Parenting blunders. What you should unlearn now and forever. (1)

Parenting can be an arduous task at times. The boundaries between good and bad are often too obscure to formulate /or follow a good parenting protocol. In the exasperating efforts at being a good parent, we keep committing parenting blunders at every other step of raising our children. Thankfully, most of us never mean to hurt, and our weirdest reprimands/punishments are targeted at our child’s well-being only, at least that’s what most parents think.

These everyday parenting blunders seem too innocuous, yet they lead to terrible long-term consequences. We must find out these gaffes and kick them out of our parenting toolbox as soon as possible.

‘Eyes can’t see what the mind does not know’ holds true in this context as well. Therefore, the first step would be to recognize these well-mingled, innocent-looking monstrous blunders before we can attempt to lock them away, once and forever.

Not surprising, each one is worse than the other, none deserving even the tiniest place in our beautiful journeys. I will try and talk about each one in detail with references to common scenarios faced by most parents and hope to enable you in identifying these ugly clones out with ease.

• Comparisons.
• Labeling/Name-calling.
• Belittling.
• {The belief that} Knowing = Doing.
• Equating Punishment to Discipline
• Gender-based parenting, and teaching.
• Making all decisions on your child’s behalf.
• Being a miser in encouragements and reward.

Parenting Blunder # 1 Comparisons.

Every child is unique, one of its kind. Comparisons are not only disturbing and hurtful, they have an immensely negative impact on their self-esteem. This one is, for sure, one of the worst parenting blunders that we all keep committing day in and day out.

Won’t it hurt if your boss kept comparing you to one colleague or the other? Pitiful and demoralizing! Young kids often face this predicament at the hands of their most trusted humans, the ‘PARENT’. Sadly, the impact is gigantic. Their tender minds are bewildered by this unwelcome barrage of comparisons when their achievements/or failures are judged against someone else’s standards, ignoring their individual potential.

Caregivers or Scaregivers? what do you wish to be?

We all wish to see improvement in our children and are desirous of inculcating good habits/behaviour. In this hot pursuit, we often want to set good examples by giving them comparisons to look up to. The tone of dialogue delivery and the content of your statement determine the message delivered: encouragement or insult. We often end up doing more harm than the good we intended.

There are hundreds of positively productive choices, and comparison is not one of them.

# Troubleshooting: Poor Grades. Desired outcome- Good grades.

Option1: Ruthless comparisons.

Aim: Make him realize he is doing bad, develop some guilt in his heart about not doing enough, and manipulate him into performing better.

• Why can’t you get an A+/like your brother/sister?
• How is it possible that all your classmates perform better than you?
• Your cousin got A+/in all. He doesn’t even ask for help.
• With these grades, I shall have to hide my face behind a veil. How can I face other (proud) parents?
• Do better next time, or you won’t get to celebrate your birthday like your sister.

Results/Effect:

• Hatred/dislike for his sibling/ classmates.
• Dislike/avoidance of studies, social gatherings, and events. Fear of being ridiculed.
• The child may mark himself as useless, thereby stops making any effort in this unprofitable pursuit.
• Regretful blow to the developing self-esteem of your precious little wonder.

Option 2: Encouragement and positive problem solving.

Sit with your child, talk about what can you do to make his grades better, does he need help in a subject, is there any distraction, or he needs some material/assistance to perform better? Appreciate the good, howsoever small, and don’t forget to encourage.

• I can see two As, that’s a very good thing I must say.
• However, there’s scope for improvement, we gotta work on changing the B’s to A’s and A’s to A +s.
• Today we can celebrate our success, and then let’s sit down to make a plan for improvement.
• Do you need some help with the studies, any material or book, or perhaps I can help get a grasp on a tough topic?

Result:

This shall instantly uplift the failing spirit of your child. The child will feel felicitous about his efforts and take responsibility for the failure/low score/poor grades. He’ll aspire to work harder knowing that you got his back, as parents are supposed to. Despite not being a perfect mark sheet, it gave you a rather perfect parenting opportunity.

