Parents should never put too much pressure on their child to be successful.
It used to be that parents celebrated their toddlers’ success because it was fun to watch their little ones grow up and achieve new things.
More and more, though, parents are pushing their toddlers toward success because the parents want to live vicariously through their kids.
Many parents, in fact, are using their toddlers in order to feel better about themselves and their parenting skills.
But what impact does this have on the toddlers?
Children are now extensions of their parents’ sense of self in a way that is new and unprecedented. “More than in the past, children are viewed as a project by perfectionist parents. Today’s parents are imposing on their kids a violence of raised expectations. They are using their children for their own needs. We’ve decreased the threat of physical violence but increased the psychological violence.” – Steven Mintz, professor of history at the University of Houston and author of Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood.
Sure, kids need to be nurtured and you can impact the type of people you’d like them to be as adults, but you need to know where to draw the line.
Is your identity wrapped up in your kids so much that you believe that if they don’t do well in a particular activity that it means you’ve failed as a parent?
Are you sending messages to your kids that what they’re doing isn’t good enough and that they need to strive for better and better all the time?
Do you continue to push them toward success to the point that your little one doesn’t even know what it’s like to make his or her own decisions about what they’d like to do?
These are important questions to ask yourself – especially if you have your little one engaged in lots of extra-curricular activities.
What do you think? Share your comments below.
Rocking The Cradle of Class [Psychology Today]
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