♠

Shaping their character

• Specific
  • Whether you're an earth mother or a PTA president (or both!), you're very concerned with setting specific expectations for your kids' behavior. You do this both by telling them what to do and acting as a role model, and, in general, you expect them to follow your careful guidance. As a parent, you think you should be very actively involved in fostering your children's growth, which includes determining what activities they should engage in – sports, tutoring, music, chores, art, yoga, whatever. When it comes to everything from family meals to manners and morals, you know what's best.

Making the rules

• Authoritative
  • When it comes to setting rules and expectations with your kids, you're the grownup and you know what's best. And since this is the case, it's not really necessary to always explain the logic or rationale behind your rules and expectations. You're also scrupulously fair: you do your best to apply your standards equally to each child. Parents who take this approach believe that it's important for parents to make decisions for their kids and that, generally, rules and expectations shouldn't be open to discussion.

Enforcing discipline

• Lenient
  • When it comes to discipline, your watchwords are tolerance and lenience, and you tend to avoid punishing your children for behaving inappropriately. As far as enforcing rules and expectations goes, lenient parents like you don't think it's necessary to get upset with kids for not obeying instructions. It's certainly not appropriate to use spanking to get children to behave, and could be self-defeating. In your opinion, kids should be allowed to do what they like without being told exactly how to behave.