Top 5 Mistakes Made by Parents

This is a Guest Post written by well known Educationist Louise Baker

Being a parent is hard work. As a parent, you’re responsible for raising children into healthy, happy productive citizens. The responsibility for their health and well being falls solely in your lap, and you’re the one who is praised or blamed when they grow up to be Nobel Prize winners or serial killers. Anyone who has ever been a parent knows that this is a rewarding but stressful endeavor. Finding the right balance to bring out the best in your child requires avoiding the top 5 mistakes that good parents make.

1. Allowing Your Child Too Much Freedom
Children need and crave structure and discipline. Of course they will never tell you this. They may not even know it themselves. Setting boundaries for your children and enforcing rules is imperative to creating productive citizens. Children who are not given adequate discipline find it hard to adjust in society as adults. Not disciplining their children is one of the top mistakes that parents make.

2. Being Too Overprotective
Referred to as “helicopter” parents because of their tendency to hover over their children and watch their every move, parents who are too overprotective of their children are truly doing them a disservice. These parents step in to mediate conflicts between preschoolers, micromanage their school-agars’ social lives and prevent their teenagers from exploring their natural curiosities. This is damaging to the child who needs to fail. Failing in life teaches resilience and tenacity. When the parent is there to always rescue the child and bail them out of trouble will find that their adult child is ill equipped to deal with the frustration of adult life.

3. Not Getting Involved in Their Education
Your child’s education is paramount to their success in life. From preschool to college (yes, college) the parent’s involvement in the student’s education is the single most reliable indicator of success in the child’s academic career. A huge mistake that parents make is leaving their child’s education solely up to the school and teachers. Parents need to know their child’s teachers, get involved in parent teacher organizations and understand the child’s educational needs.

4. Neglecting Your Spouse
There is no better gift that you can give your child than to have a healthy relationship with your spouse. Children feel secure when their parents are happy. While it may be tempting to neglect your spouse in favor of your child, this is ultimately damaging to the family’s overall health. Your treatment of your spouse will teach your child how to be a good spouse, and will affect his happiness as an adult.

5. Living Vicariously Through Your Child
Your child is not a miniature version of you. He is his own person, with his own dreams, aspirations and limitations. So you wanted to be a concert pianist/artist/and fashion designer. She may want to start a rock band. Let her. One of the greatest mistakes parents make is not allowing their children to explore their own creativity and desires.

Being a parent is hard work, but it is rewarding in its own right. By avoiding common mistakes, you will raise your child to be a happy and productive adult.

Louise Baker ranks online degrees for Zen College Life. She most recently wrote about the best colleges online.