These are some of the most common parenting mistakes and how to correct them.
Avoiding and Neglecting Your Child
Neglecting a child is a very common type of child abuse and it is just as harmful as any type of physical abuse. By leaving their children unsupervised in dangerous situations, ignoring their needs, or generally making them feel useless and worthless, parents actually become a huge factor and cause of children’s lowered self-esteem. This usually leads to children closing up and isolating themselves. Treating them like this can leave them with many long-term psychological scars.
To prevent that from happening you need to make your children feel loved and appreciated. Pay attention to them, talk to them and bond with them as much as possible. Make sure they know they can talk to you.
Physical or Verbal Abuse
Physical and verbal abuse can be extremely damaging for obvious reasons. In most cases these types of abuses occur when parents vent their frustrations at their children. They come home irritated because of something that happened at work and then take it out on their children.
Punishment may not entirely be a bad thing. Sometimes, we punish kids for their own good, to teach them a lesson and prevent them from hurting themselves. However, if a child is constantly yelled and being physically harmed for every single mistake they make, they will come to fear you and avoid talking to you whenever they have a problem.
For these and many more reasons, it is important that you avoid using insults and spanking as a form of punishment. You can opt for giving them an earlier curfew or extra chores. Developing healthy communication skills so that you can have mature conversations with your kids about this is crucial.
Setting a Bad Example
Many parents sadly turn a blind eye to their children’s behaviour and do nothing to stop it. In most cases, this comes from disbelief. Parents simply refuse to believe that their child could do anything wrong and it ends up harming a child more than it helps them. What parents fail to realise is that bad behaviour comes from the house. By behaving poorly and using slurs in front of children we set a bad example.
This is why we as parents need to work on ourselves to become better for our children. Start working on developing some healthy and positive habits. If you treat yourself well, your children will observe and ‘take notes’. Teach them how to implement these healthy habits by showing them.
Favouritism or Partiality
If you have two or more children, you need to make them all feel equally loved and appreciated. Showing more affection to one child and giving it more attention, can harm your other children. Even the child that is being favoured can be harmed by this behaviour. This type of treatment is damaging to all children. In most families, boys and older children are the ones getting the special treatment which ends up making other children feel neglected and inferior, and as we already mentioned, neglect can be very damaging to children’s mental health.
For these reasons, making sure that all of your children get the same amount of attention, love and support is very important. Try to make personal bonds with every one of them through the things they love and are interested in. This also has to be applied to your ways of punishing them when they do something wrong. You can’t favour one child and go easy on them while punishing the rest of them when they do the same.
Too Much Pampering or Interfering
Now, giving your child proper care, attention and love surely is needed. However, giving them too much of it to the point where they become spoiled and too dependent on you is not good. Many parents go out of their way and become very overprotective of their children. They interfere in their activities so much that when the children grow up they don’t know how to take care of themselves. Pampering them too much can be a problem. This can especially be a problem once you decide to send your children to a kindergarten. They will be refusing to go, hang out with other children and will most likely experience separation anxiety.
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To prevent that from happening, sending your child to a professional childcare centre where they can learn how to socialise with other children and be independent can be very healthy for them. Giving them small tasks that they need to solve on their own can also be very positive for your kids. It teaches them how to handle life on their own without your help.
Irresponsible Financial Attitude
Many parents don’t think about teaching their children about healthy financial attitudes and it shows. They go to two different extremes. Some cater to every wish their children have, while others are being selfish and calling it a ‘teaching technique’. Spoiled kids grow to become selfish and they never learn the value of money.
For that reason it is important for you to have a healthy conversation with them about money. Teach them what it’s like to earn money with their intelligence, work ethics and honest work, but don’t put the money on the pedestal. It is just a piece of paper and should never be more valued than friends, family, love, support, and many other things in life that just can’t be bought with money.
Not Trusting the Child
Lastly, not trusting your children and not giving them a chance to explain themselves can be very damaging to them. Let them form their opinions, let them have a word, and treat them as your equals. Being harsh with them and not letting them speak their minds will only pish them away from you and make them want to rebel. However, if your treat them as equals, they will come to respect your word and feel more comfortable opening up to you.
Conclusion
In conclusion, to help your child have a healthy and positive childhood and grow up to be a kind respectful person, treat them with kindness, show them how to do their best and offer them healthy amounts of support and love.
