Are you sure your care won't turn into a toxic burden for your child? As you read this, thousands of children are rolling their eyes, listening to yet another "I want the best."
Dr Lisa Damer , author of the bestselling book Parenting Without Regrets, told The Guardian : "Parents in the 21st century are repeating the mistakes psychologists exposed 30 years ago, but now the cost has tripled."
We analyzed data from a 2023 Journal of Family Psychology study and found 3 fatal mistakes. Some of them will make you drop your phone.
Mistake one
According to a report from the Harvard Child Development Center , 72% of parents ignore their children's emotional cues, masking it with the phrase: "I don't have time for your drama."
Psychologist Mikhail Labkovsky compared this to playing Russian roulette in the podcast “The Art of Being a Parent”: “Every suppressed feeling of a child is a bullet that will fire in adolescence.”
Mistake two
For example, overprotection, which ranked third in our anti-rating, according to the Stanford Parenting Study , increases the risk of anxiety disorders in children by 400%.
Anna's story from Novosibirsk confirms this: "I controlled every step of my daughter's life - from the choice of friends to the color of her socks. At 14, she ran away to her grandmother and refused to come back. Now we communicate only through a lawyer."
But there is good news: An experiment by the Child Development Institute showed that parents who practice “emotional auditing” (10 minutes a day talking about feelings) raise children with 30% higher self-esteem.
How to start? Psychotherapist Esther Perel advises: “Ask your child: ‘What made you smile today?’ This will break down the wall faster than a thousand lectures on the benefits of math.”
Mistake three
It's about comparisons with other children. "Why can't you be like Masha?" is a phrase that, according to the Journal of Social Psychology , lowers a child's self-esteem by 40%.
Psychologist Alfie Kohn writes in his book, Punishment by Reward , "Comparison teaches children that they are loved only for their achievements."
Case study: Kirill, 12, from Moscow, stopped communicating with his classmates after his mother publicly praised his friend for winning an Olympiad. “I felt like I was trash,” he wrote in an anonymous survey.
Another pitfall is ignoring digital literacy. A Common Sense Media study (2024) found that 65% of parents do not discuss cyberbullying with their children, believing that “they will figure it out themselves.”
The result? Every third teenager faces online bullying, but only 10% seek help. “I was afraid my mom would take my phone away,” admitted 13-year-old Polina, who spent a month hiding offensive comments on TikTok.
In a decade, your child won't remember what kind of console you bought him. But he'll definitely remember how you screamed over a broken cup or laughed at his dream of becoming an astronaut. Don't let your mistakes become his trauma.
