• Socially confident kids. Methods of control: Controlling the kids is important. Is it absolutely essential that parents have rules. Allowing kids to do whatever they want is a disaster for the kid. E.g. parents have to stop their kids from eating a jar of cookies, hitting their little sister, making them go to school etc. - Control is important: Kurdek & Fine (1994) • Who: 800 kids asked about things that determined level of control their parents exerted. • What: kids rate level of control by answering items on a questionnaire. E.g. Someone in my family makes sure that my homework is done. Or Generally someone in my family knows where I am and what I am doing. Or someone in my family keeps a close eye on me. • Results: o If the answers on questionnaire suggested that the family had good strong amount of control (not completely controlling though), the kids had higher sense of self-esteem, social confidence and self-efficacy. o Thus, control becomes a important predictor in cognitive (school) achievement. Three factors of control: 1. Clarity and consistency of rules: it is important for young kids to understand what the rules are and that rules don’t change. • Knowing what happens when a rule is broken and having rules to be consistent. It is important for younger kids to not have too much flexibility in what rules are as they do not have the cognitive preparedness to understand this. • It is comforting for kids to know what rules are, what the consequences for breaking them are and that these rules and consequences do not change etc. Thus, the kids knows that nothing surprising is gonna happen. 2. Parental expectations: parents who expect mature behavior from their kids, treating others well have kids who are better off.

• Research suggests that when parents expect kids to be relatively mature, they treat kids expecting that and reward kids for being as expected= as long as it is reasonable, reach up a little bit= children will try/strive to meet the higher parental expectation. 3. Use of Punishment:

Lecture 30 Methods of Control Control is important!: Control is needed as kids can get themselves into dangerous and other wise negative situations for self and others. Kurdek & Fine (1994): Three factors of control: • 1. Clarity and consistency of rules • 2. Parental expectations • 3. Use of punishment o There has been media discussion about “do not punish your kids”. But kids need to be punished sometimes, what matters is the way we punish kids. If punishment is particularly scary or violent, it doesn’t work well. o Do something as soon as the kid starts an undesirable behaviors. Do not wait until kid engages in several bad behaviors. o Parents have to be calm as a parent= this is why parent needs to intervene early in the bad behavior. o Punishment has to be mild. Parent must interrupt early before, (you yourself become too upset) and also kid forgets what the punishment is for!