5 Signs of Toxic Parenting
And how to fix it if you think you might be a toxic parent.
As a mother of three, I have often wondered how decent or how awful my parenting skills are. It is natural for any parent to want to know if they are screwing up their kids or if they are doing things the right way, whatever the word “right” truly means. There is no one handbook to measure a parent by, and in the world of social media, parent shaming is at an all-time high.
So, how do you know if you’re a good parent? Well, one way to know is to look at what bad parenting is. And that means splicing apart the term toxic parenting to see if your behaviors match up with those that are well documented and understood to be damaging to children.
Toxic parenting is a catch-all term to describe parents who generally behave in one of the following ways. It is important to remember that every parent will have moments of frustration and anger and may lash out by yelling stomping through their house. That does not make a parent toxic; it makes them human. What we are looking at here are patterns of behaviors that occur regularly and that are harmful.
1. Narcissism
Parents who seem to lack the capacity to care for their kids might be narcissistic. They will be emotionally unavailable and not respond appropriately — or at all — to a child in distress. What’s worse, narcissistic parents often view their kids as objects rather than as people and manipulate them to fit self-centered agendas. For example, narcissistic parents will often force their kids to excel at sports or follow a career path that matches the parents’ idea of success while ignoring their child’s wants and dreams.
The unifying theme for narcissistic parents is that the parent is threatened by their child’s attempts to be independent, which is precisely what kids are supposed to do. Controlling behaviors that appease the “what about me?” mentality of the parent is a classic sign of narcissistic parenting.
2. Verbal and emotional abuse.
The American Psychological Association has said that verbal and emotional abuse is as dangerous…
