The way of parenting during early childhood is deemed to exert significant impact over the course of one’s life, as what’s exposed to a child early on could firmly shape their intellect, cognition, and, most importantly, judgement on right and wrong. As a result, views diverge on whether parents should be permissive and lenient when attending their children, i.e., satisfying everything their child asks for and licensing the child to behave unchecked. Proponents of such parenting style may argue that such “free-range” facilitates children to freely explore the world around them through a trial-and-error process and is conducive to their creativity and cognitive abilities while also sets children free from the fear of being blamed or punished. Notwithstanding, if we consider children as a blank paper, i.e., they have no pre-existing judgement nor cognition, such licentious parenting could be dangerous. In the worst case scenario, instead of the expected creator or emerging young talent in the future, such “free-ranging” could give rise to criminals or even be fatal.
It has been proposed that animal intuitive dominate over humanity in young children. Hence, timely intervention must be given during the process of parenting to check children’s demand/desire and allow for the acquisition of self-discipline and humanity. Otherwise, according to the operant conditioning, every satisfaction of the child’s unreasonable demand for e.g., toys or snacks reinforces and encouages further demands, which is an infinite loop. Consequently, as the child grows up and upon their demand could not be fulfilled, they may opt to breach rules or even commit crimes simply because of the mindset that ‘everything I want could be satisified’ rooted from their spoiled childhood. Similarly, licensing the child to do whatever they want regardless of the consequences could yield the same result, since the obeidence to rules and regulations must also be cultivated from childhood. According to statistics and national surveys, this is also one of the primary reason to account for the skyrocketing adolescent offences in recent years.
Next, being dismissive in parenting could significantly impair children’s cognitive ability and judgement, not necessarily by the aforementioned means but equally harmful. This is because that rather than abruptly intervening with a child’s action, most parents tend to explain the underlying mechanism to their children, which in turn helps children to get know the world and expedite their growth. For example, when a child tries to ignite the hob, the timely intervention of their parents could prevent a further incident and also let the child know that “hob could produce fire”. Countless processes as such stimulate the intelligence and cognition of children, which are vital to the subsequent studying and development. Allowing children to act freely hinders this process and frequently put unwitting children in imminent danger such as fire, toxic substances, and road accidents.
Overall, the disadvantages of permissive parenting outweighs its advantages and is detrimental to children’s development when they grow up.