Parent Traps

Professor Matt Sanders

Do you frequently feel exasperated, ashamed, or embarrassed by your child’s behaviour? Do you find that your child often irritates you? Do you have to threaten and shout to get your child to cooperate? Do you frequently argue with your partner about how to handle your child’s behaviour?

If the answer to some of these questions is yes, you might be caught in a parent trap.

The criticism trap involves becoming locked in frequent power struggles with your child and reacting to misbehaviour with escalating criticism (“Robert, you’re always making a mess”), threats (“If you do that one more time you’re in big trouble”), yelling and finally hitting. This type of discipline often backfires, with the parent’s rapidly building anger leading to resentment and further hostility.

The leave them alone trap involves the parent ignoring their child when they’re behaving well. If good behaviour is taken for granted and not actively encouraged it will occur less often and is likely to be replaced with the misbehaviour that receives so much attention.  Praise and reward behaviours you like and they will occur more frequently.

The for the sake of the children trap occurs when parents in unhappy marriages stick doggedly to the same marriage routines (for the sake of the children) rather than learning new ways to resolve their problems. Research shows that children who live in families where there is a lot of parent conflict develop more emotional and behavioural problems than those raised in stable families, regardless of whether that stable family is one- or two-parent.

The perfect parent trap is a need to be perfect rather than competent. There is no such thing as the perfect parent and aspiring to become one will lead to disappointment, resentment, guilt, and feelings of inadequacy. Parenting has elements of both a learned skill and an ongoing loving relationship between individuals.

The martyr trap is where parents become so over-involved in parenting they neglect their own needs for intimacy, companionship, recreation, privacy and fun. In these cases a parent’s relationship with their partner suffers and they may end up feeling dissatisfied and resentful. Quality parenting takes place when adults have their own lives in balance.

Professor Matt Sanders is founder of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program.  Contact Elizabeth Kunz at Kinder Institute, 407-898-7798 or elizabeth.kunz@thekinderinstitute.com  or visit the web at www.triplep.net for more information.