The role of parents influences any child of any family, because it is essential to train and educate children as balanced and self-sufficient people. For this you have to dedicate a lot of time, effort, patience, affection and a lot of emotional intelligence, something that parents should take into account when educating their children at home.
But what happens when parents also have OCD? At the following article, we explain how having a parent with obsessive compulsive disorder affects children.
Index
- What are the parents like?
- What reaction does this attitude provoke in your children?
- What about children who submit to demanding parents?
- What happens when demanding parents also control and overprotect their children?
- How to avoid that children end up being insecure, indecisive and without self-esteem?
What are the parents like?
Parents who suffer from obsessive compulsive personality disorder are demanding parents, who punish the child harshly and without flexibility when he misbehaves or does not meet his expectations, which tend to be excessive and unattainable for a child.
For example, if the child gets a good in a school subject, the father demands a notable, if he gets a notable, he demands an A, if he gets an A, he demands an honor roll, and if he gets an honor roll, It constantly reminds you that you should not stop trying to always be the best.
What reaction does this attitude provoke in your children?
This attitude on the part of the parents causes the child different reactions:
- Rebelling against the parent and progressing to Conduct Disorder or Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which are the precedents for Antisocial Personality Disorder.
- Submit and accept the attitude of the parents, trying to respond almost obsessively to their demands. If they manage to fulfill them, they feel good about themselves, if they don’t, they accept their parents’ criticism, and what is worse, they learn to cruelly criticize themselves, establishing a strong low self-esteem.
What about children who submit to demanding parents?
To answer this question, even if we are within the context of obsessive-compulsive disorder, it is useful for any family that parents are abusively demanding of their children.
These children try to respond to parental demands and be what their parents expect of them. Parents, being perfectionists and manipulators, establish severely rigid and delimited rules for them, with parents being clearer about what their children cannot do and what they must do. What their children can do is forgotten, which limits the child’s capacity for initiative and their decision-making is impaired, creating an insecure personality.
What happens when demanding parents also control and overprotect their children?
When this occurs, these parents with OCD tend to direct all of their children’s steps in decisions, choices, behaviors, and even mood. This occurs until the child is relatively older.
This educational attitude leads children to feel excessively responsible and mature for their age without feeling it as their own.
Sooner or later these children realize that they are not themselves, but that they are the reflection of what their parents wanted them to be, which makes them feel false about themselves.
Many, as this is the only way of learning they know, take up these intolerant, strict, inflexible attitudes and become severe like their parents, transmitting these personality characteristics from one generation to another, and sometimes obsessive-compulsive disorder of the personality.
How to avoid that children end up being insecure, indecisive and without self-esteem?
Letting them grow.
Sometimes, the frustrations of parents focus on the attitude they show towards their children, and these, instead of receiving emotional and balanced support, receive that they are not capable of anything without their parents being on top of them all the time, criticizing what they do wrong and forgetting what they do well or their progress. And it is not like that.
Children must be allowed to do, experiment and make mistakes. If they are wrong, nothing happens, you don’t have to get frustrated or frustrated them. Mistake is the best learning process.
And parents should accompany them in the learning process, encouraging them that next time they will surely do better if they put in effort.
This article is merely informative, we do not have the power to prescribe any medical treatment or make any type of diagnosis. We invite you to see a doctor in the case of presenting any type of condition or discomfort.
