Learning to Lead

As it turns out, good parenting really can keep your kids safe. Or at least it helps your chances of doing so. A recent study came out about teen driver safety and the findings are astounding.

5,600 teens were asked to place their parents in one of four categories:
1. Authoritative (high support/high rules)
2. Authoritarian (low support/high rules)
3. Permissive (high support/low rules)
4. Uninvolved (low support/low rules)

The kids who reported their parents as authoritative reported 50% fewer crashes than their counterparts! 50%!!! You can read about the whole study here.

As a parent, we are supposed to lead our children into adulthood. We are supposed to be the authority in our own homes. I think most of us know this, but in reality, few of us practice this. We tend to drift to the extremes where we are either too hard on our kids or too soft on them. Both extremes indicate that we aren't comfortable and confident in our role as a leader.

Finding that middle ground - that loving authority where we establish boundaries and allow consequences to do the screaming for us - is the ScreamFree way. We know that it works. It's good to see the researchers catching up to us. :)