3 Common Mistakes Parents Make Raising Children and Corresponding Correct Behaviours

In this article, I’d like to talk about three important common mistakes parents make, their effects and corresponding correct behaviours:
HUMILIATING, COMPARING, AND CRITICISING.

children children raising kids

I’m about to give some statements that I’d like you to suppose are addressed to you, and notice the emotions they evoke in you.

I say: “Smiths care more about their children than you do.”

Your neighbour says: “Our son learned to read in just two months, hasn’t yours learned to read yet?”

Your spouse says: “Pam’s husband brings her flowers every day, such things never even cross your mind.”

Your boss says: “What kind of a question is that? How stupid can you get?”

When people talk to you like that you feel angry and distant, you may experience feelings of anxiety or humiliation. You feel inadequate and worthless, you may even wish to make the person addressing you feel bad in return. What’s more, you usually don’t feel like doing anything about the issue they talk about.

However these are the very same attitudes we often resort to, while communicating with our children. You may find the following statements rather familiar:

“Look how your brother is eating, why don’t you? He’s smarter than you.”

“Do you think I don’t know you’re lying to me?”

“Who are you to talk to me like that? How dare you? Shut up!”

“No one will like you if you do that, everybody will disapprove.”

“Mum, I got 90 on my test!” to which the reply is: “What did Michael get?”

Comparing children will usually fail to help you get the desired effect; even though it may sometimes look as if it’s working, you will have hurt your child’s self-worth and self-confidence. Many parents are unaware that individuals who struggle with such problems as alcohol and drug abuse, obsessions, exam anxiety or panic attack are raised by parents who regularly commit these three mistakes. If these parents knew, they’d be careful and desist. Now you know.

Correct Attitudes in Raising Children

When we humiliate children we build a wall between us that is hard to get over; we may think this wall is made of respect, whereas it’s made of feelings of fear, anger and worthlessness. Therefore we should try to set boundaries through making children feel valued.

  • We need to aim to accept every child individually instead of comparing them to others, and to notice and point out small improvements. For example in order to encourage your child to eat, you can say:
    “Look at you:)! How much better you’ve eaten than yesterday, you’ve finished up your rice, I’m very happy about it.”
  • When we tell children others will disapprove of their behaviour, we set the society as the point of reference. This will teach them to be ashamed when they fail to conform to some norms. They will
    be more dependent on other’s approval while making decisions, less confident on their own values and intuition. You can deal with sibling violence in this way:
    “When you hit your brother, others may criticise you, it’s not what others think that matters but whether you like what you do. Are you happy with your own behaviour as a big sister when you hit your brother? Wouldn’t you be sad if your brother didn’t share anything with you, or keep his distance when he grows up because of your treatment of him?”
  • Focus on understanding instead of blaming. You can ask your child:
    “How would parents need to be for children to tell them the truth all the time? What would you tell me if you could tell the truth?”
  • When your child tells you he got 90 on his test, he needs to hear your approval. Your praise will encourage him to keep working. You may say:
    “Congratulations, your efforts have paid off, how did you do that?”

Most of us have been wounded by parental mistakes. As a consequence we tend to repeat the same mistakes our parents made, with our own children. Therefore sometimes we may need to warn and protect them from our own shortcomings. For example if you suffer from bursts of anger you can create a temporary protective buffer zone: “I have difficulty controling my anger. Whilst I am working on it I want you to back off when I’m angry, because sometimes I say nasty words I regret, despite myself.”

Many serious mental health problems stem from parents’ resorting to criticism, humiliation and comparison with very good intentions. Parenting is an enormously hard and growth provoking task. You need all the help you can get. You can explore other resources in this website to help you as parents in this difficult task.

Please share your thoughts, experiences, questions and feedback in the Comments section below. I read each comment and reply.

Photograph: Spirit-Fire
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr

Irem Bray

İrem Bray is a graduate of Bosphorus University Department of Psychology and London University Institute Of Psychiatry. She sees life as a journey of reciprocal discovery and opportunity to share gifts. She develops projects which, starting from the uniqueness of the individual, transform the society in a circular way. She works with her team, using the latest technologies, to train family therapists, and conduct sessions with people throughout the world, especially with Turks and those associated with Turks, to improve systems such as individuals, couples, families and companies. You can now contact İrem and her team at [email protected] or 0090 538 912 33 36, 0044 738 7763244 Contact her at http://irembray.com

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