Some parents don’t realize that the way they express their love and care for their children can profoundly impact their emotions and behavior.
For example, if parents are often busy with work or have too much pressure, children may feel neglected and unimportant. A lack of quality time together can create distance in the relationship, making children feel estranged and more challenging to connect with.
3 ways parents’ upbringing can make children distant
Sometimes parents think they are doing something good for their children, but the children receive it differently.
Frequently comparing their children
Social comparison theory suggests that when people constantly hear “Others are better,” it triggers a primitive survival fear – “If I’m not good enough, I will be abandoned.”
Imagine your child is raising a piggy bank. Every comparison you make is like doing two things at once – putting money into someone else’s jar while taking it out of your child’s. The problem is that children will form a closed cognitive loop:
– My value = better than others (when praised)
– My existence = inferior to others (when mocked)
This type of “conditional love” will lead children to two extremes as they grow up. They may become “workaholics,” constantly trying to prove themselves, or they may become self-abandoning, thinking, “I can’t do it anyway.”
Not valuing their talents
Neuroscience has discovered that when a person is compared, blood flow to the prefrontal cortex (responsible for rational thinking) decreases, while the amygdala (the emotional center) becomes abnormally active.
It’s like forcing your computer to run ten antivirus programs simultaneously. All memory will be occupied, so where is the remaining psychological energy for development? In fact, the brain prioritizes survival. When it continues to deal with negative emotions such as shame and anxiety, it can only allocate more resources to “kill viruses” to survive.
This is similar to when children feel that their talents are not valued by their parents, which can lead to a sense of inferiority. Children begin to doubt their abilities and are afraid to pursue their passions or interests.
The lack of talent recognition can make children feel less valuable than their peers, affecting their psychology and motivation to develop.
Ignoring their emotional changes
There is a theory of emotions in psychology. Every time a parent ignores their child, it is equivalent to:
Withdrawal: Weakens the child’s sense of security (“I have to be good enough to be loved”)
Transfer: Turns trust between parent and child into anxiety (“Others are better than me”)
Freeze: Turns off the function of expressing oneself (I will be compared anyway)
The scary thing is that this type of cognition will create a vicious cycle – the less energy children have, the worse their performance, the more worried the parents will be, leading to escalating comparisons, and the black hole of the child’s energy continues to expand… Eventually, children become distant from their parents.
So, how can parents connect and communicate closely with their children?
Most of us have unconsciously said things we didn’t mean to. Parents can apply three methods to change the way they talk to their children.
“Lens” communication method (turning comparisons into observations)
– Pull-down mode: “Little Treasure, I see that you’ve been studying this poem for 30 minutes, but you still haven’t memorized it.”
– Empowerment mode: “I see you’re looking for the best memorization method. Would you like us to experiment together?”
By asking questions focused on development, you activate the prefrontal cortex instead of the amygdala, allowing the child’s brain to concentrate its “power” on problem-solving.
Balancing energy
Create a visual “energy account,” putting progress in the income column and deviations in the expense column, such as:
Income column: Taking the initiative to make new friends and giving children a bravery medal +10 energy cents/Focusing on playing for 30 minutes +5 energy cents/Finishing homework faster than yesterday +10 energy cents…
Expense column: Comparing once – 10 energy dollars / Pretending to be happy – 8 energy dollars…
When parents focus on what children do well (even if it’s just tying their shoelaces 10 seconds faster than yesterday), they continuously reinforce positive behavior and boost children’s confidence.
Setting up an “emotional buffer zone”
When parents are about to say something like a comparison, try this mantra: “I almost want to say… (deep breath), but what I want to say is, how can we solve this problem?”
Pausing for about two seconds can activate the prefrontal cortex of the brain, preventing the emotional brain from taking over and saying hurtful things. If needed, parents can pat their child’s shoulder or touch their head to restore a sense of security.
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