Practices

This article uses citations that link to broken or outdated sources. Please improve the article or discuss this issue on the talk page. Help on using footnotes is available. (April 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

A parenting practice is a specific behavior that a parent uses in raising a child. For example, many parents read aloud to their offspring in the hopes of supporting their linguistic and intellectual development. In cultures with strong oral traditions, such as Indigenous American communities, storytelling is an important parenting practice for children.

Parenting practices reflect the cultural understanding of children. Parents in individualistic countries like Germany spend more time engaged in face-to-face interaction with babies and more time talking to the baby about the baby. Parents in more communal cultures, such as West African cultures, spend more time talking to the baby about other people, and more time with the baby facing outwards, so that the baby sees what the mother sees.

Skillsedit

Parenting skills assist parents in leading children into healthy adulthood, influencing their development, and maintaining their negative and positive behaviors. The cognitive potential, social skills, and behavioral functioning a child acquires during the early years are fundamentally dependent on the quality of their interactions with their parents.citation needed

Canadian Council on Learning says that children benefit (avoid poor developmental outcomes) when their parents:

1. Communicate truthfully about events, because authenticity from parents who explain and help their children understand what happens and how they are involved;
2. Maintain consistency: Parents that institute regular routines see benefits in their children's behavioral patterns;
3. Utilize resources available to them, reaching out into the community and building a supportive social network;
4. Take an interest in their child's educational and early developmental needs (e.g. Play that enhances socialization, autonomy, cohesion, calmness and trust.); and
5. Keep open lines of communication about what their child is seeing, learning, and doing, and how these things are affecting them.

Parenting skills are widely thought to be naturally present in parents; however, there is substantial evidence to the contrary. Those who come from a negative or vulnerable childhood environment frequently (often unintentionally) mimic their parents' behavior during interactions with their own children. Parents with inadequate understanding of developmental milestones may also demonstrate problematic parenting. Parenting practices are of particular importance during marital transitions like separation, divorce and remarriage; if children fail to adequately adjust to these changes, they are at risk of negative outcomes (e.g. increased rule-breaking behavior, problems with peer relationships, and increased emotional difficulties).

Research classifies competence and skills required in parenting as follows:

• Parent-child relationship skills: quality time spent, positive communications and delighted show of affection.
• Encouraging desirable behavior: praise and encouragement, nonverbal attention, facilitating engaging activities.
• Teaching skills and behaviors: being a good example, incidental teaching, benevolent communication of the skill with role playing and other methods, communicating logical incentives and consequences.
• Managing misbehavior: establishing firm ground rules and limits, directing discussion, providing clear and calm instructions, communicating and enforcing appropriate consequences, using restrictive tactics like quiet time and time out with an authoritative stance rather than an authoritarian one.
• Anticipating and planning: advanced planning and preparation for readying the child for challenges, finding out engaging and age-appropriate developmental activities, preparing token economy for self-management practice with guidance, holding follow-up discussions, identifying possible negative developmental trajectories.
• Self-regulation skills: monitoring behaviors (own and children's), setting developmentally appropriate goals, evaluating strengths and weaknesses and setting practice tasks, monitoring and preventing internalizing and externalizing behaviors.
• Mood and coping skills: reframing and discouraging unhelpful thoughts (diversions, goal orientation and mindfulness), stress and tension management (own and children's), developing personal coping statements and plans for high-risk situations, building mutual respect and consideration between members of the family through collaborative activities and rituals.
• Partner support skills: improving personal communication, giving and receiving constructive feedback and support, avoiding negative family interaction styles, supporting and finding hope in problems for adaptation, leading collaborative problem solving, promoting relationship happiness and cordiality.

Consistency is considered the “backbone” of positive parenting skills and “overprotection” the weakness.

Parent trainingedit

Parent psycho-social health can have a significant impact on the parent-child relationship. Group-based parent training and education programs have proven to be effective at improving short-term psycho-social well-being for parents.

Cultural valuesedit

Parents around the world want what they believe is best for their children. However, parents in different cultures have different ideas of what is best. For example, parents in hunter–gatherer societies or those who survive through subsistence agriculture are likely to promote practical survival skills from a young age. Many such cultures begin teaching children to use sharp tools, including knives, before their first birthdays. In some Indigenous American communities, child work provides children the opportunity to absorb cultural values of collaborative participation and prosocial behavior through observation and activity alongside adults. These communities value respect, participation, and non-interference, the Cherokee principle of respecting autonomy by withholding unsolicited advice. Indigenous American parents also try to encourage curiosity in their children via a permissive parenting style that enables the child to explore and learn through observation of the world.

Differences in cultural values cause parents to interpret the same behaviors in different ways. For instance, European American prize intellectual acuity, especially in a narrow "book learning" sense, and believe that asking questions is a sign of intelligence. Italian parents value social and emotional competence, and believe that inquisitiveness demonstrates good interpersonal skills. Dutch parents, however, value independence, long attention spans, and predictability; in their eyes asking questions is a negative behavior, signifying a lack of independence.

Even so, parents around the world share certain pro-social behavioral goals for their children. Hispanic parents value respect and emphasize putting family above the individual. Parents in East Asia prize order in the household above all else. In some cases, this gives rise to high levels of psychological control and even manipulation on the part of the head of household. The Kipsigis people of Kenya value children who are not only smart, but who wield that intelligence in a responsible and helpful way—a behavior they call ng/om. Other cultures, such as Sweden and Spain, value sociable and happiness as well.

