We need to speak plainly about what happens in our homes when the front door is shut. Most of us grew up hearing that everything done to us was for our own good. When you become a parent yourself, it is easy to repeat the same scripts without thinking twice.
If any scene in this piece sounds familiar, do not make excuses. Do not write it off as practical discipline, strict parenting, or high standards. If you recognise your own voice in these words, you are dealing with an instance of terrible parenting.
Bad parenting rarely looks like police reports or front-page news. It lives in the small, ugly habits we pull out whenever adult convenience matters more than our children. Looking closely at these moments gives us room to pause, reflect, and do better.
The Breakfast Table and the Morning Commute
Think about how the morning begins. You had a disagreement with your child last night, and when they come out of their room and say good morning, you deliberately walk past and ignore them. You treat basic civility like a bargaining chip, forcing them to walk on eggshells just to see if your anger has cooled down.
And if you were the one who lost your temper the night before, you never actually say you were wrong, because in your mind, parents do not apologise. Instead, you cut up an apple, place the bowl on their study desk, and assume the problem is solved. Children know when an adult made an unfair call, and refusing to say the actual words teaches them that authority excuses bad behaviour.
You might even tell your kids to be grateful to have you as their parent, as if food, clothing, and shelter were generous favours rather than baseline duties. Demanding praise for meeting survival needs turns the family into a debt collection agency. The child learns that affection is an invoice they can never settle.
Then you get into the car or start the morning commute. On the way, you tell them that their laziness is wasting all the money you pour into tuition centres every month. Academic guidance should help a child understand the syllabus, but the moment you tally the dollar cost of every grade, learning stops being an opportunity and becomes a guilt trip.
You might even blame the kids for the luxury car you can no longer afford, complaining that all your spare cash goes toward their needs instead. You tell them that if you did not have to pay for their childcare, school fees, and daily expenses, you would still be driving a continental ride. Children did not ask to be born, and they never asked to be treated like an expense that ruined your personal lifestyle.
School Hours and Everyday Discipline
Look at how discipline is handled during school hours. Some parents withhold their child's recess money as a penalty, leaving them to sit hungry in the canteen while their classmates queue for food. Nutrition should never be conditional on obedience.
Or the child wakes up with a burning forehead, and instead of letting them rest, you dose them with paracetamol and force them to school anyway so you do not have to burn childcare leave. You do not do it for their lessons; you do it so you can head to the office and protect your own working day. Treating school as a drop-off centre while your child sits shivering at their desk is pure selfishness.
When they come home in the afternoon, they want to show you something they made in art class. But you tell them not to bring those scribbles back home from school because the flat has no space for useless paper. Discarding their effort teaches the child that you only value what can be scored on an exam.
If they act up later in the day, you grab a rubbish bag and dump their toys into the bin right in front of them. It does not teach tidy habits or self-control. It merely proves that whoever is bigger gets to destroy personal property when they are angry.
The same impatience shows up on weekends at the playground. Your child gets stuck at the top of a climbing net, scared stiff and crying, and you stand below looking at your watch, telling them not to waste your time. Dismissing their terror exposes plain selfishness, showing you care far more about your own convenience than a frightened child.
Dinner Conversations and Academic Pride
As they grow older, that impatience takes a different form. You refuse to let them touch the washing machine or cook an egg, only to call them hopeless when they reach secondary school and cannot manage basic chores. You cannot shield them from daily responsibilities and then insult them for being unprepared.
By the time subject combinations come around, you force them into pure sciences or business tracks they have zero interest in. You do it because you want a respectable path to talk about with your colleagues, disregarding what your child is naturally good at. In the end, they end up with qualifications that satisfy your pride and exhaust their spirit.
Look at what happens around the dinner table when guests are over. You sit across from relatives and laugh at your child's poor grades just to make conversation and protect your own pride. When home does not protect a child from public embarrassment, nowhere feels safe.
And when results fall short of expectations, you go as far as cancelling their promised birthday celebration as a penalty. A birthday marks the day a child entered the world, not an annual bonus for hitting academic targets. Linking celebration to report cards tells them that affection only exists when they perform.
Then there are the moments in public where they act out and you humiliate them simply for disgracing you in front of strangers. You are not correcting their behaviour; you are defending your own image. Public shaming only teaches children to associate your presence with anxiety.
Behind Closed Doors
Yet the moment they speak up for themselves at home and offer a polite "no, thank you" to an extra task, you snap and ask who they think they are. A child saying no politely is exercising a basic boundary. Treating polite disagreement as open defiance trains them to become pushovers who cannot stand up for themselves later in life.
Even in their own bedroom, boundaries disappear. You wait until they step into the shower, pick up their mobile phone, and read through their private text messages under the excuse of checking on them. Snooping only ensures they learn how to hide their personal lives from you.
When you are together on the sofa and they try to share a story about their day, your eyes remain glued to your social feed. You give them a distracted nod while continuing to scroll, showing them that online posts matter more than their voice. After being dismissed enough times, they will stop trying to talk to you.
When genuine grief happens, like the family pet passing away, you shrug and say it is just one less thing to care for. You reduce a loyal companion to a household chore that you are glad to cross off the list. Brushing off loss with cold logic teaches children to bottle up sorrow and distrust affection.
And perhaps the oldest habit of all: when they refuse to cooperate, you threaten to leave them behind or throw them out. You walk away down the corridor or shut the gate in their face, using their fear of being discarded just to force compliance. They do not obey you because they understand what went wrong. They run after you or cry outside the door out of pure fear.
The 20 Everyday Habits to Stop Today
Here is the full inventory of everyday scenes we just walked through. Treat it as an honest checklist to see how your own home measures up.
- Tell your kids to be grateful to have you as their parent.
- Ignore their "good morning" after yesterday's misbehaviour.
- Say "parents don't apologise."
- Tell them their laziness is wasting your money on tuition.
- Blame the kids for the luxury car you can no longer afford.
- Laugh at their poor grades in front of others.
- Say "don't waste my time" when they are scared stiff at the playground.
- Say "one less thing to care for" when their pet passes away.
- Read their private texts while they shower.
- Dump their toys into the bin when they "misbehave."
- Force them into academic subjects they have no interest in.
- Tell them not to bring "scribbles" from school back home.
- Withhold recess money when they don't follow your rules.
- Cancel their birthday plans because of disappointing results.
- Scroll on your social feed while the kids share their day.
- Force them to school when they are having a fever.
- Humiliate them for disgracing you in front of others.
- Never teach them life skills, then call them hopeless.
- Say "who do you think you are?" when they turn you down politely.
- Threaten to leave them behind or throw them out.
Facing the Mirror
None of us get every interaction right. But when we look at these everyday scenes, we have to be honest about what they really mean. They are not acts of tough love.
They are moments where our convenience, our ego, and our social standing came ahead of our children's basic dignity. You might forget why you were irritated by tomorrow, but your child will remember the coldness you showed them for years.
Owning up to these habits is uncomfortable, but admitting what they are is the only way we begin to do better.