What if the very thing you think is “loving” your kids… is actually holding them back?

As busy parents, it’s easy to fall into the trap of making life easier for our kids. We may step in when things get hard, lower expectations to avoid conflict, or prioritize their happiness over their growth. But over time, this well-intentioned approach can leave kids unprepared, less resilient, and unsure of what they’re truly capable of.

The truth? Many of us unknowingly separate love and expectations, believing we can’t fully do both at the same time. But that imbalance is exactly what creates frustration in parenting and limits our children’s long-term growth.

In this episode of Parents Making Time, we explore the powerful parenting framework of high love and high expectations and how finding that balance can transform your relationship with your kids and help them become confident, capable individuals. 

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL LEARN:

•  How the four parenting styles impact your child’s confidence, behavior, and long-term success 
•  Why busy parenting often leads to lower expectations and how to shift that pattern 
•  What it really looks like to combine deep love with meaningful expectations in everyday family life 

If you’ve ever felt torn between being a “nice” parent and holding firm boundaries, this episode will help you see that you don’t have to choose. You can raise kids who feel deeply loved and are prepared for the real world.

Because real parenting isn’t about making life easier for your kids, it’s about helping them become who they’re meant to be.

Easily improve your intentional parenting efforts at mealtime with our FREE resource, Dinner Conversation Starters.

Download our FREE resource, 30-Second Micro Moments of Intention with Your Kids, created for busy parents like you who need easy, actionable ways to have daily meaningful connections with their kids in less than a minute!

Parenting Questions? Email us at [email protected] (Please note, your question may be featured on the show).

For parenting inspiration, time management ideas, and encouragement for families, follow the hosts' individual accounts:

Anthony Craiker: Instagram | LinkedIn

Jennifer Craiker: Instagram

Interested in joining our free online parenting community? Send us a DM to receive an invite!

VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://www.parentsmakingtime.com/

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Transcript

Parents Making Time Ep. 29

Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Before we get started, we wanted to invite you to check out our website parents making time.com. There you'll find our full library of podcast episodes, blog posts that expand on the ideas that we talk about here on the show, and free resources designed to help busy parents connect more intentionally with their kids.

It's also a place where you can learn more about me and Jennifer and reach out to connect directly with us. We're continuing to add more content and resources, so we'd love for you to stop by and take a look.

Have you heard of the theory of high love and high expectations? Simply put, it's that the best growth happens when people feel deeply loved and are held to high standards. Today we want to discuss what this could look like when applied to our relationships with our children.

This is parents making time. The show that helps busy parents put family first without burning out. We are Anthony and Jennifer Craiker. [00:01:00] We don't just give parenting tips. We help you become the parent you want to be.

Jennifer: Now, in thinking about and researching this idea of high love and high expectations, I came across the work of someone named Diana.

Bomb rind. Bomb rind was a developmental psychologist who conducted research on parenting styles, and she came up with four different parenting styles. So we're gonna share those with you. The first style is authoritative. This would be your high love, high expectation that we're talking about. She called it high warmth and high demand.

She said those are parents that set clear expectations, but they're warm and nurturing and encouraging their children to be independent. Maintain boundaries at the same time. Now, the second parenting style she came up with was called authoritarian. A little bit different. This is low warmth, but high demand.

And so this would be where you put those, because I said, so [00:02:00] parents, the third parenting style that she. Studied was permissive. This is high warmth, but low demand. So this might be those kind of parents that think they wanna be their children's friends before their parents. And the last one is neglectful.

This is just low warmth, low demand, all around low. So they provide few, if any rules or. Support. So ni, neither rules nor support. 

Anthony: Yeah. You know, a simple example of the difficulty parents face with this concept might be that we love our kids so much that it's difficult for us to allow them to experience discomfort.

So we often rush in to save them when they're struggling or we don't require. Just kind of basic tasks from them because we don't want them to have to do too much work or even sometimes because we want to avoid their complaints. So as parents, there's this tendency to wanna step in and do those [00:03:00] things for them instead of expecting or requiring that they do them for themselves and, and what parent hasn't thought a time or two, oh, I don't want to hear them complain.

