I went to the supermarket and observed a few parents and their children and how they responded to each other. The most interesting one to me was a mother and her two children; the mother seemed to be in her thirties, while the male child and female child seemed to be about five or six years old. I observed this family for about ten to fifteen minutes and I noticed a lot. First, the children would try to put candy they wanted into the cart. The mother would tell them no and to put the items back. Second, the children would whine and cry and the mother would tell them if they were not silent no one would get anything. Lastly, the mom seemed very frustrated and the children were upset the majority of the time and under distress. They were also at the register in front of me and the little boy asked his mother one last time for candy but she said no in a frustrated voice. This time the children were silent. The mother did not end up letting them have anything from the grocery store. The mother appeared to have an authoritarian type of parenting style.
Authoritarian parenting can be defined as: “makes coercive demands and imposes punishments on children in attempts to control their behavior. It provides little warmth or emotional support,” according to the textbook The Development of Children And Adolescents by Hauser-Cram. I came to the conclusion that the mother was displaying authoritarian parenting because she showed no warmth towards her children and the majority of the time the mother was simply telling them no and telling them to sit down in the cart and silencing them. There was neither positive nor negative disciplines given to the children. The textbook also states that children with authoritarian parents tend to “have poor relationships with peers and lack curiosity” (The Development of Children And Adolescents). Children with authoritarian parents have