Parenting Style

My husband and I are authoritative parents. We encourage our children to be independent and we always let them explore the things around them freely. We set rules and limits. If we say 'no' to them, we really mean it. Whenever our children falls short, we give them punishments but we always explain to them the motive for that. We sometimes let our children experience difficulties, defeat, and other negative things in order for them not to be deprive from it's value. As much as possible, we want our children to realize that failure, disappointment, sadness and negative emotions are part of life. We strongly believed that for a child to grow up emotionally healthy, he or she has to experience the good and the bad things and learn how to cope with them.
We always praise our kids for their good deeds instead of looking at their mistakes. We focus also on our child's strength so he will feel good about himself. We are strict when it comes to doing their homeworks, having good manners towards other people, and eating properly during mealtime. Lately, we've been trying to enforce strict rules for TV watching. We are very particular with the shows our children is allowed to watch and very specific in the number of minutes that they can stay glued to the tube. Anyway, we try to create a unique relationship with each child. Each of them have different personalities so we tend to deal with them individually. We are not only parents to them, but we are friends to them also. That is our way for them to be open to us about everything that's happening within their lives. It's funny because when go out as a family, other people always thought that we are sibblings and they were looking for our parents. Then we always have to tell them that we are the parents. We always spend "quality quantity time" with our kids by playing with them and getting to know them more. My children loves doing sports like swimming, biking and basketball with my husband. With me, it's mostly arts and crafts, reading storybooks, playing hide and seek and eating. It is very important for me and my hubby to let the kids enjoy their childhood. Lastly, it's very important for us to teach them how to pray. My husband and I are both religious and we want our kids to be the same also.