Are you feeling stuck with the role of teaching or parenting? You aren’t the only one. They are often assumed to be two roles, which can easily cause role confusion. The children need both throughout their development. As the two roles become one, it would be a problem to distinguish them.
Parenting is the primary and essential support system for children. It includes so many responsibilities to provide to them. Those are crucial, just as the children’s basic need for protection is being available to them. Plus, parents can easily influence them. As a vital role to change and impact on them, any intentional behavior makes changes. Parents teaching their child try to achieve something to make a difference most of the time. Among the intentional effort to teach, parenting is likely to get confused by teaching since parenting involves it.
Importance of teaching, we might exaggerate and even dramatize it over parenting. Intentional attempts to teach might go out of control and emerge to carry it as a main role. That would be the idealization of teaching and forgetting about overdoing it.
What am I to my children?
Do you know what you do is teaching or parenting? They aren’t two different things as well. As it says, the things we know about being good parenting equals being good teaching (1). They are similar to each other, while others consider them to have a similar connotation. They have shared responsibilities that are two irreplaceable roles and inevitably influence children. However, we possibly miss that they are slightly different.
Similarities and Differences between Parenting and Teaching
You can intentionally be teaching something or just being a role model to children (1). While learning is a lifetime, it is possible to think there are many ways of teaching. It can take place in different ways and forms. As a matter of fact, it seems that having a parent as a teacher at home is more challenging for children. Other than the similarities of these two roles, being parents is more than that. It covers other responsibilities that no one can’t overlook. When parents as teachers model to a child, parents represent the image of the teaching role rather than parenting.
What is the difference between parenting and teaching?
A parent’s responsibilities are shown in different ways once the children’s needs emerge. If you are concerned about teaching over anything else, the needs of the child won’t meet. It may confuse them and result in communication problems between them. The child might struggle or refer to having some other issues while parents concentrate on teaching.
Those can mislead the conversations and create more problems. As in some homeschooling, they may start to assume their parents as teachers and feel confused or uncomfortable. For example, because of the pandemic, there has been a chance to experience how it really feels to be or have parents as teachers in the new normal. As the family conflicts arouse, they might express their discomfort with starting to resist learning and being educated by their parents3.
References
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Bosley, D. (n.d.). Parenting as Teachers-teach life skills to your child. The Center for Parenting Education. Retrieved September 25, 2021, from, https://centerforparentingeducation.org/library-of-articles/responsibility-and-chores/teaching-children/
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Gordon, I. J. (1976). Parenting, teaching, and child development. Young Children, 173-183.
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McCurdy, K., 2021. Teaching versus Parenting | Family-Based Education. Retrieved September 25, From https://familybasededucation.org/natural-learning/teaching-versus-parenting/
