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Ten Sure Ways to Ruin Your Children
by Dr. Nancy Moelk
I have been helping people with parenting for over 30 years. Much of what I have to offer is from all the mistakes I made with my own four children. Here is what I consider the top ten ways to ruin your children. We should all know by now that we have made mistakes. Those of us who can’t admit it are to be pitied. So see if you can find a couple things on this list that you haven’t done and pat yourself on the back!
1. Insist on making everything about you and not them.
2. Try to control how they feel and what they think.
3. Be more concerned about your image as a mom than their development when they make mistakes.
4. Try to keep them from the consequences of their choices because it is too painful to watch.
5. Micromanage their lives, living through their successes and failures.
6. Never really be present to them in the moment. Instead, be lost in your own head or drama.
7. When they share how they feel, try to fix it instead of just listening.
8. Compare them to yourself or others.
9. Criticize more than you praise. Focus on the negative.
10. Make sure they can’t win no matter what they say or do. Correct, contradict and one-up everything.
Forget about where they have to go to school, how much TV they watch, whether they have extra-curricular activities or the latest fashion. All those things you think matter don’t have much impact on them. Who you are and whether you have the ability to connect to them, respect them and love them as a person in their own right separate from you will go further to aid their emotional health and development than anything else. And saying you are sorry once in a while is helpful, too. The other vital element in any family system is for you to be willing to work on your junk. I mean the junk you carry from all your childhood conflicts. The junk of your resentment, bitterness, resignation and negativity. The junk of your injuries where you longed for love, and no one showed up. Engaging God to help you clean up the messy yard of your soul will do more for your kids than everything else combined. And you won’t have to teach it. This is something they will catch automatically by your being a role model.