Shadnan Mahmud

Bengali parents are often seemed to be disappointed by seeing the friendly relationship between parents and children of western culture. But in the sub continental culture, mother is always depicted as the self-sacrificing figure, and father is shown as a truculent grumpy person. There isn’t too much example of Bengali families coming to a plane. But nowadays, this ethic is changing. And, this change is quite positive. But, Positive Parenting is not positive always. Sometimes positive side of parenting is proving to be negative for both parents and children.

As a parent, it’s important to form a stable, good relationship with children for a better future. The relationship status between parents and children, the understanding level of them decides the characteristics of the child. Whether he will be confident and liberal in his behavior depends on the relationship with parents. People who are becoming parents in contemporary time usually avoid frightening behavior with their children. The topic of our today’s discussion is the challenges of Parenting and how positive parenting proves to be harmful in some cases.

Hopelessness in children’s personal life

Often parenting fails to decide the border line. While encouraging the kids, parents often forget the fact that they won’t be there by children’s side always. If children don’t learn from their mistakes, or they can’t acknowledge their limits it will harm them in a huge extent in their future. People are bound to make mistakes. It’s parent’s duty to make their children realize their mistakes and accept failure in a positive way.

Many a time’s parents become so concerned about their children that, they always pretend to be happy in front of their children. They never share their problems, anxiety, and exhaustion with their children. They think, confessing their negative feelings to the children won’t be auspicious for them. But it’s not the right way of dealing. By sharing their success-failures, good-bad times, strength-fear with children, they actually teach them how to deal with life at any circumstances. Life is a combination of both success and failures. Parent’s mistakes, grief, fighting mentality, penance, weakness gives children an overall message about life. Gradually, children understand the concept of real life without even realizing.

There is one thing that parents need to understand. According to children’s age, they should be made familiar with direct or indirect experiences of life by parents. If children is a toddler, parents shouldn’t confess their negative feelings in front them. But, with gradual raise of the children, it’s not advisable to sustain the tenderness, caress always. Otherwise, they won’t be able to handle the worldly side. A woman who dedicates their whole life to the family often suffers from dissatisfaction as they cannot do something significant in their personal life. In the language of research, mother’s duty is described as ‘Invisible Labor’. That is to say, positive parenting has a negative side for the parents sometimes.

Being caring for parents

Many matters of parents life is directly or indirectly connected with compliance of children. It’s actually difficult sometimes to give positive parenting while suffering from personal problems, financial problem. Sometimes, they had to force themselves to behave normal in front of the kids. While going through a tough situation, it’s not easy to maintain a healthy, positive, friendly relation always. Whenever for the sake of positive parenting they are made realized about their mistakes, it becomes unbearable for them. Considering the situation, positive parenting can prove to be terrible for the parents.

Praising all the time

There was a time, when “Authoritarian Parenting” was very popular. This means parents used to behave very strictly with children. Among advice, order, embargo, punishment etc children used to grow up. Then comes “Permissive Parenting”. There are some shortcomings of this popular parenting technique. Giving children unbridled encouragement on every other matter often becomes a curse. Often they become weak to criticism, because of blusterous praising.

After a certain age children need to face the real world. And at that time, it obvious that everyone won’t be their well wisher. As he grows older, he needs to experience many tough situations; he needs to hear criticism because of his faults and failures. If he gets used to only praising from his parents, he won’t be able to adapt in this kind of unwanted situations. So, what’s the solution? Both Authoritarian and Permissive parenting should be excluded?

According to the research, if encouragement or praising is 4 times (4×) of the criticism then it’s an effective way of parenting. But its need to remember that, both praising and criticism should be for valid reasons. That means, if children does something worth praising, only then they should be praised. Same goes for criticism or punishment. They shouldn’t be punished unnecessarily. The reason behind criticism is to make them realize their mistakes. During the growth of mental health, if commendation is more than criticism it will be helpful for a better future.

A beautiful future for children is always a dream of parents. Many parents often overlook the mistakes of their children. They judge their children behavior from a positive angle always. They don’t want to admit wrongdoings of their children. On the other hand, there are some parents who behave strictly with their children always.

Positive feelings (caress, embrace, encouragement, love) make children sincere, associative, self-confident as a person. Negative feelings (dominance, rebuke, criticism) help him to think, plan or to have foreknowledge of the world. Every child should be raised as a potential human being with parent’s love and control.