Toxic Parents
This terminology may seem obnoxious to you and you might think that how on earth could a parent be toxic to their kids. Unfortunately, this is how it is. Some parents bring their children up by giving them the utmost care and unprecedented love. While some parents don’t care about the well-being of their family and go around doing things that can damage the personality of their kids to the core. During your school time, you might have come across multiple students with a social anxiety issue. Some of them behave aggressively, some of them through tantrums, some face difficulty understanding the concept. There are gazillions other insecurities and negative traits that dwell on the children who happen to have a toxic childhood. This performs a role in deteriorating their personality in a way that no one could have imagined.
In this article, you will find detailed information about the traits of toxic parents and how toxic parents can affect the life of their kids. If you are someone new into parenthood, this article is also beneficial for you to know what things could affect your child’s personality and mental health.
5 Major traits of toxic parents.
Here we’ll see a few of the common toxic traits of parents that are seen often.
1. They create unsafe spaces for their children whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Toxic parents follow this reckless norm to put their kids or even children who are adults in unsafe situations or situations that make them uncomfortable. The situation that they put their children into is rather damaging in terms of feelings, emotions, and insecurities. They never respect your feelings, your emotions, and your comfort zone. Oftentimes, they make ill decisions of telling your insecurities out loud in front of people. This thing tends to make you feel insecure and uncomfortable with your parents. Your mental peace and ease is never their priority.
2. They don’t understand the concept of space.
Space is something crucial to make any relationship stronger. One of the most common traits of toxic parents in that they don’t recognize boundaries. They ignore the need for space and think that because they have given birth to you so they have a complete hold over your life. They meddle in every matter and try to dictate things. In a toxic relationship with parents, you may notice that there is very little space for personal growth. There is way more assertion and obligations than understanding and support.
3. Their feelings always dominate over the feelings of their children.
Another common trait of toxic parents is that try to dominate every other situation. They consider their right and wrong unremitting and what is right and wrong in your view, has no value in their view. This is how the pattern of sacred and profane continuously fluctuates between parents and their children. Parents try to dominate every situation by considering only what they feel right. They don’t understand the dire need for mutual understanding and support by ignoring the needs of their children. This is what leads to toxicity in this pure relationship.
4. They are more inclined towards highly negative reactions.
They tend to dramatize every single situation that is not up to their choice. They usually get out of control and loud at even small and minor matters. They can become verbally abusive at times and don’t even realize how wrong it is to many levels. Being loud and react dramatically is something that they consider as their denial defence mechanism. This is all to stop their children to do what they don’t want them to do. But they don’t realize that this is morally shabby and disreputable.
5. They are highly critical and they lack empathy.
Toxic parents do not know how to empathize with their children. Their priority is always their own needs and desires and primarily how they want things to be. They don’t understand the patterns of their child’s behaviour but instead, they choose to be critical. They criticize their children for not doing things how they want them to do. They don’t pay heed to the emotional and mental growth of their kids. For them, the areas of one’s personality that require catharsis are of no enough importance.
How these traits can affect the lives of children.
Now, we will see how these negative and toxic traits of parents can affect the life of their children. These all traits that are above mentioned have antagonistic and deleterious effects on the mental and emotional growth of the children who have gone through toxic childhood. Not everyone is lucky enough to get a healthy environment for their development and catharsis. Let’s see how that how this toxic brought up environment can be detrimental to a child’s health.
- Children facing continuous toxicity during the growth phases are more likely to develop anxiety disorders than other children of their age group having a healthy environment for bringing up.
- Ones who face a lot of criticism, their stress responses are oftentimes triggered more easily. This is because of past patterns of stress caused by continuous abuse and the aloof behaviour of their parents.
- Because of facing all the stress and anxiety, these children are at higher risk of getting heart diseases later in their life. This has been proven by the research study which was being conducted for 12 years.
- Toxic parents in adulthood can cause their children to experience fatigue more often. This is because they feel worn out of handling all the chitter-chatter that continuously clutters their head.
- Chronic stress can also lead to the weakening of the immune system.
- Children feel vulnerable and unsafe just because their parents might end up insulting them in front of the whole family or at any public place.
- They cannot perform well during class or even in extra circular activities because their mind is always so preoccupied with all the fear they face.
These were a few of the uncountable adverse effects that toxic parenting can cause. If you want to know how to deal with toxic parents when you live with them, then click on the link below.
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