How to be a good parent
Parenting is often shaped by what parents consider right, desirable or important. In the process, their own wishes and expectations may take precedence over their child’s feelings, needs, abilities and capacities. Understanding our approach to parenting therefore begins with a simple but important question: do we accept our child with all their individual qualities, allow them to express their own personality, and recognise the moments when we ask too much of them, react too harshly, give in unnecessarily or change the rules? Our answers reveal the relationship we are building with our child and how willing we are to adapt our parenting to their actual needs.
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Emotional closeness as a foundation for parenting
The atmosphere in which a child grows up has a strong influence on their development. The warmth of family relationships, a sense of acceptance, and the ways parents and children express their feelings to one another all have a particular part to play. This emotional connection does more than shape how a child feels within their own family. It also shapes their understanding of relationships between people. Experiences in childhood can influence how they later approach raising their own children when they become parents themselves. Yet the quality of the parent–child relationship is not determined solely by the parent’s qualities and actions. Children play an active part in that relationship from birth. Their temperament, responses and individual needs also influence adult behaviour, which is why the relationship with each child develops in its own way.
Why does the same parenting approach not suit every child?
Parents with two or more children are often surprised by how different their experiences can be. One child may grow up with relatively few day-to-day difficulties, while another needs much more attention, flexibility and patience. An approach that worked extremely well with one child may be entirely ineffective with another, or even provoke the opposite response. These differences are not unusual. From a very early age, children differ in many ways. Some of these characteristics are largely innate and cannot be changed substantially through parenting. Temperament, physical characteristics, sex, health and adaptability are just some of the factors that influence children’s behaviour and the way parents respond to them. Some babies have relatively predictable sleeping and feeding patterns, are generally content and healthy, and adapt easily to everyday care. Parents find it easier to recognise and meet their needs. Other babies cry frequently, become irritable easily, and have their own feeding and sleeping patterns that parents find hard to follow. Their behaviour may seem unpredictable, and attempts to establish a regular routine do not always produce the hoped-for results. For a mother, daily life like this can become deeply exhausting. Constant tiredness and tension sometimes give way to disappointment and doubts about her own abilities. When others fail to understand, particularly when they make comments about the baby’s crying, those doubts about her parenting can become even stronger. Yet the fact that one child needs more attention and patience than another does not in itself mean that their parents are doing a poorer job. Understanding children’s behaviour means taking their individual differences into account.
A perfect parent is not what a child needs
There is no single recipe for perfect parenting, nor does a child need an adult who never makes mistakes. What matters much more is having a parent who loves, understands and guides them, while taking responsibility for decisions the child is not yet able to make alone. Parenting involves guidance, boundaries and care for a child’s wellbeing, while the child gradually learns to take responsibility for tasks they are ready to manage. Every parent is entitled to their own beliefs and personal approach to raising children. Patience and consistency, however, give that approach a stability the child can rely on. As children learn to trust a parent through everyday interactions, it becomes easier for them to develop confidence in themselves and their abilities. These experiences also gradually shape their trust in other people, providing an important foundation for becoming a mature, responsible adult. The source text identifies growing up without significant developmental difficulties as one indicator of successful parenting. That assessment, however, is no substitute for understanding the parent–child relationship itself.
Accepting a child means getting to know them as they are
Parental love is not expressed only through meeting daily needs. It also involves accepting a child as a person in their own right, with qualities that may not match our wishes and expectations. If a child is lively, it is unrealistic to expect them to be quiet and reserved all the time. Equally, a cautious, more timid child should not be expected to be outgoing, quick and ready to respond immediately in every situation. Acceptance means respecting a child’s nature rather than constantly trying to mould it to fit a preconceived idea of the ideal child.
When a child does not feel loved
Emotional disengagement can take different forms, from coldness and indifference to a marked dislike of the child. A lack of parental love is difficult for a child to bear. What matters is not only what parents feel, but also how far the child can recognise and experience their love. Parents may genuinely love their child but struggle to show that love sufficiently because they are overwhelmed by work, worries or other problems. Although they attend to the child’s needs every day, their attention may be constantly occupied by other responsibilities. The child may then feel that their parents are physically present but emotionally distant. They notice that their parents’ thoughts are elsewhere and may conclude that what happens to them, how they feel or what they want to share is not important enough to attract their parents’ interest. This experience of emotional unavailability can be painful even when the parents’ love is real.
