Toxic Parents: 6 Characteristics
What if the people who are most supposed to protect and care for us harm us and make us feel bad? How do toxic parents act? What traits characterize them?
It seems that some parents go beyond simple mistakes and manifest harmful behaviors that affect the emotional growth and education of their children. Now, this does not mean that they are not educated or abandoned, but that sometimes, the way of relating to them and acting as parents is not adequate.
No one is born knowing
It is evident that parents are not born with an educational guide under our arms. We all face those first cries of the baby that we do not know how to manage. “What will happen to him?” “Am I being a good father?” They are normal doubts. The secret is attachment, affection, understanding and patience.
However, not all parents follow this parenting model. On the contrary, toxic parents carry out a series of practices that are not at all convenient for the optimal growth of the child. Let’s see what they consist of.
If you are not the best, you do not exist
Some parents demand and demand perfection from their children. They are very critical of them and only seek to achieve excellence in all areas. Such is their demand that children later feel humiliated, anxious and disappointed with themselves.
This way of educating based on reaching the top, the maximum, makes them very tense and anguished. Furthermore, the emotional damage they suffer is even more profound if their parents are constantly reminding them of their mistakes. Extreme pressure prevents them from being able to enjoy the achievements that they are achieving in their life.
Often times, these parents plan the professional career of all their descendants. It is his way of controlling them. In this way, they force them to live the life they have built for themselves and do not let their children make their own decisions or chart their own course.
Or with me or without anyone
They are those excessively and compulsively protective parents. Those who do not let their child attend a classmate’s birthday or go to the movies with his friends for fear that something will happen to him or lose him.
They are people who fear loneliness, therefore, they prevent their children from having any iota of independence. It does not mean that it is best to let them do their own thing, but excessive control is as harmful as extreme laxity.
It is necessary for children to acquire a certain degree of autonomy according to their age. It is good to let them do activities outside the home. However, absorbing parents make them feel guilty just because they want to be with other people. Of course, this situation is greatly aggravated in the adolescent stage. Especially when friends and boyfriends start to appear.
Dare to be better than me
As difficult as it may seem to understand, there are parents who compete with their children. For example, it is common to find disputes between mother and daughter out of pure physical rivalry or parents who ridicule their children in sports to stand out and stand out from them.
They are usually parents who have seen some kind of dream frustrated during their childhood or have had parents who have done the same with them. In this way, they discharge the frustration that they have accumulated during all this time in the little ones. It is a way of blaming them for their own misfortunes, a hurtful way of venting anger and rage.
Trust only me
Another type of toxic parent adopts a manipulative attitude, either consciously or unconsciously. For example: “Nobody is going to take care of you like I do” or “don’t go out tonight because you already know that your mother gets very bad on her nerves. You don’t want us to have to go to the hospital, right?
As experts in detecting vulnerabilities and weaknesses of others, they believe they have the power and the right to get what they want. And all this at the expense of their own children. They take advantage of childlike innocence to do and undo as they please.
Love me like I’ve never loved you
On many occasions, we have put on the table the importance of attachment during the first years of a child’s life. The bond that the baby generates with his mother, father and other important figures in his environment, determines his later development.
Therefore, if the parents deprive him of that affection, do not show him any kind of affection or simply do not create an emotional bond with him, the repercussions can be very serious. The family model must be based on love and trust. If this is lacking, the social relationships that the child maintains in the future will be very fruitless.
This is only done by toxic parents
Nor should it be forgotten that imitation is the basis of the child’s learning. Therefore, all habits, customs and other behaviors are learned from adults with little difficulty.
Be careful with what we show our children: vocabulary, behaviors, comments… They absorb everything and then it is difficult to patch it up. Parents are role models for them and toxic parents, unfortunately, too.
Linked to this idea is the opportunity we have to teach them healthy lifestyle habits. Eating well, doing sports frequently, not drinking alcohol or toxic substances, sleeping enough hours … If it is not instilled from the cradle, it is difficult to start doing it when one is already immersed in other types of routines.
There is no doubt that each family has its own circumstances. But having harmful behavior with your children is not justifiable. Toxic parents do not seem to be aware that they are educating their children in the wrong way. And not only that, but they are causing them severe damage that can be chronic.
