Parenting Styles
In episode 1 of our Winning With ADHD podcast Adam and Heather Walker get real about their parenting journey. Two of their children have ADHD and they share both their struggles and their wins, what has worked for them and what hasn’t.
What is your parenting style? Adam and Heather discuss what they’ve learned about parenting styles and how they have evolved as parents over the years. Below are a few snippets and takeaways from this episode that we think you will enjoy!
“As a new parent I felt I needed to show up was kind of as an authoritarian figure, because I felt that is how parents should be, from my observation of those that were around me raising kids.
Our daughter, Emily, started out pretty calm as a baby, but we both agree that this switch flipped when she turned one. Things kind of changed drastically and her behaviors were kind of extreme, as how we have described it in the past.
Our parenting style started out as authoritarian, which Emily did not appreciate. There was definitely a lot of pushback and a lot of fighting. She fought back against our stance and it was her way or the highway. She was pretty aggressive as a toddler and didn't handle being told what to do very well. She was very stubborn!
When you're a new parent you're trying to decipher whether or not this is just a typical age-appropriate behavior, whether they're just trying to figure out who they are, and exactly where you should draw the line in the sand as to what's okay and what’s not. What is an appropriate punishment or opportunity to learn from a certain behavior? We would be very strict because of how extreme or aggressive she was physically as a toddler.
We felt that if she was going to this extreme that we needed to go to the extreme on our end. We felt like we could not bend and that we had to stand our ground because of how she was pushing back against us. That led to a very confrontational relationship between us.
It was a battle of wills of who can outlast who the longest. She was so physically aggressive as a toddler that it was actually not just mental who can outlast this, but who can physically outlast this. There were many times where we had therapists teach us tips and tricks of how to handle different situations. They would tell us to hold her and hug her tight to help her work through her emotions. So we would just sit and hold her and it was physically and mentally exhausting.
One day Emily had dumped all of her cereal on the floor in the kitchen and I asked her to pick it up. Her reaction was to throw herself on the ground and she refused to pick anything up. I remember feeling completely hopeless because I was doing what the therapist told us to do and it wasn’t working. That is where we started to change the way we showed up with Emily. We wanted to be able to feel more successful in reaching our goals as parents and to have a better relationship with her. We knew we needed to change our parenting style.”
Want more? Listen to the full episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6GrJZQLa25UEYeptaWtmPD