![]() ![]() “What this model of parenting helps to point out is that effective parenting involves guiding children in such a way as to ensure that they are developing along positive trajectories.This study examined the link between young children's compliance and parental gentle guidance from a within-family perspective. “Some factors that also can influence trajectories include the family’s culture, their income and family resources, and the quality of the parent-child relationship,” said Holden. Some of the ways in which children react to trajectories include accepting, negotiating, resisting or rejecting them, he said. ![]() Holden said there are other ways parents influence a child’s progress on a trajectory, such as through modeling desired behaviors, or modifying the speed of development by controlling the type and number of experiences. Off-ramps are exits from a positive trajectory, such as abusing drugs, getting bullied or joining a gang. Roadblocks are events or behavior that shut down a potential trajectory, such as teen pregnancy, which can block an educational path. Detours, he said, are transitional events that can redirect a pathway, such as divorce. Trajectories are useful images for thinking about development because one can easily visualize concepts like “detours,” “roadblocks” and “off-ramps,” Holden said. Finally, parents react to child-initiated trajectories.Parents mediate trajectories, which influences how their child perceives and understands a trajectory, and help their child steer clear of negative trajectories by preparing the child to deal with potential problems.Parents also sustain their child’s progress along trajectories with encouragement and praise, by providing material assistance such as books, equipment or tutoring, and by allocating time to practice or participate in certain activities.Parents initiate trajectories, sometimes trying to steer their child in a preferred developmental path based on either the parents’ preferences or their observations of the child’s characteristics and abilities, such as enrolling their child in a class, exposing them to people and places, or taking a child to practices or lessons.In his conceptual framework, Holden hypothesized that parents guide their children’s development in four complex and dynamic ways: The time has come, however, to understand the impact of parental guidance, Holden said. So there are methodological reasons it hasn’t been studied, and there are also biases and theoretical orientations that have neglected this.” It’s not a simple unitary behavior that can be easily and reliably counted up. “It’s not an easy set of behaviors to observe and quantify because it’s more complex in that it relates to parental goals that they have for their children,” he said. Only in the last decade have researchers studied the role parents play in helping or hindering their child’s progress toward - or abandonment of - a particular course of development, he said. Examples include how parents reinforce their children’s behavior, punish their children or show them love and warmth. In decades past, researchers have studied many aspects of parenting that Holden described as “unidimensional” and easier to quantify than guidance. ![]() Holden describes and explains his theory and research in the current issue of the journal Child Development Perspectives. ![]()
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