Parenting Observation

The way in which our society disciples its children varies greatly among individuals. The differences may be due to the personality differences among children, the manner in which the parents were disciplined as children, the parents’ mental or emotional state, or the social expectations that are put on the parents. In order to better understand the way in which parents discipline their children I went to several locations and observed parents interacting with their children. I want to discuss the types of parenting styles before going into greater detail about my observations.
Psychologist Diana Baumind identified four types of parenting styles based on two aspects of parenting behavior,
For this observation I went to the children’s play area in the Willowbend mall with my daughter and her father. In order for me to make my observations, my daughter’s father played and interacted with her, while I sat on the bench observing the parents and their children. I believe having my own child with me made me fit in and not seem out of place as I made my observations. After being in the play area for 20 minutes I noticed a boy who looked to be about 4 years old being aggressive with the other children. Within 10 minutes of arriving at the play area the boy proceeded to purposely push a little girl off one of the taller toys. The girl fell about 2-½ ft. to the ground and seemed pretty shaken up by what had just happened. After the incident, I was looking around to see where the boy’s mother could possibly be and she was in the corner chatting with her friend. She did not look up one time from her conversation to see what her child was doing. Shortly after the first incident, I witnessed the same boy on the outside part of the play area trying to push kids out of the ride cars. His mother still had not moved from her spot on the bench where she was talking to her friend. The boy involved in this observation was in Erikson’s third stage of development, initiative vs. guilt. In this stage, children “who have an underdeveloped awareness of guilt and how their actions affect others become overly aggressive and even ruthless”(Gehart, 2009). I believe that the mother’s neglectful parenting style would establish an environment in which the boy was not aware of how his actions were affecting others. In the playground not only was the boy aggressive, but he seemed indifferent to the feelings of the other children. It was hard to watch as the boy ran around without any adult supervision. I could only imagine the problems that he might