How To Stop Being A Toxic Parent? 10 Simple Ways

How To Stop Being A Toxic Parent 2

Without even realizing it, you wind up participating in toxic parenting. Hereโ€™s how to stop being a toxic parent and create a healthy environment for your children.

Toxic parentingย sets the stage for abusive adults and startsย a cycle that is hard to escape. Thomas Fiffer offers 10 dos and donโ€™ts to keep your parentingย healthy and safe.

Perhaps theย worst thing a parent can hear from a grown-up child is, โ€œI want you out of my life. Youโ€™re toxic.โ€ Itโ€™s a death sentence for the relationship, spelling a long period of estrangement if not a permanent break.

It may be the healthiest decision for the child, but it is a heartbreaking one that carvesย a deep wound in both psyches, making the roadย to reconciliation arduous and uncertain.

No parent is perfect. Weโ€™re all human, and we all make mistakes, including some whoppers. But thereโ€™s a difference between screwing up while providing healthy love and presiding overย a psychologically damaging childhood that will necessitateย a lifetime of healing.

The steps outlined below are for concerned parents who want to do things right and are willing to examine themselves critically.

They presuppose a healthy degree ofย self-awareness and the desire and ability to make positive changes. They do not addressย behavior caused by substance abuse or serious mental illness. And they are only one manโ€™s opinion.

How To Stop Being A Toxic Parent? Here Are 10 Simple Ways

1. Be the bigger person.

Youโ€™re not only literally the bigger person, but youโ€™re also theย grown-up. Act like one. After the fight, be the one who breaks the silence, extends the olive branch, and works to restore healthy communication.

How To Stop Being A Toxic Parent? 10 Simple Ways

You may have been right, but if being right is what parenting is about for you, youโ€™re going to alienate your kid.ย Applyย the advantages of maturity for good. Step back and process. Use your judgment. And step in with determination not to be right but to make things right between the two of you.

Kids are much less likelyย toย remember whether you won or lost a particular fight or argument than to recallย exactlyย how you made them feel.

2. Donโ€™t pathologize your childrenย to coverย up your own poor parenting skills.ย 

Labeling a child or using (or worse, seeking) a diagnosis, such as ADD/ADHD or a personality disorder, to explain and excuse behavior that you should be addressingโ€”or that mirrors your unhealthy modelingโ€”places a lead weight on your child that he or she will be eager to lift at the onset of adulthood.

The same goes for blaming undesirable behavior on bad genesโ€”meaningย your partnerโ€™s. Itโ€™s one thing to be realistic about and treat an actual condition.

Itโ€™s entirely another toย indoctrinate your child with the inevitability ofย a limited, unhappy life due to inescapable deficiencies while refusing to address your own failings.

Related: How Toxic Family Dynamics Can Cause C-PTSD In Emotionally Intense Children

3. Donโ€™t make their drama your drama.ย 

Your kid gets the lead in the play or scores the winning run, basket, or goal in the championship game, or on the flip side, struggles with depression or endures a nasty breakup. Whoโ€™s triumphing or suffering? Who deserves the credit or sympathy?

how to stop being a toxic parent

Put the focus where it belongsโ€”on your childโ€”and keep it there. Sure, you have feelings. Youย share the joy inย your kidsโ€™ accomplishments and sorrow for their troubles.

But donโ€™t hang your emotional state on their emotional state or co-opt their experiences and feelings by making it all about you.

4. Understand the difference between criticizing and correcting.ย 

Children need guidance to stay on the right path. For many, discipline, self-control, and healthy habits donโ€™t come naturallyโ€”theyโ€™re learned. Be a guide, not a critic. Donโ€™t call your kidย lazy or stupid. Teach your childย a work ethic and help build his or her academic skills.

Challenge and goal setting motivates people and makes themย try harder. Personal insults break their spirit and make them want to give up. Criticism weakens, while correction strengthens and opens the door for positive reinforcement.

5. Learn impulse control.

We all get upset. We all yell. And at times, we all lose it when our children push our specific buttons or do incredibly annoying or obnoxious things. When this happens, we feel unheard, hurt, and disrespected, and tempted to strike backโ€”with harsh words, severe punishment, or physical blows.

