Three Parenting Styles to Avoid

I was recently talking to someone about “modern parenting,” and they were telling me how the main problem with parenting nowadays is that it’s too lenient. Lenient in the sense that kids get away with too much, run wild, fail to stay off people’s lawn, that kind of thing.

I don’t agree. I mean, there are definitely parents who are too permissive (and I’ll bring them up in the post). But based on what I’ve observed over the years, permissiveness isn’t the sole problem, or even one of the most important problems. A lot of dysfunctional parenting involves parents controlling their kids in unhealthy ways or placing expectations on them that aren’t realistic (like, “You will never fail, you will always be happy, you will always be my friend, you will be the answer to all my problems” etc.).

The three dysfunctional parenting styles I’m bringing up in this post are:

The Helicopter Parent

Helicopter parents hover over their kid in a stifling, unrelenting sort of way that’s inappropriate for the kid’s age and abilities. They micromanage many or all aspects of their kid’s life and keep the kid from confronting reasonable challenges.

Helicopter parents create a situation where their kids can’t function independently. They then say, “Because my kids can’t do things on their own, I need to swoop in and save them.” They thwart independence and exacerbate dependence.

These kids have a difficult time learning how to do things on their own, deal with setbacks, and work out interpersonal problems. They’re more likely to feel helpless and think of themselves as ineffective across different situations. Problems like anxiety and depression can easily take root in them.

The Buddy Parent

There’s nothing wrong with parents and kids being friendly with each other or having fun together. But there are parents who act as if they’re friends with their kids the way a classmate or sibling would be.

They don’t tend to set rules, define boundaries, or act as a reasonable authority figure or guide. (Far from consistently, anyway.) They want to be liked at all times. Some of them talk to their kids as they would to an adult friend and share their personal problems inappropriately. (They might in some ways wish to be kids themselves.)

In reference to the issue mentioned at the start of the post, this kind of parent is generally too lenient. (However, wanting to be your kid’s best buddy isn’t the only reason parents become overly permissive. Sometimes, parents aren’t particularly interested in their kids, and their permissiveness comes from being detached or neglectful.)

The Sculptor Parent

To these parents, the kid isn’t a person but a project. The kid can be shaped into a trophy, something the parent will be proud to display in-person and on social media posts. The kid can be crammed into the mold of an athlete, straight-A student, artist, scientist, beauty pageant contestant, or whatever else the parent needs them to be.

Parents who get competitive with each other, who strongly need approval from other people, or who want to live out various dreams and hopes through their child are all susceptible to becoming sculptors. Another scenario is when parents can’t stand certain qualities in the child – usually qualities that the parents hate in themselves. They lack the self-awareness to deal with their emotions in a mature way, so instead they apply the chisel to the marble or squeeze and squeeze the clay, as if their kid can be made into anything.

This parenting style hampers the child’s ability to explore and develop their own personality and interests in healthy ways. It teaches kids that they aren’t loved for themselves but for how they perform to expectations. Kids raised like this can wind up suffering burnout, depression, and an intense fear of failure, a sense that if they aren’t successful or given approval, they won’t be worth anything.

What Does Dysfunctional Parenting Typically Boil Down To?

There are other dysfunctional (and abusive) patterns of behavior that I haven’t covered here. But a key characteristic of dysfunctional parenting, regardless of the form it takes, is the parent’s inability to genuinely see their own child and treat the child as a distinct individual.

Parents wind up using the child to serve some psychological need. They might need the child to be a scapegoat, a vessel for the parent’s dreams, the parent v2.0 with certain bugs fixed, a clingy dependent who’ll never walk away, a best friend who’ll always like them, an uncomplaining servant, or whatever else.

Parents will often be controlled by the psychological need. They won’t be aware of it, at least not fully, and they’ll resist thinking deeply about their own actions, because the need is painful, powerful, and rooted in them. Parents usually find ways of rationalizing their behavior (“I’m keeping them safe, I want them to succeed”). But these parenting styles aren’t about safety, success, or happiness. They serve the parent psychologically while undermining the kid.








Continue reading →

Rediscovering What I Value

While cleaning my desk, I found a notebook from a few years ago where I’d listed 10 qualities or human capabilities I admire.

They came from a site that displays dozens of these words and asks you to pick a smaller subset that represents what you value most. (Something like that – I don’t remember the site or the specific instructions.)

It’s interesting to consider what I chose as most reflective of my values.

Continue reading →










When Children Become Branding Tools














Recommending Free Code Camp




Dickens Depicting Terrible Child Education

One of the best things about Dickens is his description of places. Even his better characterizations depict a person as a landscape of crags, folds, and crumpled postures.

I’m in the middle of one of his novels, Dombey and Son, and so far one of my favorite descriptions is of a school for boys run by the respectable Doctor Blimber. Blimber takes the young sons of wealthy families and forces on them a grueling study schedule that relentlessly stuffs knowledge into their brains until they risk becoming stupid or deeply depressed. (The head boy, a Mr. Toots, loses the ability to form coherent thoughts.)

Dombeyson serial cover

By Bradbury & Evans (Christies Auction House) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Dickens compares Blimber’s little school to a “great hot-house, in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work” –


The boys are also compared to sad birds making cheerless noises in the house:


The descriptions are funny, but at the same time, Dickens is depicting a depressing environment and its unwholesome effects on the children and teens who are trapped in it.

Even though every moment of their day is scheduled and, for the most part monitored, the boys are neglected. Their needs and their individual temperaments, talents, and inclinations don’t matter. (Dickens is setting himself against a blank slate type of attitude, where every child starts out more or less the same – and, if the teacher wishes it, can be squeezed into the same shape.) They lose their spirits. Learning isn’t learning; it’s a steady force-feeding with thick, flavorless food. Their parents don’t seem to mind, because attending Doctor Blimber’s school is the expected thing to do. It’s respectable.

Doctor Blimber knows how to prepare kids for life, so that they enter adulthood mentally and/or emotionally crushed and ready to discharge whatever tedious duties are laid before them. Only, he would never see it that way. He would see it as cultivating their minds on their path to a respectable adulthood.

Just to end this post on a modern note – a recent article from Fast Company talks how U.S. schools often fail to prepare kids for college. A major issue is how kids receive assignments that aren’t sufficiently challenging. The emphasis is more on funneling the kids through to the next grade than on teaching, particularly teaching them to think critically and creatively and to persist on challenges. (Of course, cramming knowledge into them Blimber-style isn’t the answer, not least because it doesn’t teach creativity or critical thinking.)