Parenting can be a headache, there’s no doubt about that. But, being a child can come with a set of challenges, too, especially when living with somewhat difficult parents.
The latter can come in all shapes and sizes: some might be too controlling, and others—not care at all. Some might yell constantly or use the silent treatment as a way to solve everything. Then, there are the parents who need to be parented themselves, which doesn’t give the child much of a normal childhood, either. Whatever the case, it doesn’t make the child’s life any easier and is likely to affect them for years, if not decades, to come.
Unfortunately, poor parenting is not something that’s easy to change. To make matters worse, it can become a cycle, as certain parenting techniques that people experience as kids might later be used with their own children. One study suggests that poor parenting can be passed down from one generation to the other, NBC News reports. The authors found that the more adverse childhood experiences a person had, the more likely their offspring were to be troubled, too, as early as the time they turned five.
“We found that 91 percent of parents had at least one adverse childhood experience, while 45 percent had four or more,” said one of the researchers behind the study, Anne-Marie Conn of the University of Rochester Medical Center. “And among their young children, 72 percent had already experienced at least one adverse childhood experience.”
Talking about how people’s detrimental experiences as kids can affect their own style of parenting later in life, Conn noted that it’s not easy to break patterns of behavior. “You were brought up in an adverse environment and that is what you know,” she said.
Take spanking, for instance. If they were spanked while growing up, some people might consider that a normal way of disciplining misbehaving children. But, individuals who want to break out of the cycle of poor parenting might think twice about doing that or find a way to change their ways completely.
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Discussing the topic of bad parenting, Professor of Healthcare Studies at Salem State University, Dr. Yvonne M. Vissing, noted that some people might not even understand that their parenting methods can be detrimental to their offspring.
“I think that most parents believe they are caring and responsible, but the manner in which they interact with their children can be quite concerning,” she told Bored Panda in a recent interview. “If a parent is overtly dangerous to a child, they can be reported to child protective services. The problem is that most outsiders are scared to report them (even if they are mandated reporters) because of retaliation.
“Also, children are scared to divulge maltreatment a) because they may see it as normative and not understand that they are abused, b) they fear retaliation from parents if they ‘squeal’ about how they are really being treated.”
“What a child experiences in the first few years of life sets the stage for their development and their perceptions,” Dr. Vissing continued, emphasizing the importance of parental influence.
“There are many programs, such as Harvard's Center for the Developing Child, that focus on the importance of age zero to three as the critical time for child development. This is before many children can speak, so parents may think their children don't get what's going on, but they do.
“Studies by physicians at Yale and other institutions find (by taking blood samples and looking for hormones and other measures of stress) that by the time they are three months old, children who are facing adverse child experiences (aces) have markedly different levels than those who are well-nurtured. Therefore, early love and support is central to the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development of a child; it starts when a child is born,” the expert emphasized.
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Dr. Vissing noted that such “parenting techniques” as spanking a child, hitting them, or telling them how bad they are have been found to be associated with a host of problem behaviors and conditions in children. “For example, kids who are hit when they are ‘bad’ learn that violence is a suitable problem-solving strategy for when someone is upset. They will then hit their parents, siblings, peers, or lovers later on.
“Teaching children how to control their emotions and solve conflicts in a positive, nonviolent, and respectful way has been shown to create people who are themselves nonviolent, respectful, and kind,” the expert pointed out.
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Discussing this extremely sensitive issue with Bored Panda, Dr. Vissing noted that many people learn how to interact with children the same way their parents did. “They may say they didn't like what their parents did, but when they become parents, they may try one or two different strategies themselves; and if those don't work, they default to what they learned when they were children.
“When pregnant, parents may go to parenting classes but usually they are focused on how to get the baby out of your body and not what to do with them when you take them home.”