Learning how to contain your immediate reaction and formulate an appropriate response will not only model balance to your child but also create a calmer dynamic and stop you from saying and doing things you will later regret.

Related: What Is Parentification: Identifying The Signs, Types, Effects, And How To Deal With Parentification Trauma

6. Remember that kids are vulnerable.ย 

We often forget this, because theyโ€™re so resilient. They cry, and then they stop crying. The next minute, or the next hour, their mood has changed, and everything is back to normal, at least on the surface.

But if theyโ€™re integrating painful experience, itโ€™s changing them, and if theyโ€™re denying it because itโ€™s too painful to process, theyโ€™re looking at a crisis down the road and years, even a lifetime, of therapy.

Children donโ€™t necessarily tell you when their feelings about you have changed when you have lost their respect or endangered their love for you.

They may not even be consciously aware of their own breaking points, but they have them, as we all do, so handle with care if you want them to stay whole.

7. Avoid using guiltย and shameย as consequences.ย 

Guiltย and shame are the sledgehammer and chainsaw in the parenting toolboxโ€”one hits kids over the head, while the other cuts them to the core.

Donโ€™t whine about your hurt feelings if your childย doesnโ€™t want to bake cookies or go to the ball game with you.ย Donโ€™t spoutย about how embarrassed youโ€”or Aunt Mildredโ€”will be if they fail biologyย or donโ€™t make the tennis team. And donโ€™t threaten horrorsโ€”such as a life of povertyโ€”ifย your childโ€™sย grades donโ€™t improve.

how to stop being a toxic parent

This type of behavior is incendiary and utterly unhelpful. It saps your childโ€™s confidence and makes him or her dependent on you or others for approval. Instead, help them understand their choices and the real consequencesย of their actions.

8. Donโ€™t smother and infantilize; encourage self-sufficiency.ย 

We love doing things for our kids to make their lives easier and to help them succeed, and itโ€™s our job to set up a good life for them. But thereโ€™s a difference between providing assistance and enabling helplessness, between setting the table and putting the food out and cutting it up and feeding it to your kid.

Donโ€™t allow your need to feel neededโ€”which may have roots in your own childhoodโ€”to interfere with your childโ€™s need to become self-reliant and independent.

And donโ€™t hover, because ultimately youโ€™re giving your child the message that he or she canโ€™t make it without your help.

Related: 11 Signs of Bad Parenting! Are You Guilty of Them?

9. Master and model healthy conflict resolution with your partner.ย 

A toxic, dysfunctional dynamic with your partner will both impact your childโ€™s ability to function in adult relationships and drive him or her away from your home. It creates a double-bind:

The child grows up vowing not to have the relationship they see you having and at the same time lacking the tools to avoid it.

If your own relationship is volatile or worse, violent, get help. This not only creates a safer environment for your children but also models the importance of solving problems instead of ignoringย them or sweeping them under the rug.

10. Practice self-care.

Iโ€™ve always believed that many of our worst parenting moments occur when weโ€™re tired, stressed, sick, distracted, or for whatever reasons, internally ragged.

Taking good care of yourselfโ€”maintaining goodย eating habits, exercising regularly, getting out (hire that sitter), and making time to doย things you enjoy makes you healthier both physically and psychologically and gives you more energy to deal with your children.

It also prevents you from resenting your kids for the sacrifices you make for them. And resentment is the precursor to contempt.

There are many different parenting styles, and in the absence of the instruction manual, we each find our own way. The advice here is intended to identify behaviors that are and arenโ€™t beneficial to children and conducive to developing a healthy relationship with them once they become adults.

Related: The Narcissistic Parent: 5 Signs You Were Raised By One

Toxic parenting can have damaging effects on a childโ€™s mind, and can even end up haunting them when they become adults.

If you see any of these signs of toxic parenting in yourself, or your partner, immediately work towards changing that before itโ€™s too late. Not only will your children thank you in the long run, you will also have a much healthier relationship with them.

If you want to learn more about the signs of toxic parenting, hereโ€™s a video:


Written by Thomas G. Fiffer
Originally appeared on TheGoodMenproject
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