Parenting is a journey filled with love, joy, and of course challenges!

We all want our kids to thrive. 

Parents who find us here at Forward Together are often looking for help parenting strong-willed, highly sensitive kids or kids with other high needs. And they are looking for kind, thoughtful and nurturing ways to be with their kids. If that's you, then you’ve come to the right place, my friend :)

I often hear the question, is Forward Together a permissive parenting style? I think the question comes up naturally for a few reasons, and so I thought it would be a great topic to address in this post. 

By the way, I would say that no, we are not a permissive parenting style. Forward Together is at its heart a responsive parenting style, which, if I was pushed, I'd say falls closer to the authoritative parenting category. I'll get into why later in this post. 

First, let’s dive into the concept of permissive parenting.

What is permissive parenting?

According to various publications, including this post by Parents.com and the National Institute of Health, permissive parenting is characterized by a lack of structure, rules, and expectations with few clear boundaries or consequences. 

Characteristics of permissive parents

Permissive parents are known to be warm and nurturing, and often develop close relationships with their children. All things we want there. They tend to be more lenient and flexible in their approach to parenting. 

But permissive parents may hesitate to set boundaries or enforce rules. The publications above would say this is due to a fear that boundaries and rules may hinder a child's creativity or self-expression. 

Another hallmark of the style is that permissive parents tend to avoid confrontation and conflict to avoid disagreements, often opting for a more relaxed, permissive, or inconsistent discipline. They can struggle with finding a balance between being nurturing and being authoritative. Saying "no" and enforcing boundaries feels hard.  

This may sound quite familiar to you if you are raising a strong-willed or highly sensitive child. Let’s face it, so much conflict happens living with children that have these tendencies. They have big opinions and emotions on almost everything, leading to far more conflict than we’d ever probably wish for. So it’s quite common to want to pick our battles. 

But does that make you a permissive parent, and if it does, what does that matter?

The impact of permissive parenting on children

Parents often worry about being permissive, and the long-term effects of permissive parenting. Experts paint a bleak light. They say that children raised in permissive households may struggle with self-control because they aren’t accustomed to boundaries and limits. 

They may also disregard rules and struggle around respecting authority figures because it was not modeled at home. 

Another concern is that kids may have a hard time owning their actions or facing consequences when they haven’t been raised with clear expectations and consequences. The thinking is that it’s harder for those kids to navigate challenges and setbacks. 

Common misconceptions about permissive parenting

It’s also easy to blur the line between permissiveness and other parenting styles. One myth I hear often is that permissive parents are neglectful or uninvolved in their child's life. That’s not my experience of parents that struggle with boundaries at all.

Permissive parents may have a more relaxed approach, but they are loving and nurturing towards their children. There’s no intention to neglect the child's needs, but rather to avoid conflict and prioritize their happiness.

Exploring the Forward Together parenting style

So, now we have a more complete idea about what permissive parenting is, let's shift focus to our approach here at Forward Together. 

We emphasize collaboration, respect, and open communication between parents and children. 

My intention for Forward Together is to foster a genuine and real, strong parent-child relationships that are built on trust and mutual understanding.

For that to happen requires that parents and children are each getting their needs met. 

And we encourage parents to set clear expectations and boundaries while also valuing their child's input and opinions. 

It’s this emphasis on needs, expectations and boundaries which really distinguishes us as a responsive parenting style rather than a permissive approach.

Comparing Forward Together and permissive parenting

It’s true that both our Forward Together style and permissive parenting prioritize happiness and well-being. But there are many places we differ. 

Here at Forward Together we understand the importance of balance and consistency, and we show parents how to provide their children with the support they need from a place of leadership and authority. We always want our connection to our kids to be stable. 

We focus on families where kids are strong-willed or highly sensitive because imbalance between a parent’s needs and the needs their children have commonly causes friction. And because traditional mainstream techniques can be a cause for more. 

Forward Together parenting practices open communication and collaboration between parents and children which moves us towards a more authoritative style. But unlike a traditional authoritative approach, which incentivizes through strategies like reward charts and punishment, we don’t encourage coercive strategies. 

And while permissive parents may avoid conflict, we try to actively engage in discussions and problem-solving with our children. We’ve seen with the families we work with that this open collaborative approach allows children to develop effective communication, negotiation, and decision-making skills. 

Since you live with a strong-willed or highly sensitive child you probably already have an idea that values of being seen, heard and understood are incredibly important to the children we have. Much more so than children with other temperaments. 

Benefits and difficulties with the Forward Together parenting style

Because we do prioritize setting expectations and boundaries, we see children develop a strong sense of responsibility and accountability. They learn to understand the consequences of their actions and are likely to make informed decisions. We don’t see them develop a disregard for authority figures or rules, although we recognise that our kids are always going to be big questioners and negotiators. In fact, it’s one of their superpowers!

