Parenting is one of the most sensitive jobs. New couples about to become parents for the first time usually worry about how they are going to deal with their children. While parents may think that they’re testing their children well, they may still be exhibiting examples of bad parenting without even realizing it.
Every child needs to be treated differently. The situation particularly applies if a child needs special attention. You don’t need to be a professional psychologist to know what is good for your children. Simple and positive parenting styles have a good impact on children.
It is highly important to be aware of bad parenting styles to ensure good parenting practices. In this article, we will explore the examples and signs of bad parenting, their negative consequences on children, and ways to avert these unwanted effects.
What is considered bad parenting?
Bad parenting may include every action from parents towards their children that may affect their children’s personalities negatively. It may be a behavioral assessment of parents that results in a bad attitude of kids. For that reason, people usually blame a child’s parents for a bad trait a child possesses.
There may be many traits or actions in parents that may be referred to as bad parenting. Bad parenting may include almost every aspect of a child’s life. That may include physical, mental, psychological, and social impacts.
The aspects of bad parenting:
- Physical interaction: Parents naturally have physical interactions with their kids. There may be different forms of physical interactions between parents and children. If you touch, caress, hug your children with care, it will have a good impact on them. But if you beat them up or exhibit physical abuse, these acts will result in highly negative outcomes.
- Verbal communication: Parents should be careful about how they talk to their kids. If you talk about positive things, it will encircle your kids with positivity. Negative verbal communication will have negative impacts. You have to be careful even while talking to others in front of your kids. If you use bad language, your kids will learn it too.
- Psychological interaction: Parents also interact with their children psychologically on a regular basis. Every child has emotional needs. If parents don’t care about emotions or don’t respond to the emotional gestures of their kids, it will have a negative impact. If you care about your children, it has to come from your heart. Only then will it look natural and real.
- Mental interaction: Parents are also responsible for the positive mental growth of their children. The cognitive development of a child goes through certain stages. Good parenting requires careful attention from parents at every stage. Bad parenting includes igorant behavior towards mental development and special needs of children.
- Social behavior: One of the most important aspects of the parent-child bond is social interaction. How parents treat their kids in social gatherings matters a lot. Good parenting requires parents to treat their kids with respect and care. Keeping your kids away from social interaction or scolding them in front of a gathering will affect them negatively.
20 examples of bad parenting
Now that we have discussed what’s included in bad parenting attitudes, let’s move forward with the examples of bad parenting. This will give you a clear view of bad parenting practices.
Here are 20 examples of bad parenting:
Authoritarian behavior
If you impose your authority every time on your kids, it will suppress your kids psychologically. This authoritative behavior will gradually put your kids under pressure. This may result in your kids getting stubborn or aggressive by nature.
Indifferent attitude
If you keep on ignoring your kids, they will feel deprived of care. Good parents always listen to their kids’ queries and reply to them appropriately. Sometimes, kids may react in innocence. Parents need to be attentive towards their kids at all times and respond accordingly.
Over-possessive:
Parents may become over-possessive for their kids out of love. They may think that they are doing the right thing for their kids. However, being overly protective may deprive them of necessary social pressure which they have to deal with in the future.
Over-protection
Parents should allow their kids to go out and meet with other kids. Similarly, they should also give their kids freedom of playing and going out with peers within limits. Stopping them from interacting with others will deprive them of self confidence.
Physical abuse:
One of the worst forms of bad parenting is physical abuse. If you physically assault your kids in any way, it may have drastic impacts on kids’ lives. Good parenting involves reasoning rather than using physical abuse, even in cases when a child has done a wrong thing.
Harsh language
Using derogatory or defamatory remarks for your kids is also a form of bad parenting. There is a very thin line between physical and verbal abuse. The situation becomes worse when you use harsh language with your kids in public places.
Inflexible behavior
Good parents are always flexible with their rules while dealing with their kids. A child needs time to adapt to a family’s environment. You have to be patient if a child doesn’t behave the way you want. You also need to be flexible with your expectations regarding your kids.
Indifferent attitude
While being overwhelmed with your kids’ activities is not the right approach, you also don’t have to be indifferent towards your kids. Giving freedom to your children is good, but being indifferent to their actions is also not a good approach. You must supervise your kids and let them feel that you care for them.
Not being a good role model
Children quickly learn from what they see and observe. If you want your kids to be like your ideal personality, you have to demonstrate that behavior with your actions. It will be easier for your kids to follow in your footsteps rather than following a hypothetical personality.
Normalizing drugs
Drugs or any kind of unacceptable addiction is one of the prime reasons why kids get distracted from the right path. If you take drugs, alcohol, or even smoke in front of your kids, they will most likely repeat acts to follow you unconsciously.
Undue favoritism
Avoid giving special treatment to one child and ignoring others. This undue favoritism may create estranged relationships between siblings. Parents must treat and love their children equally. Bad parenting also involves taking undue sides or being overly lenient towards one child compared to others.
Long-distance relationship
Children need physical presence of their parents. So, if you live away from your children, they will develop a huge gap between you and your children. If they get used to the practice of living without you, it will abstain them from developing a physical and emotional bond with you.
