Parenting Autistically - Discovery

Before I became a parent, I studied up on it.  I took classes about infant development, social development, and other classes about human development.  I even got a degree in something I had hoped would help me be a good parent.  My Bachelor's degree was in Marriage, Family and Human Development ((MFHD) now offered as a graduate degree)), which is typically considered to be within the field of Family Sciences.

For years I had also babysat and just in general tried to really prepare myself for the responsibility of raising someone else.  It was important to me to be as good of a parent as I possibly could be and so I took my preparation really seriously.

Once I found out my son was challenged by Autism I felt pretty helpless.  Interwoven in all the college classes I had taken I had learned very little about children with disabilities, and I had not learned about any extensively.

Despite having been a Special Education Teacher in my career, before I had children, I had not had any formal training in a specific disability, but instead had a list of skills I had learned that helped me perform my job responsibilities.  So, despite my efforts to prepare I felt very, very unprepared when I my child was formally diagnosed with Autism.

This led me to really ponder the 4 major parenting styles I had learned about in college, and why it was that I felt like I could not follow one to raise my child with special needs. It seemed to me that only a truly perfect parenting style, something that was considered to be the right choice for society to pick, would also include parents of disabled children.

In doing my research for this blog post I looked towards the college I attended, Brigham Young University - Provo, to see if they had wondered about this as well; whether or not there was a specific parenting style for parents to use with a disabled child.  I discovered one News Release called "For children with developmental disabilities, parenting style matters".  Instead of adapting to one parenting style the article suggests that a parent of an child with Autism adapt a positive parenting style in order to raise their child well. I appreciated this article, but still felt I needed more answers.

As I looked further into the four parenting styles, I was reminded of a diagram I learned my freshman year in college.

	Parent Discipline
Parent  Involvement		+	-
	+	Authoritative	Authoritarian
	-	Permissive	Uninvolved

When you interpret the diagram/graph/visual aid, it pretty much means what it appears to be.

The best parenting style is called "Authoritative".  When you are being an authoritative parent, you normally use positive discipline with your child The experience of you being involved in your child's life is also a positive experience for your child because an authoritative parent is not overly dominant, is usually a good teacher, and has unconditional love for their child/ren.

The second parenting style in the diagram is called "Authoritarian".  When you are being an authoritarian parent, you normally use negative discipline with your child, which is why parent discipline is listed as a negative, because the outcome is negative.  While their involvement with their child/ren is high, which is considered a positive, it might not make your child that happy depending upon how dominant you are.  Many parents who are authoritarian may be considered to be punitive in their relationships with their child/ren.  That is part of why their involvement is so negative, even though they are very active in the lives of their child/ren.

The third parenting style mentioned is called "Permissive".  When you are a permissive parent, you struggle to discipline your child, and would rather avoid it, so discipline is always done in a positive manner, but may not be effective.  Parent involvement is listed as a negative, even though they are playing the "nice guy" when they discipline, because when a permissive parent has the chance to be involved with their child, they normally step back and either don't do anything, don't say anything, or their presence isn't really felt by their child. Overall they let their child do what they want, but they know about it.

The fourth parenting style mentioned is called "Uninvolved".  An uninvolved parent does not discipline their child at all, which is considered a negative because they really should be somehow disciplining their child.  This is always a hard one to discuss because when parent's discipline they really shouldn't be as harsh as the Authoritarian parent, but they also shouldn't be as demure as the Uninvolved parent.  With the uninvolved parenting style the parent involvement is also a negative because the parent is completely out of their child's life to the point that they might not even know what is actually going on in their child's life at all.  Overall they let their child do exactly what they want to do, and the parent might not even know what their child is up to at all.

It's always hard to label a person's parenting style.

Coming to terms with it and discovering who and what you are is not always the best wake-up call for a person, but I've found that exploring these styles has helped me learn new skills and ideas to be a better parent.  That is part of why I researched them again when I discovered my child had Autism.  I was hoping there was a quick "go-to" parenting style I could use as I got on my feet and discovered how to parent my child.  I found out that there was not and that a lot of research has not been done on the subject.

That is okay though, and is understandable, as every child on the Autism Spectrum requires a different life experience.  I just wanted to give my child the best.  So, in order to do that I began to explore how to parent using all four parenting styles, with an emphasis on positive parenting when I could.  I have found overall that combining the four has been a very hard challenge for me which is still hard to describe.

However, I have not given up on myself, or on others, as we attempt to discover how we can parent our children challenged by Autism, in the best way we possibly can.  I believe our love for them will primarily pull us through most of the challenges we will face with them, and in the end, if that is the best a parent can do, then we have succeeded.