Cry, cry, I'll give you something to cry about. Yeah, that was my dad's parenting style. What was yours? Stay tuned! Parenting styles. It all started back in 1960 when a researcher named Diana Boehrind came up with these four parenting styles and they prevailed for the last 20 years. The first one was the authoritarian and the authoritarian would be my dad. Probably many of your dads too. It was like the my way or the highway parenting style. They were the boss, you know, follow my rules or there's the door. That's pretty much how I was raised. But then we came the authoritative. The authoritative parent was the authoritative parent had then rules but they also were lenient. You know, they helped you guide you through the rules. They were more like a coach. Probably a good parent to have. Then the next was the permissive parents and I bet all of us wanted our best friends to have permissive parents where we could party at their house because there were no rules. Permissive parents believed that the child should develop and grow on their own and really form their own set of rules. And the last one back in the 1960s was the uninvolved parent. And the uninvolved parent came about really many years later when the gen exers were kids. Many of the baby boomer moms went back to work. They were very, very busy and they were uninvolved. This is the generation that could play outdoors until the street lights came on. If they came home early, their mother was so busy. She'd lock the door. Stay out until 9 o'clock. Yeah, so those four styles were pretty much the rules for the last 20 years. But in 2008, a new parenting style came on the scene. Probably you've heard of this. It's called the helicopter parents. The helicopter parents were the parents that scheduled every hour of a child's waking life so that they were growing, that they were in activities. The helicopter parent worried about this child's social interaction so that they made sure that they had the right play dates. This is a parent who was worried. Back in 2008, 2009, we were getting a lot more of the social media and internet and we were hearing things that were happening to kids. So this was a parenting style that said no more freedom. You could ride your bike from the stop sign back to our house and that's as far as you can go. No more of this staying out until the street lights came on. Very, very controlling but really feeling very protective of their kids. Some of you might remember back when they put all of the foam rubber in playgrounds. This is because the helicopter parents, they wanted schools to change. They were afraid their kids would fall and get hurt in the playground. So they were very, very overprotective and a lot of this came from fear and they put many of those fears sometimes into their kids. Everything changed. Everything changed a few years ago. We went from the helicopter parent who paved the way for their kids to make sure that there was no danger to the snowplough parent. The snowplough parent who saw obstacles getting in front of the kids way, they helped him with those obstacles and they removed those obstacles. What am I mean by that? Snowplough parents do their kids homework for them. They're worried that the kids won't get a good enough grade because they're so thinking about getting them into the right school but they actually do their homework. Snowplough parents are the ones that actually filled out many of the kids job applications or their internships. You see, snowplough parents worry. They worry that these obstacles that are coming in front of kids today are way too much for them. So they can help their children because they're doing it in a loving way and remove those obstacles. They are going to make sure that their kids get in the best schools and have the best job. This is the parenting style that actually goes on that job interview. That goes on that job interview making sure that the child is getting the best deal and also that the company is the right one for the child's success. It's interesting right now because studies are coming out. Studies are coming out on kids in the workplace because this Gen Z is now entering the workplace and you know what they're finding? They're finding they don't. They're fearful of making mistakes. They're fearful of making decisions because they don't want to be wrong. You see, when we don't let our kids fail when they're young, then they don't have the tools to learn how to brush off and know that they have the capability of moving forward. Sometimes when we remove all the obstacles to make it an easier journey for the kids, what we're doing in the end is actually making their life much harder. So I want you to think about your parenting style and I want you to think about how you're connecting with your kids right now. And let's let's think about this failing forward. Sometimes getting a C on your report card or a D, it's not the end of the world. It's showing kids that they need to work harder and you're there to help them. I hope this one helped you. I'm Karen McCullough with another Lesson from the Road.