Authoritarian Education: What Is Behind This Style Of Education?

Authoritarian parenting describes a style of interaction in which only the needs of the adult count. The child has no chance to grow at its own pace and in its own way. It must subordinate itself and will try to live as inconspicuously as possible so that it can avoid the adult’s dominance.

You can find everything about the topic of authoritarian parenting style here.

Love Or Authoritarian Upbringing?

Once the baby is born, the daily routine should revolve around the baby’s needs. The newborn is completely dependent on its parents in every way and cannot help itself on its own. It knows no time and when the mother goes out of the room, she seems to disappear.

The coordination of the limbs is not yet developed, which means that the baby cannot help itself. It hears mother and father talking, but it cannot yet associate experience with the words. It does not know the content of the words. The only thing it understands is the loving presence of a caregiver.

A relaxed mother loves her child unconditionally at this time. There is still nothing to guide. Rules and regulations cannot yet be understood at all, so education is only through love and care, not through authoritarian upbringing.

Once the baby has grown into a toddler exploring its environment, parenting takes on another form of expression. Parents must set limits. Not only to protect their belongings from the curious hands of children. Since the child cannot yet assess the consequences of its actions, the child’s world of experience must be limited by the parents.

The stove is taboo, as is the litter box. Mom’s and dad’s things stay in their place and are not toys. The child is introduced to the world of the parents and is given instructions about what may and may not be done.

At this point, different parenting styles become apparent, as parents exercise their natural authority in different ways. While one mother patiently and lovingly carries her offspring away from dangerous places countless times, other parents give a slap and a loud word.

Authoritarian upbringing always manifests itself with demands and instructions spoken in a harsh tone. The child is commanded and has to follow the instructions, otherwise there will be trouble.

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Where Does Authoritarian Education Come From?

Authoritarian education has nothing to do with real education. Every child should be allowed to understand the world in peace without being constantly confronted with demands. Children are not adults who can function. A child needs:

  • Loving security.
  • Understanding.
  • Patience.
  • Attention.
  • Time.

Parents who cannot give this to their offspring have experienced little love in their own childhood. Their lives were also primarily about achievement and functioning. They also experienced an authoritarian upbringing because their needs were not seen or understood by their parents.

A child always meets us with an open heart in the beginning. However, if it lives in an emotionally cold environment, it will subordinate itself to this aura and banish all joy and laughter from its heart. It becomes a symptom bearer of the family and cannot give or receive love in later life.

Authoritarian parenting styles are usually not conscious to the parents. Their own behavior seems normal because they do not know themselves differently. They have never experienced themselves as warm, patient, and compassionate. Therefore, they cannot respond to these characteristics of their child. Children immediately sense what their parents are giving them in terms of emotional expression.

When we look at newborns, we notice their clear eyes and deep gaze. If we meet the child half a year later, this radiance has disappeared in most cases because the parents could not respond to it.

What we do not touch in our children, that is, what we do not express to them, they will have to repress internally. Only in adulthood do they get another opportunity to consciously face the unrequited feelings.

This would not have to be the case if mothers had dealt with their own past, the psychological wounds of childhood had healed and authoritarian upbringing no longer had a reason.

Your Behavior Affects Parenting

Parenting involves much more than we think. It is not only about setting (positive) limits to protect the child from himself. For children, parents are a natural authority. They believe in them unconditionally and adopt their values.

Unfortunately, authoritarian upbringing gives a child the feeling of not being worth much. Parents will only praise the offspring for appropriate achievements and even that does not come from the heart. It is not about the child, but about the adults and their success. They ordered something and it was carried out. The pride is about themselves and has nothing to do with the child.

For sensitive children, authoritarian education is very painful and hurtful. Children need to be hugged or smiled at for no reason. They long for someone to comfort them when it hurts. But they don’t get it. Their parents can’t give them an education that comes from the heart.

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There is no emotional warmth that resonates with them, which a child depends on because they live completely in feeling. The parents have suppressed their loving feelings. All that is left is performance thinking, suppressed frustration, and anger.

Many parents have problems with their children when they live authoritarian parenting styles, but their child constantly challenges them emotionally. It comes running and throws itself into the arms of the mother. Or it cries and wants to be held. Mothers who have had to close themselves off to their feelings have great problems with such situations.

They react on a rational level and let their offspring know that it’s not so bad or hug the child without inner involvement. There is no real closeness. Even if the family does a lot, the child will feel alone and lonely.

Can Parenting Styles Enable Healthy Growing Up?

In contrast, anti-authoritarian education offers complete freedom from rules. While authoritarian upbringing focuses on the child’s functioning, anti-authoritarian upbringing gives the child free rein.