So I'll just do it. I'll take care of it. Or. Even at times I'll just do it so that they can continue to be with their friends or do whatever fun thing that they're doing right, right at that moment, which. In a sense that might feel like high love, right? But what does that child do when it's time for them to leave the nest and be on their own and they haven't been asked to have responsibilities in the home, and everything was kind of done for them.

It doesn't make for a very capable or resilient child. 

Jennifer: Yeah, I've thought about that at times. Especially when it's time to do the dishes in our house and you know, the groaning that happens in our house over dishes. Oh yeah. And so many times it's easier for me just to say, I'm just gonna do 'em 'cause I don't wanna hear [00:04:00] it.

So I think that the core mistake that we make is that we can't separate our, or that we often actually separate our love for our children and our expectations of them. We think they're two completely different things and we can't do both at the same time. That's not really true. But because of this, we end up leaning too heavily in one direction or the other, and we're completely out of balance, and we end up with results we never intended or want.

And. You know, ultimately it's not that we're making the mistake of not loving our kids enough, and it's not that we don't expect enough from them, it's that we struggle with how to balance that together. How to do it at the same time. 

Anthony: Yeah. We believe that loving always looks like being nice. Or essentially having low expectations, but it's really a, a yes and kind of thing.

We can love them and have high expectations, but we avoid the high expectations sometimes because we want to avoid that conflict. Uh, we're, [00:05:00] we're. Tired of the complaining. Uh, we worry more about keeping kids happy than about teaching them, and we forget that real love says I care more about who you're becoming than what you feel right now.

We also mistake our own expectations as trying to control our kids. We somehow think that that's a negative thing. Um, we equate high expectations with strictness perfection and full compliance, but real expectations. The type of expectations that we're talking about here when we're talking about having high love and high expectations.

It's, it's more like, I know you're capable of more and I'm help here to help you achieve that. 

Jennifer: Yeah. And kids are really, really good at playing on these. Insecurities that we have and how to implement this, right? Yeah. Have we not heard the, but don't you love me, but don't you want this for me? Don't you wanna do that for me?

Because kids don't [00:06:00] wanna feel pain, don't wanna struggle. They don't understand the big picture. That's our job to understand the big picture and guide them through it. Right. Right. So I wanna go back to, um. Baum Ryan study for a minute and talk about the consequences that she found with each parenting style.

And we're gonna go through the parenting styles in the opposite way than I introduced them before. So we're gonna start with neglectful parenting. And remember, neglectful parenting. This is when you have low expectations and, and low love. You're, you're just not doing a lot. And these children. Um, often rank the lowest across many different markers.

They exhibit poor self-control, low self-esteem, higher rates of delinquency. It's just, it's not good. And I don't think very many parents truly are in this situation. I think there are some, but I think our listeners are, are not there. The second one is permissive parenting, and this is the one where we're, we're doing a.

A lot of [00:07:00] love, but not a lot of expectations. So we're just allowing them to do, do what they'd like. Um, she found that these children often actually struggle with self-regulation, probably 'cause they've never been taught regulation. They struggle with authority and they struggle with their own impulse control.

So these, these kids were not setting them up for. Success when we're not, you know, giving them those expectations. Now, children who grew up with authoritarian parents, so this is the, because I said so parents, they often have lower self-esteem and they struggle socially or they become anxious because I think, you know, they're not used to having that, that balance of the love and the expectations.

And then lastly, um, we have authoritative parents, which those. Children of authoritative parents are generally more confident. They're more self-reliant, they're more socially competent and more well balanced. Now, as a disclaimer, I wanna say that not every child is [00:08:00] gonna fit exactly into the molds of what I just read based on.

How you were as a parent and you know, give yourself some grace as you're learning and growing and, and not that your child is doomed to all of these things, but it does help to see the benefits of balancing both high love and high expectations in the study that was done. It, it's helpful to learn from that.

