What’s Your ‘Parenting’ Type?

A Growling Success
The Tiger parent puts excellence in academics above everything else. Tiger parents pick their children’s extracurricular activities with an eye to the future, not because a child enjoys the activity. Free time is seen as being lazy. “Parents are authoritarian and have high expectations” and exhibit extreme “tough-love parenting.”

The antidote to being a tiger parent is to recognize that a child should be the one driving academic studying and extracurricular activities, not the parent. If that means your child eschews playing a sport or only turns in minimal work to pass high school chemistry, that’s okay. Repeat after me, tiger parents: It’s your child’s life, not yours.

Emotionally Connected
The Elephant parent is the exact opposite of the Tiger parent. “These parents value emotional security and connection.” While that can be good for a child, elephant parents take it too far with co-sleeping until the child is well into school, for example.

The antidote to being an elephant parent is to recognize your child’s mental well-being isn’t solely your responsibility. Your child is separate from you, and learning to deal with emotions is part of growing up.