Chapter 1: Introducing Lifespan Development

Chapter 1: Introducing Lifespan Development

When reading this chapter, I could my own childhood and the parenting styles that raised on and how the environment of it shaped the person I have become as an adult. Although, I found two of the parenting styles to be a bit rigid in their classifications on whom the children under those styles would become. I still could not clearly identify what type of parent I am to my children, and therefore what type of teacher I might also become. As a fully grown adult, I can look back at my upbringing as see that I lived with mostly Authoritarian parenting style. Being raised to give respect to elders, rarely having a voice within the home, and knowing that my opinion in things did not actually count. I really believe this affected me as a person and in how I parent my own children. 

In using the information I gained, I would expand my knowledge of how to teach my students in a way that could be relateable to them; to each child, because given the fact that not all children come from the same type of household, they will not all respond the same way if I used the same teaching style to reach them all. I can see how a versatile type of teaching can be effective in a classroom with varying degrees of development in child-adolescent age students. Not every child is going through the same life and developmental changes in their growth, therefore getting to know each of your students and where they are at individually in nature and environment would greatly affect the measure of success I would have as a teacher.

What I learned from this chapter from Baumrind and his four styles of parenting in Authorative, Authoritarian, Permissive and Neglectful is before you have children, you should sit down and decide how you want to parent them. You cannot know who your child is going to be, and therefore you must be flexible in the process, but know who you are and what kind of household you want to raise your child in because how you parent will effect the course of their lives and the course of their children's lives. As a teacher, you must understand and be consistent, just like with your own children. Every child is different and will respond in different ways, but if you are consistent in who you are it will greatly benefit every child or student you come into contact with.