Separation from parents and feelings of rejection
Some parents work hard to give their child a comfortable life while leaving most of the direct care to other people. The child may spend each day with carers and weekends and holidays with relatives. In some families, a child lives with their grandparents for years, even when there is no pressing need for this arrangement. The source text draws particular attention to prolonged separation in the first years of life, linking it to possible difficulties in forming emotional closeness and trust later on. In that account, children may struggle to establish the relationship they need with their parents when they return, having experienced the earlier separation as rejection. Children may also begin to believe that they are responsible for the lack of parental attention. Rather than understanding the circumstances behind the separation, they may conclude that they are not good, clever, obedient, successful or attractive enough to deserve love. Such beliefs can undermine their confidence and their view of their own abilities. Feeling insecure, a child may begin looking for ways to attract their parents’ attention and gain their affection. Sometimes this takes the form of pronounced tantrums, aggressive behaviour, refusal to eat or refusal to speak. The original account describes how, when these attempts fail to bring the closeness the child wants, their reactions may become more pronounced, leading to intense aggression or, conversely, withdrawal and social isolation. These consequences should not be seen as inevitable outcomes of every separation. They are possible patterns described in the source material; how widely they apply requires professional assessment.
Why can a parent find it difficult to accept their own child?
The reasons for emotionally rejecting a child can be complex, and parents are often not fully aware of what influences their behaviour. One possible reason lies in their own upbringing. A parent who did not experience enough acceptance may unconsciously repeat their parents’ patterns of behaviour. Sometimes unresolved anger and hostility towards their own parents find expression in their relationship with their child. In other cases, adults recognise in the child qualities they regard as their own shortcomings and react to them with aversion. A particularly harmful form of this behaviour occurs when a parent uses the child to hurt the other parent. This can happen during separation or divorce, when unresolved conflicts between adults begin to affect their relationship with the child. What these examples have in common is the possibility that children bear the emotional consequences of experiences, feelings and conflicts that belong to the adults.
Inconsistent parenting: when the rules change with a parent’s mood
Children find boundaries easier to understand when their parents’ responses are reasonably consistent. Rules that keep changing, by contrast, can leave them insecure and confused. Inconsistent parenting may be particularly likely when parents are overwhelmed by daily responsibilities, exhausted, or short of time and patience. A mother who is constantly tired may punish her child for behaviour she would usually overlook, then allow the very same thing the next day. Sometimes she gives in simply because she needs a break or wants to finish a task without interruption. A similar situation can arise with fathers who spend little time with their children because of work. Wanting to avoid conflict during their time together, they allow almost anything until the child’s behaviour begins to frustrate them. At that point, even a minor incident can trigger sudden, excessively harsh punishment. Children find it difficult to understand why the same thing is sometimes allowed and sometimes punished. They gradually lose confidence in their own understanding of the rules and in the predictability of their parents’ responses. This confusion may be accompanied by fear and doubts about whether their parents’ love is truly constant. The source text describes the possibility that children defend themselves against these feelings through various behavioural difficulties and reactions it calls neurotic.
Parents are allowed to make mistakes—and are responsible for acknowledging them
No parent can be entirely consistent all the time. Occasional unfairness, a poor decision or a reaction shaped by tiredness are part of real family life. A parent’s willingness to acknowledge their own mistake can change how a child experiences such a situation. Children can understand that a parent has made a mistake or been inconsistent, especially when the adult openly accepts responsibility instead of blaming the child for their own actions. This creates the possibility that an occasional mistake will not damage the trust being built through the relationship.
