How Parents Affect A Child’s Level Of Self Acceptance
- Did your parents teach you to deny the things you want?
- Do you sacrifice your wants and needs to make others happy?
- Learn how to accept yourself and the things you want in life.
How much you accept yourself as an adult, is strongly tied to the type of love you received as a child. However self acceptance is also tied to how often your parents accepted the things that you wanted, and the things that you dreamt about.
Denying Dreams
For example, many children often aspire to be something their parents do not approve of. They may want to be an artist, a singer or maybe an actor?
However their parents do not approve, and tell the child they are living in a “fantasy land”. They may tell them something like they are “not good enough”, or they will “never make it anyway” so it would be better to pursue a more traditional and safer job like they have.
Learning To Deny Yourself
This is an extremely common scenario, especially during teenage years of life. Although it may occur much earlier, such as when children begin to model people they see on TV.
But if the child or teenager is constantly told that they shouldn’t want to do that, and they should do this instead, in effect what happens is that the child becomes encouraged to deny or disown their own feelings in order to please the parent.
Since as children the desire to please our parents is extremely strong, we will often do anything in order to please them, and receive the love that comes with that approval.
However should the child learn to deny the things they want in order to please their parents, ultimately this leads to a lack of self acceptance.
As the child grows older into an adult, this lack of self acceptance then leads to poor levels of confidence, self esteem and an attitude that even though they may want something, they probably wouldn’t get it anyway and so there would be no point in trying.
The adult has now become conditioned to give up on the things they would like to do, even before they try to do it.
A Need To Please
This lack of self acceptance extends further into work and social life. As if the adult lacks self acceptance, they will often have an attitude that in order to get what they want, they must first please or prove themselves to other people.
You can see this attitude in people who are overly nice and are completely submissive, willing to do or say anything to make you happy or to “like them”.
However this attitude often leaves them with a lack of fulfillment in life, and a loss of control. Since how they feel about themselves, is dependant on how you react towards them.
Finding A Solution
Lack of self acceptance is extremely common in today’s society, and amplified by the media which instills feelings of inadequacy in the viewer.
As a result there are a lot of people who are completely submissive, and tend to do what other people tell them to do, whilst forgetting about their own hopes and aspirations.
However in reality these hopes and aspirations are not forgotten, but merely pushed to the back of the mind. Because they are still there, and the person is living a life that is not aligned with their true desires, this causes a conflict in the mind.
Ultimately this leads to a lack of fulfillment and satisfaction in life, because the person wants to do one thing, but is forced to do something else.
The key point to understand here is that a lack of self acceptance often stems from how your parents treated you as a child, and whether or not you learnt to deny what you wanted in order to please your parents.
This lack of self acceptance then became a subconscious limiting belief which was carried through to adult life. So even though you may have left your parents a long time ago, you still have a subconscious belief that you must first deny yourself in order to please other people, and receive approval from them.
In order to reverse this limiting belief it is necessary for you to become more focused on yourself. To stop being concerned about what other people think of you, and whether or not they like what you are doing.
You can never please everyone, and if you try, you will never please yourself. So from now on make an effort to stop trying to please everyone you meet, and instead please yourself.
Thank you for the enlightening article - I have often relayed to people the power of words, especially with children and you are absolutely right - often times, words of concern relay to a child that they are simply not good enough. Thank you!
That is so dangerous to tell a child that they are living in a fantasy land when they relay their dreams - it has such negative results, please parents everywhere, don’t do that
Although some do, children should not compare themselves to model, actors, rich people, ect. This is only going to bring your confidence level down. Be yourself and be happy with who you are today!
Pleasing yourself should come first and also be true to yourself is important.
Current research suggests that parents do not have control over the type of people children ultimately become. Rather it is their peer group and genes. It is a shame there are those who keep pushing these antiquated theories, making parents feel guilty, and making parents constantly try to control and shape their children…
I think it is a big mistake to say that parents have no influence on how their children develop. There are 3 factors which largely determine how children grow up.
1 - Genes. This is shown by babies who have different temperaments. Not all babies act the same way, which suggests it is either genetic memory, or they are influenced by their parents somehow in their mothers womb.
2 - Parents. These are the first role models for the child, who the child will naturally mimic as a survival mechanism. As they grow older, they will begin to absorb the beliefs and values of their parents. Which unless changed, will stay with them their entire life. If these beliefs are negative, these will often manifest themselves later as low self esteem and/or self sabotaging behaviour.
3 - Peer Group. People become like the people they hang around, and if they were raised being made to feel insecure and that that need to please others to get people to like them, they will be easily influenced by the people around them and what they see in the media. Children who are raised to feel confident and have high self esteem, are less likely to be negatively influenced by their peer group.
So all 3 factors are important, but i think the most important factor is how the parents raise their child, and the beliefs and values they instill in that child.
This does not mean a parent should feel guilt if their child is different to how they wanted to raise them, as often parents raise their children in a similiar way to how they were raised. The difference is, because society changes drastically each generation, what may have applied before may not necessarily apply now. So it is definitely hard work and very unpredictable, although in general, if a child is raised with high self esteem and a high level of self acceptance, they will grow up to be that way as an adult.