Every person’s memories of their own upbringing, both good and bad, significantly influence their approach to parenting. We often let the most painful or irritating parts of our childhood dictate how we raise our own children, instinctively avoiding traits we found harmful or maybe just annoying. While it’s sensible to break cycles of negative parenting, this process requires careful, intentional reflection rather than a purely emotional reaction. When parents react solely to avoid what they disliked, they risk overlooking the potential drawbacks of their new, reactive style. Instead of simply turning away from negative experiences, we should analyze why they bothered us and identify any possible silver linings. A parenting style that is blindly and reactively built on avoidance can unintentionally create a new pattern of unhealthy practices.
For instance, a common pattern emerges when parents who endured harsh verbal upbringings swing to the opposite extreme: an excessively soft and kind parenting style. This overcorrection can result in the parent capitulating the moment the child becomes upset, mistakenly interpreting the child’s distress as a failure on their part. The risk here is that the child quickly learns to use emotional outbursts to exert unhealthy control over the parent-child relationship. We must remember that a child’s upset can stem from countless factors and does not automatically signal that they are being harmed.
I find myself telling my own adult children to think critically about the way we parented them, move forward with the ideas and experiences that were helpful and shed the ones that were not. In this way, the best of what we are giving our children is carried forward, and can only create healthier generations.
The moral of this story is: pay attention not just to your own emotional response but to replacing an unhealthy parenting style with a healthy and functional style.