Reasons harsh parenting will backfire and make you lose your child

Reasons harsh parenting will backfire and make you lose your child

While it is understandable that this is Africa and children are not allowed to override their parents, it is important for parents to know the best measures to drive their points home and still give the children their love at the same time.

Reasons harsh parenting will backfire and make you lose your child
File photo of a black mother checking out what her daughter is up to.

The saying ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ is a watchword for many Nigerian parents. Most of the parents in the society were raised the old fashioned way; sticks, belts, hunger and severe punishments were the things they were raised with.

Thus, they think raising their children in similar ways would not kill them as they will become better individuals in the future.

Now, this may be true; however, it could be faulted by the state of things in the nation. Technological advancement has taken off the scales in the children’s eyes. Children are smarter than their parents think they are, they pretend to be mild while with their parents in order to see their reactions and learn more about them.

Many Nigerian parents love to be known with the ‘no-nonsense’ habit as they can flog the living daylight out of children that misbehave. The implication of doing this is grave as children lose the tenderness in them and become rigid.

Find below some of the ways harsh parenting will make you lose your children:

1. Children feel unloved

Reasons harsh parenting will backfire and make you lose your child
File photo of an unhappy black child.

If your method of parenting requires sticks and bridle, then you may have to change it before you start making your children feel unloved.

If you would rather beat out the disobedience in them rather than nurture them with God’s words and prayers, you may end up killing them or driving them away from you.

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2. Fear

Reasons harsh parenting will backfire and make you lose your child
File photo o a young child being punished.

Harsh parenting may work on your kids at the long run because they do not want to get scolded or beaten for doing something.

At the same time, you will be replacing their brevity and tenderness with fear. You stand the chance to lose the meekness in your children as they could be scared of opening up to you for fear of being beaten. Overtime, children become depressed and withdrawn.

3. Dependence on peer

Reasons harsh parenting will backfire and make you lose your child
File photo of a sad lonely girl.

When children become scared of their parents, they have no one to quell allay their fears and doubts. They end up depending on their friends in the school and neighborhood.

How do you want to ascertain if your children are not dining in the counsel of the wicked when you are in fact a Margaret Thatcher? My 8-year-old cousin asked me who a pure and innocent woman is; it took me some minutes before telling her.

It turned out she knew the answer, she was just asking me for validation. If you lie to your children simply because you want to protect them, they will find out somewhere else and stop telling you what is going on in them.

4. Difficulty in learning

Reasons harsh parenting will backfire and make you lose your child
A black child having difficulty to learn being laughed at.

Parents who are harsh do not help their children at all. The measures used in raising them may be too tough the children become depressed and suffer from bouts of anxiety.

Children who are used to harsh parenting find it difficult to learn in school as they become unsure of themselves. With this, it is justifiable to say harsh parenting has psychological effects on children.

5. Children become hardened

Reasons harsh parenting will backfire and make you lose your child
File photo of a stubborn pretty child.

Everything should not be about beating. One of the parenting rules you should apply is being unpredictable. How about correcting your child with love when he confesses to a crime instead of beating him?

If you resort to punches and punishments each time they misbehave then they will develop immunity to your beatings.

The moment you discover your child has the attitude of ‘the worst thing you can do is beat me’, your harsh parenting methods have failed. Some children cry so hard when they are spoken to.

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6. You drive them away from home

Reasons harsh parenting will backfire and make you lose your child
File photo of a sad young lady.

The home is a place of rest; it is where you go to after enduring all sorts of hardships in the school and workplace. The moment you become too harsh for your children, they find solace in their friend’s homes.

They do not look forward to going home! If children like that make it to tertiary institutions, they will deliberately skip going home on holidays.

Students like that have no love in their hearts and find it easy to move with the crowd. Unwanted pregnancies and belonging to secret societies cannot be escaped.

Source: Legit.ng

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