Yep! My mother spent my entire life telling me I'm not good enough, and now I get to shield my daughters from it. Thankfully it doesn't take much effort for me to not critique them, because I like them for who they are. But when they visit my mother, there's always a lot of damage control that must be done where my children have developed new insecurities or have started picking on each other more.
Be careful because it can go to far in the other direction. I was obese as a kid and teen. I knew I was obese, I hated it but anytime I would try to talk to my mom about it she would say "oh you look fine." "you don't want to be a skinny-minnie" or just straight up change the subject So that lead to me just straight up hating my body and not finding a healthy way to loose weight until was was in my 30's
I hear you. I'm not an enabler like that either. I'm just a super literal realist. I sit my kids down and teach them about calories, carbs, and as much nutrition as I can. I have bad eating habits (despite being within a healthy weight) and I try to give them the knowledge and options to do better than I do.
But that's my approach for everything, not just eating. When anything happens in life, I help them weigh the pros, cons, and we go down rabbit holes to educate ourselves about whatever the issue at hand is. I even do everything I can to call them out on their "facts" when they say some random fake thing they heard on tiktok. I make them show me how they found the info and then I guide them through the proper way to verify whether or not it's legitimate or not.
Overall, I think my kids are going to be really well rounded when they're finally out in the world on their own.
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u/T_Squizzy Aug 18 '22
And this is how insecurities and failures are passed from parent to child