Your child learned an excellent way to deal with failure, working towards improvement rather than lamenting over the failure/loss incurred.

Parenting Blunders # 2
Labeling your child.

Negative labels

Negative and disparaging labels sound like: coward, duffer, fool, useless, burden, liability, confused, clueless, always angry, forever sad, never happy, sad soul, idiot, nonsense, etc etc etc etc.

When the child is continuously called a particular name, s/he tends to imprint that label into his personality. Moreover, the casting is intense, and hard to get rid of. The child’s interpretation is often remarkably different from his/her parents’ intent.

What Parents say	What Kids interpret
Duffer	I am A duffer, I just can’t understand anything. Why even try?
Fatsy	Just wish I was slim like Alisha. Need to do something about it! (the root of bulimia, anorexia) My body is so ugly. I hate myself.
Demure	I am born shy. I can’t speak even if what I want to.
Fool/stupid/retarded	Why do I make a fool of myself, always? Should stay out alone rather than making fun of myself in front of others.
Angry-bird	I’ve got serious anger issues. Just can’t help being angry. It’s beyond my control. This is how I am.
Sad-soul	I can not stay happy. I am doomed to be sad until I live.

If we could look into the minds of our children, we would feel ashamed. Of course, none of us has any idea of the damage we are doing. No parent would ever wish to be the reason behind these crippling stigmas carried by their innocent children, often for the lifetime .

Positive labelling, one of the hidden parenting blunders.

One may think that parents who always taunt their kids with these negative-labels are bad at parenting, yet the over-enthusiastic praise-drooling ones are committing no less a blunder.

• My son is just beyond genius, he is gonna be a Nasa scientist one day.
• Alisha is a rockstar, she’s gonna ace the stage someday.
• Sania is a mathematics wizard. No equation is tough for her, ever.
• Hrithik has phenomenal cricketing skills. He is gonna leave Sachin behind in records.

These look and feel so encouraging, yet can be damaging beyond expectation at times.

For one, these put constant pressure on the child to keep up to the expected label. The child may start to see his loved sport/ field as a burden that needs constant attention to keep up to the mark and eventually lose interest. Kids lack adult maturity and often fall prey to the pressure.

When these kids can’t perform up to the expectation, they tend to self-blame, overexert, and may face serious health and mental issues.

Performance pressure can take its toll even on the most well-trained, and disciplined athletes. Do we need to subject our innocent little souls to such mighty trouble?

What’s the solution

Very simple. Label the quality, the behavior, the circumstance, anything but not your child.

• You are a bad boy can sound much better as: This was a bad thing to say/do. You should apologise and try not to repeat such bad behaviour in future.
• Duffer vs I see you are having difficulty in this area. How can we improve? I am here to help you if you may need it.
• Such a crybaby you are! You gonna be sulking in your tears forever. Don’t you know how to be happy like other kids do? Replace the blame-game with something positively encouraging and uplifting like- this seems to be a bit harsh time, I bet you are feeling very sad. It’s just normal not to be happy and gay all the time. We gotta deal with it and move on, with a smile.
• You are a fabulous dancer should sound like- That was a fabulous performance. In so proud of you. Keep it up.
• Master batsman vs This was a good batting performance, hard work always pays. Keep striving for the best.

A simple twist in the way of communication can be a great way of keeping the morale up and boosted.

Parenting blunders are as much a part and parcel of our parenting journeys as are parenting wonders. The task is to make a clear distinction between the two, making our superhero-ish efforts more prolific and less retrogressive. This is a huge undertaking, and stuffing it all in a single write-up would be an injustice to the detailed conversation needed in this regard. If you wish you continue reading, we can jump to for part-2 of the blog. (popping out of the oven soon)

The futility of negative parenting strategies like punishment/reprimands is well known, and the harm done outweighs any intended benefit. In my earlier blog, I have tried to address this particular menace in-depth and can be browsed here.