Supportive Parents And Permissive Parents, What’s The Difference?

Educating and raising children is not an easy task. Parenting has a wide color palette and rarely is parenting’s choice “black and white”. For example, by letting our child create their own experiences, we can be supportive or we can stop being permissive. So, do you know the difference between supportive parents and permissive parents?

Finding the gap between granting privileges and not granting privileges is more complex than it seems. Many times our attitudes can benefit or interfere with the child’s learning, so we need to be aware of them.

First and foremost, it is important to know our child’s abilities and based on these determine if they can meet a challenge on their own.

Second, we need to reflect on our behavior: Do we teach our child how to solve a problem, or do we solve it for him? We will dive deeper into this idea further down.

How is a child’s learning process?

Learning varies from child to child and parents must act as skill coaches. We need to help our children become more autonomous day by day. For some children this can be very easy to achieve, while for others it can be quite complicated.

When children face various difficulties in life , the parents must be the support and not the solution. But how can we know if we are acting like one or the other?

To determine this difference, it is important to know that when we support our children, we motivate them to develop in their autonomy. On the contrary, when we try to remove difficulties from their path, we do not offer them any learning tools.

It is important to teach children to overcome obstacles on their own, to face their fears and to improve their self-confidence.

The difference between supportive and permissive parents

Now that we have a general idea, let’s look at each of the differences between supportive parents and permissive parents.

What do supportive parents do with their children?

• Can identify and recognize his child’s feelings
• Can match his actions with the child’s mood
• Give love and support in the face of unpleasant feelings
• Understand the child’s learning difficulties and adapt to them
• Establish appropriate rules and establish positive habits to model your child’s behavior
• Promote healthy habits to deal with frustration, anxiety or anger
• Discuss boundaries and house rules, as well as consequences when they are not followed

• Praises the progress of their children, regardless of the outcome
• Encourage perseverance and the value of effort
• Teach your children to face problems and not avoid them

What do permissive parents do?

Thus, permissive parents try to protect their children from adversity and avoid fear, anxiety, failure or shame. Some of their main features are the following:

• Is not consistent in following the rules at home, for fear that their children will get angry at them or stop loving them
• Avoid all situations that may make the child uncomfortable
• Takes the responsibility that belongs to their children
• Overreacts to tantrums
• Protect their children from the natural consequences of their actions
• Intervene to avoid disappointing their children
• Speak for their children instead of letting them express themselves
• Do not know how to say no and allow everything

• Do not motivate their children to do things on their own, for fear of failure
• They always apologize for their children’s mistakes and prevent them from taking responsibility for their actions

Regarding the differences between supportive parents and permissive parents

As you have seen throughout this article, there are clear differences between the two parenting styles.

It is important to identify your parenting to avoid being overly permissive.

Even if you know that your children will not cope with all the difficulties they face, you need to cultivate self-confidence from an early age. This way, you will provide them with the necessary tools to overcome any problem on their own.

If you solve everything for them to avoid suffering, you will not help them grow. Parents should be their support and their guides, but it will be children themselves who must discover the way through life’s maze.