Written by: Emily Joswiak • January 19, 2021• Mental Health Parenting

Common Parent Mistakes That Affect a Child’s Mental Health

If you have a child, you probably want only the best for them. The best childhood, the best education, and the best life possible. As a parent there’s a lot of weight on your shoulders; this should not be downplayed. Parenting is difficult, to be sure, but there are some common misconceptions about a few things. In order to make you feel like you’re prepared to raise your child as best you can, we’ve come up with a few common parent mistakes that affect a child’s mental health to watch out for.

Not Taking Their Feelings Seriously

When you’re an adult with real, everyday concerns, sometimes a child’s problems and feelings can be a lot to deal with. However, you have to remember they don’t have the experience dealing with turmoil that you do, so everything feels like the end of the world. Not taking these feelings seriously can lead to your child suppressing them and not learning how to cope with adversity correctly.

Praising Them for the Wrong Reasons

In recent years, it’s been discovered that how you praise a child and what you praise them for can drastically affect them. What you shouldn’t be doing is praising your child for being “smart” or “gifted,” as these imply a static world view. This can lead to a child that doesn’t work as hard because they believe everything should come to them naturally, which can have far-reaching detrimental effects later in life.

Not Having Strong Parent-Child Boundaries

We all know someone that describes themselves as their children’s “best friend.” This kind of thinking can be dangerous because it doesn’t set the right precedent for how a parent and child need to interact. Parents need to have the right boundaries in place unless they want power struggles in their home, where the child feels like they can do whatever they want because their parents aren’t real authority figures.

Not Instilling the Right Values in Them

It can be easy as your child gets a little older to just let them do their own thing, but you should still be trying to teach them the right lessons as they grow. If you want your child to be kind or have a generous spirit, you’ll need to set a good example for them as well as explain why those traits are important. Don’t let your child learn values from outside sources you can’t control. Stay the course with teaching them the correct values and don’t get complacent.

Not Letting Them Fail

One of the biggest parenting mistakes that can affect a child’s mental health is not letting them fail. Failure is an unfortunate part of life, but it’s also crucial to our growth as people. Without failure, no learning can happen. If you do everything for your child and never let them fail, they’ll never grow up to understand that failure is okay, and it shouldn’t grind them to a halt.

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Last modified: January 19, 2021