When a mother and father have different rules
Inconsistency does not arise only in the actions of one parent. It can also stem from disagreement between a mother and father about how to raise their child. Different views on parenting are not necessarily the greatest difficulty in themselves. Children can adapt to their parents having different approaches, particularly if the parents accept and respect those differences. The conflicts that arise from disagreements about parenting can be a much greater problem. If one parent forbids something and the other immediately allows it, a child will understandably turn more often to the more permissive parent. Yet this does not simply work to that parent’s advantage. According to the source explanation, the child may also lose trust in both parents because their decisions no longer seem reliable. Parents therefore do not have to think exactly alike. What matters much more is that their disagreements do not become a source of ongoing conflict and insecurity for the child.
Unrealistic expectations: when a child’s life becomes a parent’s plan
Some parents imagine their child’s future long before the child has a chance to show their own interests and abilities. They expect success in everything, the best results, and development according to a predetermined plan that leaves too little room for the child’s individual needs. This relationship often involves constant direction, advice and demands. Resistance is not accepted, and failing to meet expectations may bring punishment. The parent schedules almost every activity: when the child eats, sleeps and plays, what they wear, and whom they spend time with. Particular emphasis is placed on tidiness, cleanliness and readiness to follow every instruction without hesitation. Above all, the child is expected to obey. Their wishes and current capacities often take second place, while success is measured by how closely they follow their parents’ plans. These children sometimes begin learning foreign languages, taking music lessons, attending ballet classes or joining other organised activities at a very early age. Yet the number of activities alone does not determine the quality of their development. Problems arise when the demands become more than the child can manage.
The consequences of constant pressure to be the best
A child who must constantly achieve high results may begin to experience every failure as a disappointment to their parents. When expectations exceed their actual abilities, frustration arises because they cannot meet the demands placed on them. That experience can lead to feelings of inadequacy and, later, guilt. The pressure to be perfect at everything leaves little room for the natural process of learning through attempts, mistakes and the gradual mastery of new skills. The source text also notes that parental plans based on such excessive demands often do not work out. Despite all the effort and constant control, a child’s future may not match the expectations laid out in advance.
Parents who constantly criticise
Some parents almost never show satisfaction with anything their child does. Even when they are pleased with a child’s behaviour or achievement, they hold back praise for fear that recognition might spoil the child or stop them making an effort. Instead of encouragement, the relationship is marked by frequent negative comments, reprimands and criticism. The child is compared with peers who are supposedly cleverer, more successful or better, and is sometimes subjected to taunts or ridicule. Being constantly confronted with their supposed shortcomings can gradually undermine a child’s confidence. Rather than developing trust in their abilities, they begin to doubt their worth. They may feel less capable and less successful than others, an experience often accompanied by dissatisfaction with themselves. When children rarely receive recognition for their efforts and what they have done well, criticism can become the lens through which they begin to see and judge themselves.
Overprotection: when care begins to limit independence
In the first months and years of life, a child depends heavily on adults. A parent’s willingness to protect them, help them and meet their needs is then an essential part of their care. As children grow, however, their capabilities change. They gradually want to try more things for themselves, and parental help needs to keep pace with that development. Problems arise when a parent continues to act as though a child is entirely helpless, even when they are ready to take on simple activities. A child wants to eat by themselves, put on their shoes or reach for an object, but the parent keeps stopping them. The parent warns that they are too young, do not know how, might fall or might get dirty, then does the task for them. These responses may come from genuine concern, but they also deprive the child of a chance to try out their own abilities. If adults repeatedly take over things children could learn to do themselves, independence becomes harder to develop. Children may remain overly dependent on their parents, unsure of their abilities and fearful of new experiences.
How does a child respond when they are not allowed to grow up?
A child who feels constantly supervised may develop strong resistance to parental restrictions. Sometimes that resistance appears as anger, excessive demands or disobedience at home. Outside the home, the same child may seem unusually quiet, obedient, timid and unsure of themselves. In these circumstances, a child may feel that their mother is always there, will not allow them to take any risks and, regardless of their actual abilities, still sees them as a small child. The source text also links overprotection with the possibility of a child becoming demanding and focused primarily on their own needs. It describes difficulties in forming friendships, as well as later problems in communicating with other people.
Why do parents become overprotective?
