Demanding Parents: 7 Things They Get Wrong

Raising and educating a child well is not easy. Although most parents want the best for their children, the different ways of educating do not work in the same way in all subjects. Thus, the educational strategies that are used are not always the most appropriate to achieve the autonomy and correct development of a boy or girl.

Overprotection, authoritarianism, ambiguity... all this can lead children to form an idea of the reality that may or may not serve for their correct adaptation to the vital circumstances that touch them live. Among all these characteristics of different types of education we can find the exaggerated demand, which can cause various problems in children. For this reason, this article is going to focus on demanding parents and the seven aspects or things in which they are wrong.

• Related article: "Toxic Families: 4 Ways They Cause Mental Disorders"

Demanding too much: when discipline and effort are taken too far

There are very different ways of educating. The pattern of behavior that we use when educating our children,

the way of interacting between parents and children, how they are taught, reinforced, motivated and expressed are what is called parental style.

It is common that, in an increasingly liquid and dynamic society, many families choose to try to impose discipline on their progeny, trying to instill the culture of effort and motivate children to always aspire to the maximum and seek to achieve the perfection. This kind of parents tend to require their offspring to be active, try their best and they manage to fulfill all the objectives that are proposed to them with the maximum possible efficiency.

Overly demanding parents tend to have an authoritarian parenting style, characterized by having a basically one-way type of communication and little expressive, with a clear hierarchy and that provide clear and rigid rules, granting little autonomy to the minor and presenting a high level of control and high expectations regarding they. However, while discipline and effort are important, being overly demanding can lead to difficulties in the psycho-emotional development of boys and girls, such as those that can be seen continuation.

7 frequent mistakes derived from a high paternal demand

Using the occasional challenge as a way to increase performance can be effective. However, if it is a consistent pattern of behavior and is not accompanied by efficient communication and expression of coherent feelings, in some subjects this educational style can contribute to cause different problems of adaptation.

Some of the mistakes especially demanding parents make are the following.

1. Pushing doesn't increase performance

Although encouraging effort and improving results can be useful to increase the performance of in a timely manner, maintaining a high level of demand over time can in fact cause the effect contrary: performance may decrease thinking that one is not good enough, or due to the persevering search for an improvement in the results obtained.

2. Error intolerance

It is common for demanding parents not to sufficiently reinforce their children's efforts, nevertheless noticing the presence of some errors. For this reason, the idea that is transmitted to the children is that the error is something bad, that must be avoided. Thus a intolerance towards error, which can lead to the next point, the birth of perfectionism.

3. An excess of perfectionism is not good

Excessive demands in childhood can cause children to feel that what they do is never enough, not feeling satisfied with what they do throughout their lives. Thus, these people develop the need to do things as well as possible, seeking perfection. In the long run This makes them people do not finish the tasks, since they repeat them over and over again in order to improve them.

4. Unrealizable expectations are created

Believing in one's own possibilities and those of others is good. However, These expectations need to be realistic.. Too high and unrealizable expectations cause frustration at the inability to meet them, which in turn can cause a negative self-perception of one's own abilities.

5. Demanding too much can cause insecurity and low self-esteem

If the demand is not followed by recognition of the effort made, the boy or girl you won't feel like your efforts were worth it. In the long run, they can develop severe anxiety and depression problems, as well as learned helplessness thinking that her efforts will not change the final result.

6. Focusing on compliance can cause a lack of self-motivation

Getting a child too focused on what she needs to do can cause her to ignore what she wants to do. If this situation occurs persistently, said boy or girl in the present adult stage emotional blocks and inability or difficulty in self-motivation, because they have not finished developing their own interests in childhood.

7. It can cause problems in personal relationships

The children of very demanding parents tend to learn the level of demand from their parents, and reproduce it in the future. Thus, it may be more difficult for them to socialize due to the high level of demand that they can present both towards themselves and towards other people in their relationships.

Recommendations to avoid these errors

The aspects mentioned so far are mainly due to the presence of pressure and high expectations, intolerance to errors and lack of reinforcement for one's own behavior. However, the fact of being a demanding parent does not necessarily imply that these problems appear, can be avoided with sufficient communication and emotional expression. Some tips or recommendations when it comes to avoiding the indicated deficits could be the following.

Accompany better than instruct

The pressure these children feel is very high, sometimes being unable to do what they would like to do at the level that their loved ones would want. To avoid this, it is recommended that the expectations transmitted to the children be realistic and adjusted to the abilities demonstrated by the minor, avoiding extremism.

With regard to intolerance to errors, this does not occur if the boy or girl is taught in question that making mistakes is not bad nor does it mean failure, but rather they are an opportunity to improve and learn. And that even in the case of failure, this does not imply that they stop loving them.

Value your effort and not your achievements

Much of the problem that this type of education produces is the no evaluation of the effort carried out. The solution is to consider the importance of the effort made by the children, regardless of the results, and contribute to making this effort come to fruition. This is especially important when the child does an activity correctly, in which sometimes he does not congratulate himself when it is considered something normal and expected.

Confidence in children's abilities is essential in order to motivate them and boost your self esteem. In order not to devalue the abilities of children, it is recommended that if there is something that needs to be corrected, try to indicate positive way and without incurring criticism, or at all focusing it on the activity or the objective to be achieved and not on the child and his her ability.

Bibliographic references:

• Baumrind, D. (1991). Parenting styles and adolescent development. In J. Brooks-Gun, R. Lener and A. c. Petersen (Eds.), The encyclopaedia of adolescence (pp. 746- 758). New York: Garland.

• Baumrind, D. (1996). The Discipline Controversy Revised. Family Relations, 4 (4), 405-414.

• Chen, X., Dong, Q., and Zhou, H. (1997). Authoritative and authoritarian parenting practices and social and school performance in Chinese children. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 21, 855-873.

• Del Barrio, M. v. and Roa, M. L. (2004). Parenting practices, maternal personality and social class. Proceedings of the II Spanish-Portuguese Congress of Psychology