If you could create an ideal child, what qualities would he or she have?
Pose this question to potential parents, and a huge percentage of them would have “intelligent,” “good looking,” “sociable,” and “talented” on their list. However, the truth is that a vast majority of children grow up to be people who are average – they have average looks, intellect and talent. Outstandingly talented people are very rare, and that is why we hold them to such high esteem. As parents we have a hard time accepting this fact and from a very young age we start pressurizing them with our own expectations and ambitions.
All our lives we hear the phrase “Every child is a potential winner.” This is not just wrong, but also harmful in inflating our expectations from our children. The dangerous thing is that we end up tying our love for our child to their achievements. Parents should not need to have a reason to love their child – that should be unconditional. Children should not feel the need to earn their parents’ love with their performance. They deserve to be loved whether they are average or exceptional.
Try not to “label” your child – even good labels are harmful. If you label your child as “intelligent” and your love is contingent to his or her scoring high marks consistently, your child may never try to play games or spend time with friends because they know that your love or approval would decrease if their scores went down, and the only way to keep them high would be to keep at it and not waste time with games or friends. Now that’s a terrible thing to happen! They’ll be constantly in a state of anxiety to keep you happy, and will never feel good about themselves because their abilities matter to you more than anything else.
The negative labels of course are the most damaging. If a child keeps hearing that he is lazy or stupid, his self esteem will always be rock bottom. It’s hard to persevere at a task if everyone expects you to give up, it’s hard to keep self control if people expect you to jump into a fight every time, so avoid these labels.
Bottom line: The more children feel they are loved for what they are rather than their achievements, the higher their self-worth will be.