There can be different reasons why a child holds a particular place in a parent’s life. Sometimes the child has a health difficulty or a developmental disorder that heightens the parents’ need to protect them. In other families, the child’s birth was long awaited. It may have followed difficulties conceiving, infertility or a pregnancy that needed special care to continue. In some cases, the parents’ relationship was already affected by serious marital problems before the child was born. In those circumstances, a mother may experience the child’s arrival as a kind of reward after earlier difficulties, disappointments and unmet expectations. The original account describes these mothers as highly responsible, strongly committed to their families and driven by a pronounced need to provide maternal care. In the family pattern described, fathers are often less involved in decision-making and have less authority in relation to the mother and child. Overprotection may then be linked to a parent’s particularly intense emotional focus on the child.
When overprotection turns into excessive permissiveness
Some children raised with a highly protective approach begin to behave rebelliously, defiantly and very demandingly towards their mothers. In trying to please the child or avoid conflict, a mother may become increasingly permissive while the child tries to take control of everyday situations. One example given is behaviour in a shop. A child demands that something be bought for them and, when they do not get what they want, reacts with loud protests and a pronounced outburst in an attempt to change the parent’s decision. If the parent seems helpless and repeatedly gives in, the relationship may become marked by ever greater demands from the child and an ever weaker parental ability to set boundaries.
Excessive strictness: when obedience matters more than development
A strict parenting approach often rests on the expectation that a child will obey without question and conform to the parent’s rules. Parents may then place excessive limits on behaviour that is normal for a child’s age. Shrieking, jumping, running, banging and lively play can be tiring for adults, but they are also part of children’s natural ways of expressing themselves and playing. Problems arise when a parent sees this behaviour primarily as disobedience to be suppressed. Excessive strictness can also appear in demands that do not match a child’s developmental maturity. A three-year-old, for example, may be expected to put away their toys entirely alone, even though they still need help or guidance with the task. A naturally lively child may be expected to sit motionless when visiting other people, touch nothing, scatter no objects and show impeccable manners at every moment. Such expectations can exceed the child’s actual developmental capacities.
When a parent tries to shape a child in their own image
Parents who are excessively strict often put considerable energy into trying to make their child exactly like themselves. They may justify this approach by believing that strict discipline will best prepare the child for the future and prevent them from becoming spoilt. When a child has a great deal of energy or is not obedient enough, some parents seek a psychologist’s help, believing the behaviour to be a problem. They try to secure complete obedience through punishment and frequent, lengthy lectures about what the child may and may not do. Yet children are often not developmentally ready to understand much of these explanations. Instead of taking in the intended message, they may become confused and frightened. Excessive external control can limit the development of independence and the ability to initiate activities and make decisions. The consequences may also be apparent in relationships with peers. A child may be exceptionally polite and obedient among adults, who often praise them and hold them up as an example to others. Among peers, however, they may struggle to take part on equal terms in shared games and activities, and may experience rejection.
Harsh punishment does not mean a child has learnt to manage their behaviour
The source text links particularly serious consequences to harsh punishment, especially physical punishment. A child who is unusually quiet and obedient at home may behave very differently at nursery or school. With peers, they may become rough and aggressive, trying to establish dominance at any cost. This difference in behaviour is described as a sign that the child has not developed their own internal control, but behaves in response to pressure from adults. Interestingly, in this respect, excessively strict parenting is linked to a similar problem that can arise with highly permissive parents. In both cases, children may struggle to develop independent control of their behaviour, even though the parents’ approaches are almost opposites. Excessive strictness involves a great deal of supervision and restriction, but too little understanding. Children adapt to external demands without sufficiently developing the ability to manage their own behaviour.
Hidden resistance and physical reactions
A child who is afraid to openly oppose strict parents may develop less obvious ways of avoiding their demands. They may sometimes appear careless, behave as though they have not heard an instruction, or frequently forget what they have been told. If forced to eat, they may try to hide food to escape parental control. In some situations, emotional tension may also be expressed through physical complaints. The source text mentions headaches, stomach aches and pain around the heart as possible psychosomatic reactions associated with these experiences. Taking longer to master a skill or performing less well than peers therefore does not necessarily mean that a child is less intelligent or lazy. Fear, insecurity and a lack of confidence in their own abilities may sometimes lie behind these difficulties.
