Raising children is a journey where parents constantly need to learn to provide the best for their children. When you have both a daughter and a son, you will notice the different psychological characteristics of each gender, so raising children requires appropriate adjustments based on their gender.
When raising a daughter, you should consider the following three avoidances:
Avoid favoring males and belittling females
Favoring males and belittling females is one of the long-standing mindsets in Eastern cultures. This causes many girls to grow up feeling hurt. Parents often value their sons or younger brothers, focusing on providing the best things for their sons to “bolster” the family’s foundation. Many people see that providing for their sons is providing for their own family, while providing for their daughters is providing for another family. It is because of favoring males and belittling females that many families only give the best to their sons. If you still have this mindset, your daughters will become self-conscious, unhappy, and dissatisfied.
Avoid wasting innocent money
There is an old saying: “Raise boys in a poor manner, raise girls in a wealthy manner.” Many people believe that girls need to be well taken care of so that they won’t suffer from deprivation and be tempted by the outside world in the future. However, excessive pampering can turn children into selfish, demanding, and materialistic individuals. Therefore, love your children appropriately without spoiling them. Girls also need to accept discipline to become strong when they grow up and be able to protect themselves. In today’s society, girls need to be independent. Moreover, if girls are pampered too much, they will have a princess mentality and find it difficult to adapt to the outside world, lacking understanding and exhibiting an arrogant attitude, which will make it difficult for them to receive genuine love.
Avoid negligence: Teach children self-defense
In today’s era, our children can face many temptations and dangers. Girls are more vulnerable to danger than boys. Therefore, it is necessary to teach children self-defense, critical thinking, and how to avoid being deceived. Sex education helps children protect themselves and gain knowledge, which is extremely important in today’s society. Girls living in society often have to face hidden dangers such as kidnappings, human trafficking, sexual assaults, and other types of attacks. Once these undesirable incidents occur, they leave deep emotional scars on females. Therefore, educating children about self-defense to prevent bad situations is extremely important.
When raising a son, parents should consider the following three “don’ts”:
Don’t do everything for your child
Parents often make the mistake of doing everything for their child because they love them. This is especially detrimental to boys. Children who do not understand things tend to rely on their parents, which leads them to become ineffective individuals in society. Taking care of everything for your child will make them lose their ability to be independent. This will make children feel suffocated, and parents will waste their efforts. Boys need to explore and gain experiences. The image of boys needs to be strong and capable of taking care of themselves and their future families. Therefore, when parents do everything for their child, they hinder their growth and make them suffer later in life, causing their own suffering and the suffering of others. Let children develop their own abilities by allowing them to take care of their appropriate tasks at each stage of their development. Through this, they will gradually develop their courage, observation skills, and vision.
Don’t suppress your child’s emotions
Boys are not always strong. However, many parents demand that their child suppress their emotions and impose standards on them without truly caring about their child’s personality. Some people say that boys should not cry, play with girls’ toys, or like flowers. Boys should only like strong things like guns, cars, and airplanes. However, this is not advisable because suppressing their emotions will hinder children from truly being themselves.
Repressing emotions is not beneficial. Boys also need to have their emotions released.
Don’t spoil your child
Many people often spoil their sons because they believe that they will be their future. However, excessive indulgence is not a form of love, but a form of harm. When a child feels important and catered to, they will always rely on others, not understanding the hardships of life, not appreciating the value of labor, and not respecting others. Therefore, parents need to avoid spoiling their sons too much. Let your child become independent so that they understand that they need to work hard in order to have something to eat and achieve success. No matter how much parents love their child, they cannot always be by their side. Therefore, parents need to care for their child but not spoil them. At each stage of development, parents need to teach their child appropriate tasks for their age, and help them assist others.
