer?”
  • “Private vs. public parenting (& a new Pew study)”
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Filed Under: bullying, cyberbullying, Parenting, Risk & Safety Tagged With: authoritative parenting, bullying, Parenting, parenting styles, resilience, self-control

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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