7 Parenting Mistakes to Avoid if You Don’t Want to Raise Spoiled Kids
While every parent wants the best for their kids, sometimes their parenting styles and intentions can lead to a few negative results. It may impact their development and behavior, leading them to become spoiled brats. This can be significantly kept at bay by encouraging resilience in children.
Let 5-Minute Crafts help you re-evaluate things and become better at parenting using the tips suggested below.
1. Rewarding bad behavior
When you continue fulfilling your child’s demands, particularly when they’re throwing a tantrum, it’ll only make them understand that their parents will give in as long as they scream and cry loudly. But when you say no to their demands, it’ll help them find a solution on their own, making them self-reliant and resourceful.
2. Protecting kids from consequences
Helicopter parenting is a style of parenting where the parents are overprotective or become overly involved in their children’s lives. This stops them from becoming independent, daring, and problem-solving on their own. It also encourages bratty behavior.
You might do everything for your kid with nothing but good intentions, but at one point, you may find yourselves surprised when they don’t respect these gestures. You’ll be better off letting them lose in order for them to gain wisdom and experience about things to do and not do.
3. Compensating with materialistic goodies
Busy parents tend to make up for their lack of quality time with their children by gifting them materialistic things, which eventually makes the kids materialistic too. Many parents give money to their children without teaching them how to save. This results in having kids ask for more money with a mindset that they need it no matter what. When you give financial liberty to your kids, it spoils them to the core.
4. Apologizing to your child when they are disappointed
There are valid moments in a family where it is appropriate for you to apologize. For instance, when you mistakenly throw away our kid’s precious painting. But there are also instances where you don’t need to be remorseful, like not being able to get your kid their favorite toy. You can surely empathize with them, just don’t apologize for it.
You can try saying something like, “I know that toy means so much to you, but it’s not in our budget,” or “The toy looks great! How about we team up on this one? I can pay this XYZ amount for it, and you save the rest.” This will help your kid have some control over the decision and it will make them responsible enough to earn special things rather than just simply being given things by you.
5. Making empty threats
Let’s illustrate this with an example: Suppose your kid is drawing on the walls, floors, and coffee table. You remind them to draw on paper instead and threaten them that if they continue to color on the walls again, you’ll take away their crayons. But they ignore you and keep vandalizing your home with their colors.
You think about taking their crayons away from them, but eventually, you let them continue to ruin your walls because you’re too exhausted to deal with their tantrums when they don’t get to do what they want.
This is a mistake because kids can easily differentiate between an empty threat and a real punishment. While it is good to want what’s best for them, it’s equally essential to keep them in check. Empty threats also make your kids not look up to you for guidance, and seek it elsewhere as they grow up.
6. Debating about house rules
There must be zero arguments when it comes to rules in the house. Having endless debates on the same thing is pointless, as the results are predetermined. Your kids will and can certainly be upset when they don’t get what they want, but you must not engage in any bickering back and forth. You must develop a mindset for them that, we have rules here because this is what we do as a family. And then carry on.
7. Putting them on a pedestal by giving them a sense of entitlement
You treat your child as if they’re the center of the universe and super-special. However, this parenting style will only build a sense of entitlement, not confidence. When we over-parent our kids with the intention of wanting the best for them, we tend to over-indulge, over-praise, and sweep away any obstacle in their path. By doing this, we rob our kids of the opportunity to handle things on their own, learn from their mistakes, and even survive in adversity.