Indigenous American culturesedit

It is common for parents in many Indigenous American communities to use different tools in parenting such as storytelling —like myths— consejos (Spanish for "advice"), educational teasing, nonverbal communication, and observational learning to teach their children important values and life lessons.

Storytelling is a way for Indigenous American children to learn about their identity, community, and cultural history. Indigenous myths and folklore often personify animals and objects, reaffirming the belief that everything possesses a soul and deserves respect. These stories also help preserve language and are used to reflect certain values or cultural histories.

The consejo is a narrative form of advice-giving. Rather than directly telling the child what to do in a particular situation, the parent might instead tell a story about a similar situation. The main character in the story is intended to help the child see what the implications of their decision may be, without directly making the decision for them. This teaches the child to be decisive and independent, while still providing some guidance.

The playful form of teasing is a parenting method used in some Indigenous American communities to keep children out of danger and guide their behavior. This parenting strategy utilizes stories, fabrications, or empty threats to guide children in making safe, intelligent decisions. For example, a parent may tell a child that there is a monster that jumps on children's backs if they walk alone at night. This explanation can help keep the child safe because instilling that fear creates greater awareness and lessens the likelihood that they will wander alone into trouble.

In Navajo families, a child's development is partly focused on the importance of "respect" for all things. "Respect" consists of recognizing the significance of one's relationship with other things and people in the world. Children largely learn about this concept via nonverbal communication between parents and other family members. For example, children are initiated at an early age into the practice of an early morning run under any weather conditions. On this run, the community uses humor and laughter with each other, without directly including the child—who may not wish to get up early and run—to encourage the child to participate and become an active member of the community. Parents also promote participation in the morning runs by placing their child in the snow and having them stay longer if they protest.

Indigenous American parents often incorporate children into everyday life, including adult activities, allowing the child to learn through observation. This practice is known as LOPI, Learning by Observing and Pitching In, where children are integrated into all types of mature daily activities and encouraged to observe and contribute in the community. This inclusion as a parenting tool promotes both community participation and learning.

One notable example appears in some Mayan communities: young girls are not permitted around the hearth for an extended period of time, since corn is sacred. Although this is an exception to their cultural preference for incorporating children into activities, including cooking, it is a strong example of observational learning. Mayan girls can only watch their mothers making tortillas for a few minutes at a time, but the sacredness of the activity captures their interest. They will then go and practice the movements their mother used on other objects, such as kneading thin pieces of plastic like a tortilla. From this practice, when a girl comes of age, she is able to sit down and make tortillas without having ever received any explicit verbal instruction.

Immigrants in the United States: Ethnic-Racial Socializationedit

Due to the increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States, ethnic-racial socialization research has been gained attention. Parental ethnic-racial socialization is a way of passing down cultural resources to support children of color's psychosocial wellness. The goals of ethnic-racial socialization are: to pass on a positive view of one's ethnic group and to help children cope with racism. Through a meta-analysis of published research on ethnic-racial socialization, ethnic-racial socialization positively affects psychosocial well-being. This meta-analytic review focuses on research relevant to four indicators of psychosocial skills and how they are influenced by developmental stage, race and ethnicity, research designs, and the differences between parent and child self-reports. The dimensions of ethnic-racial socialization that are considered when looking for correlations with psychosocial skills are: cultural socialization, preparation for bias, promotion of mistrust and egalitarianism.

Ethnic-racial socialization dimensions are defined as follows: cultural socialization is the process of passing down cultural customs, preparation for bias ranges from positive or negative reactions to racism and discrimination, promotion of mistrust conditions synergy when dealing with other races and egalitarianism puts similarities between races first. Psychosocial competencies are defined as follows: self-perceptions involve perceived beliefs of academic and social capabilities, interpersonal relationships deal with the quality of relationships, externalizing behaviors deal with observable troublesome behavior and internalizing behavior deals with emotional intelligence and regulation. The multiple ways that these domains and competencies interact have shown small correlations between ethnic-racial socialization and psychosocial wellness, but this parenting practice remains in need of further research.

This meta-analysis showed that developmental stages affect how ethnic-racial socialization was perceived by children. Cultural socialization practices appears to affect children similarly across developmental stages with the exception of preparation for bias and promotion of mistrust which are encouraged for older aged children. Existing research shows ethnic-racial socialization serves African Americans positively against discrimination. Cross-sectional studies were predicted to have greater effect sizes because correlations are inflated in these kind of studies. Parental reports of the influence of ethnic-racial socialization are influenced by “intentions,” so child reports tend to be more accurate.

Amongst other conclusions derived from this meta-analysis, cultural socialization and self-perceptions had a small positive correlation, cultural socialization and promotion of mistrust had a small negative correlation and interpersonal relationships had a positive relationship with cultural socialization and preparation for bias. In regard to developmental stages, ethnic-racial socialization had a small but positive correlation with self-perceptions during childhood and early adolescence. Based on study designs, there were no significant differences, meaning that cross-sectional studies and longitudinal studies both showed small positive correlations between ethnic-racial socialization and self-perceptions. Reporter differences between parents and children showed positive correlations between ethnic-racial socialization when associated with internalizing behavior and interpersonal relationships. These two correlations showed a greater effect size with child reports compared to parent reports.

The meta-analysis on previous research shows only correlations, so there is a need for experimental studies that can show causation amongst the different domains and dimensions. Behavior of children and adaptation to this behavior may indicate a bidirectional effect which can also be addressed by an experimental study. There is evidence to show that ethnic-racial socialization can help children of color obtain social-emotional skills that can help them navigate through racism and discrimination, but further research needs to be done to increase the generalizability of existing research.