There are two different axes that determine parental styles Uninvolved not warm and not controlling Their children tend to be neglected and Social Services often gets involved Authoritative warm and controlling Their children tend to be the healthiest being simultaneously independent but also willing to get help if they need to Authoritarian not warm but controlling Their children tend to be average but in some cases the child will become rebellious and undisciplined as soon as they move out Indulgent Permissive warm but not controlling Their children are impulsive easily frustrated and have no self control Children can learn in a few ways 1 Direct Instruction is just telling the kid what to do 2 Conditioning involves pairing together an unconditioned stimulus which produces an unconditioned response and a conditioned stimulus which initially has no effect In time the conditioned stimulus alone leads to the unconditioned response which is now termed the conditioned response 3 Punishment and Reinforcement However Reinforcement is often stronger than Punishment because rewards are stronger This can lead to the negative reinforcement trap when children are rewarded for bad behavior 4 Direct Observation and as the Bobo Doll Study demonstrated children are more likely to imitate what they observed if it was someone they respected and they think the course of action will be helpful which Bandura called self efficacy a Counterimitation is the only exception a child is unlikely to do something if they saw another child do the same thing and get punished even if an adult is also doing it unpunished If punishment proves ineffective it can often lead to abuse Divorce also leads to worse behaviors in children This is because it results in a loss of a role model With that being said stepparents who genuinely want to be parents and are high in warmth can lead to good results again for the same reason that adoptive parents produce better kids than foster parents It s all about the presence of an active role model who genuinely wants to be a parent Self control is a valuable skill that can lead to improvements later in life It can be depleted strengthened and restored For parents this means that they can increase self control by rewarding good behavior when they see it instead of just expecting it to happen Specifically they can use dispositional praise which links the praise to the child s sense of self but make sure to praise the effort not the talent as praising talent can lead to obstacles feeling harder than normal