Ignoring privacy
Parents must adapt to the constantly changing needs of their children. You may interact with them more in the early stages of their development. However, you must also allow your children to have their personal space and privacy as they grow younger. The situation particularly applies to teenagers.
Ignoring hygiene and discipline
Children usually like to make a mess while they play or have fun. Many parents tend to get upset if their kids disturb their house’s settings. Parents need to understand that it is very normal to have a messed up house when children play. Getting angry with them or scolding them for making a mess will fall under bad parenting.
Demonstrating criminal activity
Children are most likely to follow in the footsteps of their elders. They particularly follow in the footsteps of their parents and relatives. So, you need to ensure that you don’t get involved in a long kind of illegal activity. Otherwise, they may also follow that path.
Parental conflicts
Parents are the closest entities for children. You may not be able to observe it, but they closely follow the life patterns of their parents. So, even parents must never fight or argue loudly in front of their kids. The negative effects aggravate if parents are on the path of getting divorced.
Neglecting their education
Education is one of the prime factors in a kid’s growth. Good parents are directly involved in their kids’ educational journey. If you just leave your kids to their schools without getting personally involved, it will be bad parenting. You must know how your kids are performing in curricular and extracurricular activities.
Ignoring special needs
You have to keep a close eye on your kids about their needs. Some kids have special requirements. You must be able to identify and fulfill those needs. Otherwise, kids may start considering them as deprived of privileges that you could afford for them.
Inappropriate digital activities
All digital activities may provide value. However, you cannot allow your children to have a digital activity that is not appropriate for their age. Parents need to avoid allowing their children to watch TV for extended periods, thinking that the educational videos will benefit them.
Ignoring parental controls
In this age, kids are surrounded by digital devices. It may not be practical to keep them away from digital activities. However, you can still monitor their activities with a good parental control app. Ignoring their digital activities and interactions may have highly negative effects on their personalities.
What is the most problematic parenting style?
All forms of parenting styles that include neglectful behavior or indifferent attitude towards their kids are considered to be most problematic. Children always require love, care, and supervision from their parents.
When parents deprive them of their basic needs of parental attention, it results in long-term negative effects on children. Children may lose their self-respect and confidence. They may also become victims of mental, social, and psychological disorders.
How do parents negatively influence their children?
Parents may influence their children negatively by showing multiple forms of bad parenting styles. Parents must learn from the examples of bad parenting we discussed in previous sections. They must avoid adopting bad parenting practices to ensure that their kids are not negatively influenced by their behavior.
Just to re-emphasize, the following are a few of the ways how parents may negatively influence their children:
- Criticizing them regularly for every mistake. This will lead them towards low self-confidence.
- Being overly protective will influence your kids to become overly dependent on you.
- Your unrealistic expectations for your kids may put them under high stress.
- Abusing your kids physically or verbally may result in your kids being stubborn and aggressive.
- Lack of emotional understanding with your kids may result in a bad parent-child relationship,
How can family be a negative influence?
While it may sound strange, family may also be a source of negative influence for children. If there are conflicts within family members, it may have a lot of negative impacts on children.
Similarly, the presence of criminal activities in a family will also affect children. They may get inspired from the criminal minded people in the family. If a family has a lack of discipline, ethics, and domestic norms, children are most likely to have the same shortcomings.
These are only a few of the reasons why a child’s family can negatively influence him or her. For the same reason, people often check a person’s family background before knowing about him or her. The family background reveals a lot of information about a person.
What should parents learn from the examples of bad parenting?
There are many takeaways in our discussion about examples of bad parenting. Parents who want to make the best out of their parenting journey must avoid all the mistakes we discussed above.
Let’s quickly enlist a few lessons parents can learn from the examples of bad parenting:
- Love, care, and support for children is a must for parents.
- Treat your children with practical and realistic expectations.
- Parents must have a mix of strictness and leniency according to the situation.
- Parents should have effective, knowledgeable, and open communication with your children.
- demonstrate the ideal behavior as an example for their children to follow.
- In the current digital age, parents need a good parental control app to supervise their children’s digital activities.
Do parents using parental control apps influence their parenting?
Yes. Parents using parental control apps influence their parenting by focusing more on supervising their kids. They can be sure of their kids’ online safety by monitoring and supervising digital activities they perform on their phones.
It is best to use a parental control app after informing them about its benefits. Otherwise, it may lead to trust issues between kids and parents. So, you are advised not to rely solely on parental control apps. You must have a mix of direct communication by having mutual discussions and the use of parental control apps to ensure responsible parenting duties.
Parental control apps are the need of the hour in the current lifestyle of kids and parents. You cannot leave your children to do anything they want on their devices. Sometimes, this may lead to serious issues. That’s why parental control apps were introduced to solve these problems.
FlashGet Kids is the best app that realizes the importance of this issue. This app is designed to ensure the safety and security of kids so that their parents can be free of worries. This app lets you know the location of your kids at all times. You can also have live notifications for their every phone activity.
It is best to have a good parental control app to monitor your kids. However, you should not rely only on apps to monitor and control your kids. Having open discussions about various topics and one-on-one counseling is also required to have a good balance.