We know that when children feel valued and respected, their self-esteem and overall well-being strengthens. When they don’t, expect eruptions! The open communication we foster allows for a deep understanding of each other's perspectives, leading to fewer conflicts and a more harmonious household. We hope that, as they grow, children brought up with this approach will  contribute to creating a more harmonious world. 

But Forward Together doesn’t always feel easy. Finding the right balance between collaboration and authority can still be challenging for many parents and takes practice. We already know we have kids that test our patience. Finding the adaptability they need, and a willingness to adjust as they develop can feel like a real stretch at times, a real act of courage at others and often radically new!

Why Can Forward Together Feel Like Permissive Parenting?

I find trying to fit every parent in the world into four stereotypes reductive. These groupings were also made long before our recent scientific surge into brain science and neurodiversity. They don’t take into account your individual experience. They don’t talk about whether parents make a decision to employ a parenting style, or wade into it, because we get zero training in parenting. 

After all, most often our only blueprint is passed on from our childhood. We tend to stick with it, unless it felt wrong for us or unexpectedly feels wrong for the kids we have today. 

Parenting strong-willed or highly sensitive children often requires some adjustment to the typical parenting advice out there. Unless you want to continue squaring off each day, multiple times, in epic power battles, some shifts need to happen in terms of behaviors and habits. And that change should be led by us, the parents. 

These adjustments can look or feel permissive. 

Responding collaboratively. 

Owning and accepting the full scope of our human emotions. 

Supporting a child as they get angry and meltdown because you understand what’s actually happening for them under the surface. 

All of these feel radically different from traditional strategies that most of us try and then see backfire in big explosive reactions. 

We’ve already proven to ourselves in our families that these strategies don’t work. But society at large, our family, and the voices in our heads can tell us we’re too soft, too permissive. 

That’s not permissive parenting. It’s parenting the kids we have in the style they need to be their best selves. 

Why We Welcome Permissive Parents 

Yes! We do get a lot of permissive parents checking us out and asking for help. I’m here for it!

Most parents seek us out when permissive parenting isn’t serving them. Sometimes this is parents who adopted attachment parenting that has slowly evolved into permissive parenting. Other times parents chose permissive parenting as contrast to their own harsh upbringings. For others, permissive parenting was the blueprint they received in their families. They never learned how to set boundaries because they never had them!

Another group never planned to be permissive, but became it maybe even without realizing. Often when traditional approaches caused more tension, forcing them to live “on eggshells,” in fear of the next big temper tantrum. 

Either way, they (or maybe you, reading this) find us because daily life with kids feels draining and defeating. The parent’s own needs are lost trying to keep up with their children’s needs, whose demands seem to grow daily. There’s power battles and unrest. Mean words and puzzling behaviors. We offer strategies to return the joy, comfort and ease in parenting. 

How to implement the Forward Together parenting style

Here are a few guiding understandings we have to help you get started using our approach:

1. Begin to re-establish clear expectations and boundaries: When things are calm, have a conversation about the values and behaviors that are important to your family. Collaboratively establish rules and expectations that align with these values. They likely won’t happen overnight and that’s ok. 
2. Foster open communication: Create a safe space for your child to express their thoughts and feelings. Encourage them to share their ideas and concerns, and actively listen without judgment. Get comfortable with expressing your thoughts and feelings too. If your child says, “You look angry,” and you are, own it. “You’re right! I am angry right now.” You are allowed to have feelings, just as they are too. 
3. Collaborate on problem-solving: Involve your child in decision-making where you can. This helps them develop critical thinking skills and feel empowered in their ability to contribute to the family dynamic. BUT, work out what your needs are too and do your best to get both needs met. 
4. Be consistent and follow through: Commit to rules and expectations with an energy that they will happen. If they don’t happen right away, you are not a terrible failing parent, by the way. It takes time for children to adapt to living with boundaries and expectations, but keep at it. One day eating together or showering, or whatever resistance you are struggling with today, will feel easy and natural. Pinky promise!
5. Model your boundaries: Children learn through observation, so talk about your own and ask to have them met. Show your children (and everyone else!) how to communicate openly and respectfully. “I need five minutes to unwind right now, can we make that happen? Then we can play with trucks.”

Discarding parenting styles for something better

Parenting is a complex and ever-evolving journey, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Ultimately, I'm not so interested in labels as I am in helping families figure out what works best for them. 

We offer an alternative to permissive parenting that emphasizes collaboration, respect, and open communication that works incredibly well with high needs kids. But parenting is a continuous learning process. It takes soul-searching, habit forming and more than a little experimentation to find the right balance for your family. And that’s OK. 

What’s Your Parenting Style?

If you’d like to know more about your parenting style, take this quiz. You’ll find out your parenting power moves and how to use them effectively with your child’s personality. 

Spend Less Time Fighting, More Time Smiling

And to get guidance in establishing healthy boundaries and fostering a positive parent-child relationship, consider joining my signature program, The Breakthrough Parenting Program. In month 3, we dive deep into working on boundaries and creating a harmonious family dynamic. I'd love to have you there on this transformative journey.