*Editor’s Note: This piece is part of a series. Read the previous part here.  

In this series, I’ve been uncovering some of the habits that parents adopt with the best of intentions.

If you’ve been reading them, you know by now that I’m a parent too. And trust me, I make mistakes. As I’ve mentioned in the previous parts, most of our well-intentioned habits don’t come from a place of harm; they stem from deep, unconscious conditioning.

These habits come from everywhere. We hear them from other parents, we absorb them from our own upbringing, and we see them daily on social media. You could say we’ve been brainwashed into believing that these tactics are actually efficient.

But, they’re not. What we fail to see is that sometimes our most “loving” tactics follow our children into adulthood, leaving them to spend decades unlearning the very behaviors we used to guide them.

We can never be perfect parents. But we can be aware. 

Today's best stories.