What happens if the people who should protect us and care for us harm us and make us feel bad? As the so-called toxic parents acting? What are their characteristics?
It seems that some parents go beyond simple mistakes and manifest harmful behaviors that affect the emotional growth and education of their children. However, this does not mean that they are not educated or that they are abandoned, but, sometimes, the way of relating and acting as parents is not the most appropriate.
Nobody is born knowing
It is evident that parents are not born with an educational guide under their arms. We all meet the first cries of a baby and simply do not know what to do in the first moments. "What will happen to him?" "Will I be a good father?" These are normal doubts. The secret is attachment, care, understanding and patience.
However, not all parents follow this model of parenthood. The toxic parents, on the other hand, have a series of practices that are not useful for the optimal growth of the child. Let's see what these behaviors are.
If you are not the best, do not demand
Some parents demand the perfection of their children. They are very critical and only seek to achieve excellence in all areas. Such is their demand that children and then feel humiliated, anxious and disillusioned with themselves.
This way of educating on the basis of reaching the top, the best position, makes them very tense and anguished. In addition, the emotional damage he suffers is even more profound if his parents constantly remember his mistakes. Extreme pressure prevents them from benefiting from the achievements in their lives.
Many times these parents plan the career of all their descendants. It's their way of controlling them. Therefore, they are forced to live the life they build and do not allow their children to make their own decisions or to trace their own destiny.
With me or without anyone
They are excessive and compulsive protective parents. Those who do not let their child go to a classmate's birthday or go to the movies with their friends for fear of something happening or losing it.
These people fear loneliness, so they prevent their children from having a minimum of independence. This does not mean that the most convenient thing is to let them act at will, but excessive control is as harmful as extreme permissiveness.
It is necessary for children to acquire a certain degree of autonomy based on their age. It is good to let them do activities outside the home. However, parents feel absorbing guilty simply because they want to be with other people. Of course, this situation is much worse in the adolescent stage. Especially when friends and boyfriends start to appear.
He dares to be better than me
As difficult to understand as it may seem, there are parents who compete with their children. For example, it is common to find disputes between mother and daughter out of sheer physical rivalry or parents who ridicule their children on the sports field to stand out over them.
These are usually parents who saw some kind of frustrated sleep during childhood or who had parents who did the same with them. In this mode, the accumulated frustration exerts during all this time the shortest. It's a way to blame them for their own misfortunes, a painful way to deal with anger.
Trust only me
Another type of toxic matrix is the adoption of a manipulative attitude, consciously or unconsciously. For example: "Nobody is going to take care of you like me" or "Do not go out tonight that you already know that your mother is very tired and sick with nerves, you do not want her to go to the hospital again, right?"
As experts in detecting vulnerabilities and weaknesses, they believe they have the power and the right to get what they want. And all this at the expense of their own children. They enjoy the innocence of children to do and undo at will.
Love me like I never loved you
On many occasions, we put on the table the importance of attachment during the first years of the child's life. The bond generated by the baby with his mother, his father and other important figures in his environment make a decisive contribution to his future development.
Therefore, if the parents deprive him of that affection, do not show him any kind of affection or simply do not create an emotional bond with him, the repercussions can be very serious. The family model must be based on love and trust. If that is missing, the social relations that the child will maintain in the future will be very fruitless and frustrating.
Toxic parents are also role models for children
Nor should we forget that imitation is the basis of the child's learning. Therefore, all habits, customs and other behaviors are learned from adults with no difficulty. Be careful what you show your children: vocabulary, behaviors, comments ... They absorb everything and after doing it is difficult to fix. Parents are role models for them and toxic parents, unfortunately, too.
From this idea comes the opportunity to teach them healthy habits. Eating well, playing sports often do not consume alcohol or intoxicants, sleep recommends ... If you do not teach good habits from birth, it will be difficult to start doing it when you are already immersed in other routines. There is no doubt that all families have their own circumstances, but have a detrimental behavior with their children is not justifiable. Toxic parents do not seem to be aware that they are educating their children in the wrong way. And not only that, they are causing serious damage that can become chronic.