Discover the 5 most common mistakes we make as parents

How hard it is to be a parent every day! and above all to do it well. Raising our children is not just teaching them how to dress or to carry their plate to the sink, which is already hard enough to achieve; in our role as parents, there is much more. We must pass on the values we want to guide their lives and teach them what is right and what is wrong, no easy task at all. To do all this we do not have any specific training in parenting, what we usually do is let ourselves be guided by our common sense and by what our parents did with us, and that's how it goes for us!

We face the different developmental stages of our children with information such as:

“Si ahora te parece difícil espérate a la adolescencia”

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“Una hostia a tiempo te ahorra muchos problemas en el futuro”

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“Este niño está muy consentido, ya verás cuando sea más grande”

Phrases that, far from helping, drain our energy. As parents there are things we must be clear about and we also have to talk about them and agree on them with the other member of the couple. We must dedicate time to deciding what rules we are going to set and what is important for our children to learn and follow strictly. Those are going to be the rules we will fight over, and with the rest we won't waste too much energy. Once we have the rules, we must enforce them and we will have to say NO.

As parents we have to be able to say NO in a firm but affectionate way, that conveys to them that we are with them at every moment to help them on their path toward adulthood, but that we will be firm and uncompromising about certain things, the important ones, not all of them.

In order to exercise good authority, we must have taken good care of the bond. Your children must grow up knowing that they can count on you, and for that, everything you do in your daily life either adds or subtracts. That is why I have decided to compile here the most common everyday mistakes we make that weaken this bond:

1. You don't listen to them

Many times we complain that our children come out of school and don't tell us anything. Sometimes you ask and get no answers. How was school? and it is followed by absolute silence or a single word: fine.

We cannot expect our children to communicate when it suits us. They often do it at the worst moment, when you have to make dinner or it's bath time. They bombard you with a thousand questions about silly things that nonetheless matter a lot to them. If at those inconvenient moments you respond to them curtly or tell them to be quiet, you will achieve that, over time, your child stops asking you and stops turning to you, shutting themselves behind a door that you will not open later.

You cannot know your child well if you don't talk with him/her. Therefore, as a good friend used to say, when your child talks to you "put down the pen and sit your butt down" because if you don't, some day they will stop talking to you.

Foster the spaces for communication in your home, have family meals, sit down with them to do anything, play, get them to help you with household chores, whatever allows you to spend time together and conveys to your child that you are close and that they can count on you.

2. You don't reward them but you do punish them

We often use punishment to teach our children what is wrong. But we almost never tell them what they have done well. In our country there is a strong tendency of this kind. A boss usually doesn't call you into the office to tell you how well you have done your job; when they call you into the office it is usually to scold you for something. The rest of the time, when your work is supposedly fine, they usually don't address you at all.

Well, this tendency is the one we bring home. I have come to see cases in which parents only addressed their child to scold them, and in the end the child decided that the best way to get their parents' attention was to misbehave. It is about balancing this, about verbalizing to our children the things they do well and that make us proud. It is not about giving gifts when they behave well, that is not the concept. It is about giving them all our attention when they do something that is good, something we want to be in their behavior often and not only when they do something wrong.

3. You compare and label them

This is another very frequent habit. Do you see how well your brother eats? These are phrases that, far from motivating your child to behave well, generate frustration, anger, and jealousy. Even if our intention is good, we don't get the form right. We must avoid comparing, neither between siblings, nor with other classmates, nor with absolutely anyone. The only healthy comparison I know is the one where you compare yourself to yourself. Closely related to this is labeling, phrases like "you're stupid", "you always do it wrong", or any kind of phrase that reflects the impossibility of change is a tombstone. We must not label; when we make a criticism it should be directed at the behavior and not at the child. If I say "this that you have done is not right" I am not calling the child "bad" nor am I even saying that they misbehave, the only thing I convey is that a specific act is not the right one and that can be changed.

4. You shout at them

There are times when it cannot be avoided, no matter how much you try to be patient, there comes a moment when it slips out and you shout at them. Shouting is one of the worst ways we have to address others and it is precisely the most used with children. How do you feel when someone shouts at you? Well, multiply it by ten thousand and you will have an idea of how your child feels. Although we don't usually shout at our friends, coworkers, or bosses, at home and with the people we love most, we unload that anger. Don't shout at your child, and when it slips out, apologize, so they know it wasn't your intention to do so.

5. You rush them

We don't respect our children's timing. We always make them hurry. The notion of time is something very difficult to acquire; consider that until about nine years of age we are not able to understand a clock, and that does not guarantee that they really understand what time is. So, we cannot expect them to understand exactly what five minutes are or what it exactly means that we won't make it to school. Time is our responsibility, we must manage it well, get them up with enough time so they can go calmly and set out what needs to be done at each moment. Then there are the extracurricular activities, they run out of school without time for a snack and rush off to dance, to English, to music. When do they play? Respecting our children's time means: getting them up with enough time so as not to rush, setting their timing to avoid shouting and stress at the last moment, not filling their days with extracurricular activities every day, nor filling every weekend with activities. Let them play calmly and share your time with them.

Conclusions:

These are just some of the mistakes, there are surely many more. I myself used to make many of them, but I do it better and better. I learn to be a mother every day and my children are my best teachers. How many of the mistakes described do you make? How many of them will you stop making from today?