Just like a butterfly must experience the struggle of breaking out of the cocoon to strengthen its wings, so also our youth must mature into adulthood by experiencing failure, relating to difficult people, and other hard things we would like to protect them from. We can inadvertently prevent our children from growing into strong adults by helping them too much.
Ask any teacher what is their number one headache. Most of them will say “parents” hands down. Whoops. Don't sound to be rude but there's some truth to that statement. For all intent and purposes, we do not wish to be bad parents.
There are some damaging parenting styles which we may have unintentionally acquired and impose them upon our children without realizing the consequences. Below are some of them.
- Helicopter parents. One that tend to hover over their kids, keeping them from normal life difficulties and preventing them from learning from normal failure which would result in the life lesson of persevering.
-Karaoke parents. One that work hard at emulating their kids’ generation and try to be their buddies rather than the authority figure of parents. They fail to earn respect and to demand obedience.
- Dry cleaner parents. One who are always dropping their kids off for others to raise them or fix them. They fail to mentor their kids.
- Volcano parents. They tend to erupt all over school authorities without any warning.
- Dropout parents. Someone who give up, either just checking out of being a parent or literally leaving the family to fend for themselves. They fail to provide a role model.
- Bullied parents. They are beaten down by their strong-willed kids, intimidated by their threats. They have surrendered their authority.
- Groupie parents. One that idolize their children, making celebrities of their glorious offspring, lavishing things on them and denying nothing.
- Commando parents. They focus on perfection and compliance rather than being satisfied with growth and improvement.
Do you belong to one of those categories ? If you do, it's time to make a change. I bet you can think of someone you know who is also an example of each one of these. And of course, there is the blend too – where we do this sometimes and that other times.
What our children need is an adult in his life to make appropriate demands on one hand and to have appropriate responsiveness on the other. Remember that childhood is very fleeting, toddlers today and adolescents tomorrow. Whatever difficulty you are experiencing as a parent, you want to keep it in perspective.
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