If they grow up completely unrestrained, this has nothing to do with self-realization but develops into boundary transgressions towards other people in later life. Those who do not experience their own limits will also never ask about the limits of other people.

Children of anti-authoritarian parenting styles do not find inner peace. They have never experienced real security because a life in which no boundaries are defined is difficult to manage. People live by rules and boundaries. These include the values of respecting other people, not harming anyone, or being there for someone.

Good rules give a feeling of security. They describe a space in which one can move safely and know one’s way around. Those who don’t get that search for it in the world without ever arriving.

Many children who are shaped by an anti-authoritarian upbringing are not self-confident. Their parents insisted early on independence regarding their own decisions.

What has been called childlike freedom is in fact fatherlessness. In this case, the parents did not fulfill their natural duty to set an example because they did not want to constrain the offspring. But this also does not work as well as authoritarian education.

The Natural Authority Of Parents

Parents are the people who should familiarize the child with the rules in this world. Through them, a child learns what should be done or left alone. In childhood, parents take the instructing part, which the child must find in himself in adulthood.

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What parents instruct should be possible for a young adult to say to himself. Parents are, so to speak, the child’s inner voice and conscience. Until the adolescent is able to tell himself what is right and what is wrong.

If parents are not aware of this task, all parenting styles will only confuse the child and make him feel that he is not right. Authoritarian parenting produces children who constantly doubt themselves, always blame themselves, and subordinate themselves in relationships until they explode.

They take their childhood experiences of dealing with parents into their adult existence and usually seek out dominant partners who are emotionally hypothermic. This perpetuates the family history until one party drops out and questions himself and his behavior.

Anti-authoritarian upbringing, on the other hand, developed from the attempt to transform the dominant authority of the parents into an equal relationship. Limitlessness, however, has nothing to do with equality.

The child’s ego is simply let loose and left to try things out on its own without being limited. The approach is good, but the implementation produces egoists who desperately search for guidelines.

The reality of domineering parents should be broken up and the thought was right. Authoritarian parenting does not give a child what he needs. However, removing all boundaries and allowing some restraint is not the solution to the problem, only the opposite extreme.

If Neither Parenting Style Works, What Is The Solution?

The problem is theory. The thinking that tries to figure out what the right action is. It may sound a bit platitudinous, but the solution is simply love in its myriad expressions.

In other words, when you get involved with your child, you don’t have to question what parenting styles are best. Those are theories. Descriptions that other people have made up regarding their experiences. You cannot apply these theories to yourself and your child.

You had a childhood with very individual imprints. This results in a certain way of dealing with your child, which you cannot put into a pattern or just discard. You have the possibility to question yourself. You can observe yourself, how you deal with people. You pass on your own upbringing until you ask yourself the following questions:

  • What does my child need from me?
  • Can I give it to him?
  • What can I do to give him what he needs?
  • Am I patient with my child?
  • Do I give him room for his own experiences?
  • Do I impose my will on him? If so, why?
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A child always brings you to your limits. Without his knowledge, he will demand things from you that you have repressed. When this happens, the first thing you do is to defend yourself. You get angry with your offspring and want to put them in their place. Sometimes you feel like you are being sucked dry because there is an energy coming from your child in your direction that is demanding.

Parenting Styles Are Just Concepts

Even if we would like it to be so, parenting cannot be pressed into a concept. Many people develop guidelines on how to deal with the child. In doing so, they only mean the material level and forget that a person can never do what he is not in his heart, despite all the guidelines.

This means: You can tell a person with depression over and over again that he should be cheerful with his child – he will not be able to do it. You can tell an emotionally hypothermic mother to be joyful with her child – she, too, will not be able to do it if authoritarian parenting has closed her heart.

Education for your child is:

  • What you say about other people in the presence of your child.
  • How you behave towards other people.
  • What you do in your home.
  • What your attitude is towards work and money.
  • How you treat your body.
  • What is important to you about yourself.
  • What you like.
  • What you dislike.
  • What your attitudes towards life are.

You educate your child with everything that makes you you. There is no education that exists separately from you and that you could do.

You are the education. Your way of life shapes your child. Who you are depends on your character imprints for a long time. Until you feel that you could be more. More warm-hearted. More honest. More peaceful. More patient. More heartfelt. When you understand that, it’s no longer about authoritarian parenting or parenting styles.

Then you don’t need a concept anymore. You will say the right things at the right time based on your gut feeling. You will open your heart and trust your child. You will give up control, because it is not compatible with love. Then you will live your full potential and give your child the best education possible.

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