Parents, Don’t Leave a Hyper-Critical Legacy
Effective parents discipline their children. They lovingly teach their children family values and priorities. They promote healthy lifestyles and healthy interactions. Some parents, however, become overly critical in the response to the stress of parenting. They have well-meaning desires to instill healthy values in their children but become hyper-critical in the process. Their children don’t understand the motivation behind their parents’ constant criticism. They only see “accurate descriptions of reality” coming from the authority they love and desire to please. As a result, they internalize those criticisms and even develop a sense of shame that they “are not good enough.” That shame gives rise to perfectionism. Even more, they may develop anxiety that they “will never do the right thing” and distrust themselves, creating performance anxiety and procrastination to avoid that anxiety. In fact, adults who become overly critical parents leave a legacy in which their children:
- Become overly critical of themselves,
- Tend to become people-pleasers,
- Remain perfectionistic and judgmental of themselves and others,
- Become very sensitive to criticism from others,
- Remain hypervigilant in “reading” other people,
- Avoid conflict.
No parent desires to leave this type of legacy for their children. What can a parent do to avoid becoming overly critical?
- Learn about child development. Learning about child development can bring a parent’s expectations into check and assure they hold realistic, age-appropriate expectations for their children. You can learn about healthy child development in any number of books and websites.
- Take care of yourself. It is much easier for a parent to slip into hyper-criticism when they are tired or stressed. Get a healthy amount of sleep, eat a healthy diet, exercise.
- Develop healthy adult relationships. Your relationships with other adults can hold you, as a parent, accountable for the expectations and interactions you have with your children. Of course, this also necessitates the parents remain humble enough to be teachable.
- Engage in fun activities with your children. You can learn more about your children and their abilities through play than any other activity. Enjoy fun, imaginative, playful times with your children.
- Practice admiration and gratitude. Make it a daily habit to watch for opportunities to acknowledge aspects of your children’s character or ability that you admire. Make it a point to express gratitude to your children every day. You can thank them for a chore completed, an attitude held in check, a loving action shown, a sensitive or compassionate response…anything you are grateful to see your children do or say.
- Learn about effective styles of discipline. Read a book about discipline each year (here is a good one to start and here is a very practical one). Having the tools for effective discipline helps a parent avoid excessive criticism. And there are always more parenting ideas to learn.
Don’t leave the legacy of an overly critical parent for your children to battle with. Instead, engage in the six practices above to leave a legacy of joy for your children.
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