perform to perfection, does it trigger in you a sense of your own
inadequacy? If it does, masking this feeling by appearing to be a
dedicated parent can never address your sense of lack. The consequence
is that your children grow up to orient their worth around external
barometers such as grades, their appearance, their peer group,
possessions, career, wealth, or a spouse.HOW TO SET THE BAR FOR YOUR CHILD
As parents, we may believe that one of our duties is to set the bar for our
children. Consequently many of us create vision boards when they are
nine years old and cut out pictures of how we want their college years and
career to look. We believe it’s our responsibility to have high
expectations of them, as this is how they will learn to have high
expectations of themselves. We tell ourselves that if we embed within
them where they have the potential to go, they will develop the
inspiration to do just this.
When our children flounder despite all the “help” we’ve given them,
we wonder why. At this point, instead of going within ourselves to find
the reason, we usually push them even harder, believing they are failing
because we aren’t challenging them enough. We enroll them in
additional classes, hire tutors, and send them for therapy.
Setting the bar too high and too early undercuts a child’s potential.
Children who grow up embracing our vision of them as a lawyer, doctor,
or scientist develop an inordinate sense of themselves as inadequate.
When the bar is set so high, how can a child feel anything but dwarfed?
Parents protest, “So we shouldn’t expect great things for our children?