TOXIC PARENT

Dr Susan Forward define Toxic Parent as “Parents who do unloving things in the name of love.”

Hardly will you see parents who did not love their children and most will do anything to express their love for their children to see but in doing so, parents can also make mistakes, all parents make mistakes but when such are done in the name of love in a consistent manner then it become toxic leading to lasting emotional and mental damage in such children and they, most time if not helped, will pass same to their own children and so on until it become a generational thing. A toxic parent is often a product of a toxic parent, an abuse will become an abuser too to his/her children. If not stopped they will soon become a generations of abused and abusers.

For example, toxic parenting include:

1. Indirect ridiculing a child with names like thief, idiot, food monger etc for being poor in grades, ugly, stupid or foolish,
2. Bribing teachers to upgrade a child academic grades,
3. Paying for “miracle centers” or buying results to help get admission for a child, (this effectively help kills a child self worth and confidence all through life, except God help such a child).
4. Making negative and insulting jokes on a child
5. Inflicting physical pains or scars on a child (housemaid, house helps inclusive) as forms of corrections.
6. Labelling a child a devil for refusal to sing or actively participate during family devotion.

Discourse:

Please help update the list above with more ways or behaviors parents put on in the name of love, correction and general parenting that can have lasting emotional, mental and physiological damage on a child. We might be helping a home where parents are silently killing their own children without them even knowing it.

• Group Admin, 3pG.

Worthy of note are areas listed below, that can also be said to be Toxic behavior of parents to children.

1. Involving or exposing your children to unnecessary partying in order to please friends and cliques, some as early as the 8th day of the child’s life.
2. Talking ill of one’s spouse, teachers, neighbours, pastors, church members etc in the presence of the children. This goes a long way to affect the children negatively much more than the objects of such discussions. Making unpleasant statement or remark about others (spouse, siblings, neighbors or another child) in your children presence is never a sign of good parenting.
3. Making adults talks in the presence of your children is never in their best interest. This can include talking or joking about sex, with your spouse or another adult in your child presence, even when such statements are coded. Over time children finds ways to decode adults and understand them.
4. Watching or listening to adults content on TV or radio in the presence of your children, can also be very damaging to their long term emotional and mental welfare.
5. Buying electronics games that you can’t monitor and allowing children unrestricted and uncontrolled access to internet is one examples too many of Toxic parenting.

These and many more are toxic to your child, it is your duty to protect them from all these, ignorance is never an excuse.

• Group Admin, 3pG.