Anthony: Yeah, and I think as parents we probably. Vacillate back and forth between these different styles of parenting, right? I mean, sometimes we're permissive parents. Most of us aren't gonna be neglectful parents, right? 

Jennifer: Right. 

Anthony: Thankfully, but we might be permissive. Sometimes that authoritarianism kicks in. We become authoritarian parents because it's just easier to say, do this because I said so.

Um, but we should be striving to become the authoritative parents that you talked about, which is the high love, high expectations. Um, and, and, and have that [00:09:00] be the. The goal for the style of parenting, uh, that we're, we're seeking. But the reality is none of us are perfect parents, and we're gonna go back and forth between those different types, depending on the circumstances 

Jennifer: for sure.

And, and not all of that's wrong either. Like I was, as you were talking about the, because I said so there are times where. Either the situation just calls for that, and you can't explain further at the moment, and you need your kid to trust you. But I think what we're going is the overall, like what is your overall parenting style, right?

Yeah. You're, you're going to have moments where all of these kind of come into play, except for maybe the neglectful, but what's your overall style? Is what, what's most important? So, you know, when I was growing up, I think I had some parents that really balanced this high love, high expectations thing pretty well, and we were of course, expected to contribute to the household and do things for our parents asked.

But the way it really showed up was in the fact. That their [00:10:00] expectations of us were so much bigger than that, so much beyond just day-to-day chores. I knew that my parents believed that I was good and a capable person, and that they believed in me and that belief showed me that they loved me. Now, I wasn't a perfect child.

You're supposed to laugh. I wasn't a perfect child, but I can remember that one particular time as a teenager. This one story, um, where. I had really made a stupid choice and a friend and I had taken the opportunity to break some rules while her parents were out of the house, and her mom found out, and her mom actually called me at work one day to talk to me about it.

And she let me know that either I could tell my parents or she could tell my parents, and that was up to me. So of course I chose that. I would tell them. But I had broken their trust, both my friend's parents and my own parents' trust in a big way. So when I left work that day and I drove [00:11:00] home, I was dreading having to tell my parents about it.

But it wasn't actually because I thought they were gonna yell at me or make some big punishment. It was because I knew that I hadn't lived up to what they expected of me, and I remember the first thing that my mom said to me when I walked through the door wasn't anything like, how could you, or, I can't believe you.

She didn't even get angry. She just said, you've disappointed me. And she didn't have to say anything else. 'cause that was enough. Like, it just crushed my little heart. I didn't want to disappoint her again. I wanted to live up to her belief and my ability to make good choices. And I knew that she loved me because she believed in me.

Anthony: Yeah. I, I love that story. One, because it's such a great teaching moment that you had with your parents. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. And, and in that situation, you made some dumb mistakes, as teenagers often do, and, and your parents. You know, use that opportunity to, to teach you that you could be better. But I, I also love the story in this [00:12:00] context of high love, high expectations, because when we talk about high love, high expectations, we're not really talking about getting your kids to do chores and clean their room and do homework and get good grades and all those things.

I mean, that, that's. Part of it, right? We wanna have high expectations so that they can become self-reliant and, and, and those things, right? And, and learn to thrive. But it's really about developing their character and helping them reach their true potential, become who they're meant to become. That's what high love, high expectations is all about.

Jennifer: Yeah, because kids aren't going to be perfect and they, they shouldn't be. This is the learning period for them. And so as we do this, it gives them that space to grow. We, we can't expect perfection, we just want growth, and we want to help them achieve their best. So, yeah, 

Anthony: exactly. 

Jennifer: I love that. So if you liked what you've heard today, if you got something out of it, please leave a rating and review wherever you've listened to this [00:13:00] podcast.

And even better, will you share it with a friend so that others can hear these messages. 

Anthony: And next time on parents making time. I'm going to interview Jennifer and hear her perspective on motherhood. We're gonna talk about the highs and the lows, the hard moments, and what she's learning as this season of parenting in our lives begins to look a little bit different.

So until next time, make time to become the parent you want to be.