Many parents have high expectations of their kids, hoping they do well academically, behave themselves properly, interact with others gracefully, are stable emotionally, are independent etc. We always hope our kids do better than us & not meet with setbacks similar to ours in life. This in itself is normal but why do so many parents & kids feel stressed due to this? Have we pondered upon what we expect? Are we expecting our kids to be "perfect"? Are they "not good enough" if they didn't do as well as others/ faltered in their attempts? If we have such high expectations of them, it usually stems from our deep love for them. Then shouldn't we celebrate & encourage them on every little progress they made, instead of focusing on what they have not achieved?
On the other hand, we could be too hard on ourselves. We have high expectations of ourselves to be "perfect" parents. Every imperfection in our child, every mistake our child makes, becomes a score on our "failure" list. No one likes to fail. So we wrongly place emphasis on raising the perfect child. There are no perfect parents & no perfect children. If we accept parenting as a learning journey, we would not blame ourselves unduly but focus instead on improving ourselves & enjoying our kids.
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