How can you help your child build confidence and make progress?
When children take longer to acquire particular skills or cannot meet expectations, additional pressure is not the only possible response. It is much more helpful to look carefully at what is holding them back and what kind of parental support they need. The source text offers seven guidelines aimed at developing self-esteem, independence and confidence in their own abilities.
1. Help your child recognise their own worth
Self-esteem develops through experiences in which children recognise that they have worth and that their abilities deserve trust. When parents show through their relationship that they value the child, the child gradually builds a more positive view of themselves. This sense of security can help them take on new tasks more readily, try to master unfamiliar skills and face situations that require effort. A child who feels good about themselves finds it easier to summon the courage to try again.
2. Recognise effort and positive attempts
Rather than focusing parental attention constantly on mistakes, it is helpful to notice what a child is trying to do well. Their effort, positive actions, interests and inclinations deserve encouragement, even when the final result is not yet what is expected. At the same time, parents need to consider how many demands and responsibilities they place on the child. Excessive demands can cause stress, which can itself make tasks harder to complete successfully. In other words, continually increasing the pressure does not necessarily improve a child’s performance. Sometimes it can have the opposite effect.
3. Offer help while leaving room for independence
Parental support needs to be balanced. If adults constantly do tasks for a child, the child has too few opportunities to gain confidence in their own abilities. Yet it is not helpful to leave them entirely alone with a task they do not yet know how to manage. The approach described as best in the source text balances initial guidance with independent work. A parent can help a child get started, show them how to approach a task or offer the support they need, then allow the child to carry on and finish it themselves. In this way, help does not replace the child’s effort; it allows independence to develop gradually.
4. Set expectations your child can meet
Parental expectations have a place in raising children, but they must reflect a child’s actual capabilities. If the standards are always higher than the child can reach, they may come to feel that, however hard they try, they will never be successful enough. That experience does not help build confidence. Demands therefore need to be achievable, with their complexity increasing gradually as the child makes progress. This gives the child a chance to master new challenges without constantly feeling that they are failing to meet parental expectations.
5. Let positive responses greatly outnumber negative ones
The source text proposes five positive responses for every punishment or negative response, presenting a 5:1 ratio as a particularly effective combination. Positive responses include praise, encouragement and a warm smile. Negative responses include reprimands, criticism, indifference and even frowning. The central idea of this guideline is that children should experience parental recognition of good behaviour and effort far more often than displeasure and judgement. This ratio belongs to the approach presented in the source and should not be described as a universally established scientific rule without further verification.
6. Notice what is good before offering criticism
When assessing a child’s work or behaviour, it is helpful to start with what has gone well. Even when the positives are not easy to identify, they are worth looking for carefully. Next, you can pick out something interesting in the child’s attempt, such as an original idea or an unusual approach to the task. Only after considering these aspects is it time to address shortcomings that genuinely need correcting. Criticism should then be constructive and focus on something the child can understand and improve. The source text also suggests a simple way to reflect on your own behaviour: for a few days, write down the praise and negative responses you direct towards your child. Then look at the balance between them. According to the proposed rule, fewer than five instances of praise for each negative response is a sign that a parent should consider changing their approach. If a child continually receives more criticism than recognition for their effort, they may begin to believe they will never meet their parents’ expectations. This can diminish their self-esteem and increase their anxiety.
7. Do not turn every activity into an occasion for praise
Although positive feedback matters, excessive praise can also create difficulties. If children constantly expect praise for what they do, they may begin to interpret any other response as a sign of failure. Parents therefore do not need to assess and judge everything their child does. What often matters more to children is feeling that adults truly see, hear and notice them. For example, when a child shows a drawing, a parent does not have to immediately declare it beautiful or perfect. They can simply notice that the child has coloured the house blue and drawn clouds above it. They can also ask what a particular part of the drawing represents. This response shows genuine interest in what the child has made and gives them space to talk about their work, without every attempt needing to be judged a success or failure.
