The fundamental goal of a parent is to guide a child into adulthood, to help them become a whole person without causing harm along the way. Yet, mistakes are often made, not from a place of malice, but from a lack of awareness. These unintentional errors can cast long shadows, shaping the adults we become. Understanding these patterns isn't about placing blame; it's about recognizing the echoes of the past in our present, and perhaps, choosing a different path for the future.

Mistake 1: The Gilded Cage of Over-Parenting

In an age of heightened anxiety, the impulse to shield a child from every possible harm is stronger than ever. This is over-parenting, or hyper-parenting, where a child's life is managed, controlled, and curated to an extreme degree. In past generations, children often had more freedom and less supervision. Today, with fewer children per family and a culture of intense protection, some parents watch over their child’s every move.

The consequences of this constant vigilance are often radical and split into two opposite extremes. One path is that of wild rebellion. To break free from the suffocating care, the child may adopt an aggressive counter-culture persona—tattoos, radical hairstyles, a life lived in opposition to any system of control. Every cell in their body screams for the freedom they were never given.

The other path is that of learned helplessness. The child becomes so accustomed to being cared for that they never develop their own agency. As an adult, they seek a new caretaker in a partner, someone to make decisions, manage their life, and shield them from responsibility. They hand over the reins of their existence, but there is no guarantee the person they choose will have their best interests at heart. They become vulnerable to manipulation, forever seeking the parental protection they never learned to live without.

A Better Way: Responsibility must be transferred gradually. A seven-year-old can be responsible for the state of their room. A ten-year-old can be trusted with a weekly allowance, learning to budget their own small funds. If they spend it all in one day, the natural consequence of having no money for the rest of the week is a powerful teacher. Adulthood doesn't arrive on one's 18th birthday; it's built slowly, one small piece of earned responsibility at a time.

Mistake 2: The Iron Fist of Authoritarianism

This is when a parent controls a child not with guidance, but with fear. It’s a style of parenting built on rigid rules, harsh punishments, and an absence of explanation. The parent’s word is law, and any deviation is met with severe consequences.

I recall a story of two brothers raised under such a regime. Their mother's parenting philosophy was one of extreme, almost unbelievable cruelty. For the smallest infraction, she would beat them with a thick rubber hose, leaving painful welts. She made no distinction between caring for her children and caring for her livestock, once remarking with satisfaction, "The children are fed, the pigs are fed, everything is fine." There were no conversations, no explanations—only commands and punishments.

The outcome for these boys was tragic. As adults, they were trapped in a cycle of crime and incarceration. Their lives were so chaotic that they couldn't coordinate their prison sentences to even see one another for over a decade. This is an extreme example, but it illustrates a dark truth: when you raise a child in a system where the only rule is to fear the enforcer, you don't teach them right from wrong. You teach them only to avoid being caught, and you fill them with a rage that will eventually find an outlet.

Mistake 3: The Silence of Emotional Neglect

Ignoring a child's emotions often goes hand-in-hand with authoritarianism. After all, if a child is punished for crossing a line, their resulting sadness or anger is seen as an inconvenient byproduct, not a valid emotional response to be understood.

When parents rely solely on fear and commands, they create an emotional desert. Then, when that child becomes a teenager and suddenly has the physical and mental strength to resist, the parents are baffled. The old methods of control—intimidation, threats, punishment—no longer work. They decide it's finally time to talk, to build an emotional connection. But the well is dry. There was never a foundation of trust or emotional safety to begin with. You cannot expect to harvest a relationship in the teenage years from a field you never bothered to plant during childhood.

Mistake 4: The Poison of Comparison

"You got a C in biology, but Mary got an A." "Look how nicely Peter behaves, why can't you be more like him?"

A parent may think this is a motivational tool, a way to inspire their child to achieve more. In reality, it is profoundly damaging. We are already hardwired to compare ourselves to others to figure out our place in the social hierarchy. When a parent institutionalizes this comparison, they are carving pathways of inadequacy into their child's brain. The child grows up with a relentless inner critic, constantly measuring themselves against others and always coming up short. They internalize the message: "I am less than." This erodes self-esteem in a way that can last a lifetime.

A Better Way: The only healthy comparison is with oneself. The conversation should be, "You used to have a D in biology, and now you have a B. That's fantastic progress. You are better today than you were yesterday." This teaches a child to value personal growth over competitive ranking, building a resilient and authentic sense of self-worth.

Mistake 5: The Chaos of Inconsistency

When rules change daily, a child's world loses its structure. Today, curfew is 6:00 PM. Tomorrow, it's 8:00 PM. The day after, they can't go out at all. One day a behavior is acceptable, the next it's grounds for punishment. This isn't a permissive style where there are no rules; it's a disorganized style where the rules are a constantly moving target.

Living in this kind of unpredictable environment is profoundly anxiety-inducing. The child exists in a state of paralysis. It feels safer to do nothing at all than to risk accidentally breaking a rule they didn't even know existed. They learn that the world is an unstable and untrustworthy place, a lesson that can lead to chronic anxiety in adulthood.

Mistake 6: Buying Love with Gifts

Many adults look back on their childhoods and realize their parents equated love with material possessions. The most damaging version of this is when a parent uses gifts to apologize for their own emotional failings. A father, stressed from work, comes home and unleashes his anger on his child. An hour later, consumed by guilt, he returns with a new toy or a fancy dress.

This teaches a terrible lesson: that love can be bought and sold, and that emotional wounds can be patched over with material goods. A gift should be a supplement to love, not a substitute for it. The most valuable things we carry with us from childhood are rarely the presents we received. They are the memories of time spent together, of a parent showing genuine interest in our worries, our dreams, and our inner world.

Mistake 7: The Burden of Projected Ambitions

"I never became a ballerina, so my daughter will." This is the classic story of a parent forcing their own unfulfilled dreams onto their child. The parent may not even realize they are engaging in a form of violence, pushing a child into a life they may not want or have the talent for.

This is ultimately a hollow pursuit. The satisfaction a parent thinks they will get from seeing their dream realized through their child will never materialize. It’s a zero-sum game that leaves both parent and child feeling empty. A child is not a second chance at life for their parent. They are a new person, with their own unique path to follow and their own ambitions to realize.

A Better Way: Before enrolling a child in an activity or pushing them down a certain path, every parent should pause and ask a simple, honest question: "Am I doing this for them, or am I doing this for me?"

References

• Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2011). The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind. Delacorte Press. This book provides practical strategies for parents to understand a child's neurological development. It's particularly relevant to Mistake 3 (Ignoring Emotions), as it explains the importance of integrating a child's emotional right brain with their logical left brain. The "Connect and Redirect" strategy (pages 69-79) offers a direct alternative to the authoritarian approach of dismissing a child's feelings.
• Kohn, A. (2005). Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason. Atria Books. Kohn argues against traditional discipline methods, which aligns with the critiques of Mistake 2 (Authoritarianism) and Mistake 6 (Substituting Love with Gifts). He posits that controlling children through punishments (like an iron fist) or rewards (like gifts) undermines their moral and emotional development. The entire book is a case for parenting based on love and reason, not control, directly addressing the core theme of the article.
• Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Gotham Books. While not exclusively a parenting book, Brown's research on shame and vulnerability is deeply connected to the consequences of these parenting mistakes. Her work explains the psychological impact of Mistake 4 (Comparison with Others), showing how it fuels a lifelong feeling of inadequacy and shame. The discussion on "scarcity"—the "never enough" feeling (pages 27-31)—is a direct adult consequence of a childhood defined by comparison.