As a parent, it is important to teach your child the life skills that will help him become responsible and independent. Avoiding this teaching is a big parenting mistake and it will make your child so clingy and dependent on you. You have a vital role to play in just how self-sufficient their children will be as adults. Teaching life skills, supporting children academically, and through social and emotional challenges are good places to start.
Here are five parenting mistakes you should avoid to raise a highly responsible and independent individual:
- Shielding children from anxiety, failure, and disappointment
It is not easy for a parent to see their child experience anxiety, failure, and disappointment. However, shielding children from a setback robs them of the chance to develop the emotional muscle they need to deal with failure and disappointment in the future.
Parents should always show empathy when children experience these situations and emotions. But instead of shielding children, parents can serve as a coach to help their young ones learn how to handle them.
When children experience failure, parents can work to reframe that failure into an opportunity for learning and growth. Children can also benefit from hearing parents talk about their own setbacks or failures to let kids see that failure is a normal part of life and not something to be feared.
2. Not setting boundaries or limits for children
While completely controlling a child’s life can be detrimental, going to the other extreme of letting children do whatever they want, can also have negative consequences.
As children grow and mature they need parents and other important adults in their life to help them learn and understand appropriate ways to behave. Without this guidance, children could find themselves feeling socially lost, and without self-discipline to accomplish small tasks and larger goals. Worse, if parents give into their child’s every whim the child may expect others to do the same which isn’t the way the real world works.
Read also: 7 Important Life Skills To Teach Your Children At An Early Age
3. Letting children avoid responsibility
Children who learn responsibility understand the importance of pitching in and working side-by-side with others on a task. They also obtain skills to better understand how to organize and complete a task. But any child that is not given the chance to practice and demonstrate responsibility in childhood is also not likely to demonstrate it in adulthood.
4. Comparing children with other children
It can be so tempting to determine how your children are faring by comparing them to other children. You may find yourself looking for markers of your children’s success by questioning if your child is reading at the same rate as other children.
Believing that your child needs to do the same activities, attain the same milestones on the same schedule as other children can lead you to push your children into activities they don’t enjoy and into classes that are not a good fit. This ultimately dwindles your child’s self-esteem.
Read also: 10 Tips To Encourage Child’s Independence
5. Trying to be a perfect parent who raises perfect children
The responsibility of parenthood can feel overwhelming. Some people respond to this by trying to do everything “right,” including never showing sad or angry emotions and giving children everything they could possibly need (or oftentimes simply want) to attain a narrow definition of success.
When you try to be a perfect person, you are not modeling the resiliency that your children will need when they become adults. Having been shielded from their parent’s flaws, children may look at their own flaws as tragedies which could lead to low self-esteem and make them clingy and dependent.
Trending video of the day;
Photo credit: Getty