{"id":10715,"date":"2019-03-18T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T10:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/?p=10715"},"modified":"2019-03-17T18:51:50","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T22:51:50","slug":"living-vicariously-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2019\/03\/living-vicariously-children.html","title":{"rendered":"Living Vicariously Through Your Children?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"girl-2480361_1920\"Parents, are you living vicariously through your children? Do you want them to fulfill your unfilled ambitions? Maybe you feel like a\u00a0\u00a0friend of mine who\u00a0said, \u201cI want to give my children the life I never had.\u201d It\u2019s a caring sentiment, but sometimes parents can take this idea too far. Sometimes, our desires to give our children everything are more about us than them.\u00a0Children need to grow into their own unique selves, not simply be an extension of us. Otherwise, it becomes more about our<\/span> unfilled wishes.<\/p>\n

Maybe you are the stage mom who gets your esteem through your daughter\u2019s performance. Or the dad who pushes his son to be admitted to an Ivy league school because you were rejected. Or maybe you pushed your child to cheer because that was a desire you always had in high school. Whatever it is, we have to be careful not to\u00a0live vicariously through our children.<\/p>\n

Here are ten questions to\u00a0help assess your involvement in their lives:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Am I pushy versus encouraging?<\/li>\n
  2. Am I trying to control their every decision?<\/li>\n
  3. Do I focus on my own goals and model for them ways to achieve dreams and desires?<\/li>\n
  4. Am I saying \u201cwe\u201d instead of \u201cyou\u201d when my child accomplishes something?<\/li>\n
  5. Am I more worried about my child\u2019s success than my child is?<\/li>\n
  6. Is being the best or winning more important than doing his or her best?<\/li>\n
  7. Am I pushing my child in a direction he or she doesn\u2019t really want to go?<\/li>\n
  8. Does my child have activities apart from me or is my life completely entwined with my child?<\/li>\n
  9. Am I impatient with my child’s\u00a0development of a skill or talent?<\/li>\n
  10. When he or she doesn’t\u00a0take top honors or first place, am I secretly angry or upset?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you said, yes, to any of these, perhaps you are living through your child\u2019s successes. This can strain your parent-child relationship and stress your child to not disappoint you. It can lead children to feel that love is conditional based on performance and success. This end result can be feelings of resentment on the child\u2019s part.<\/p>\n

    And consider this, your dreams for your child may not be their calling in life. So, check your motives. Do you know the passions and desires of your child\u2019s heart? \u00a0Are you encouraging him or her to follow the path unique to them?<\/p>\n

    Our job as parents is to help them discover their calling and support them in the journey. Encourage them to be the person God made them to be, to seek the Lord in all they do and walk in the confidence of the gifts and talents God has put inside of them. And while you are doing that, don\u2019t lose sight of who you are in Christ.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Parents, are you living vicariously through your children? Do you want them to fulfill your unfilled ambitions? Maybe you feel like a\u00a0\u00a0friend of mine who\u00a0said, \u201cI want to give my children the life I never had.\u201d It\u2019s a caring sentiment, but sometimes parents can take this idea too far. Sometimes, our desires to give our…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[914],"tags":[4382,4381,4384,4380,4383,52],"class_list":["post-10715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-relationships-2","tag-childs-calling","tag-dreams-and-expectations","tag-living-childs-dream","tag-living-vicariously","tag-parent-desires","tag-parenting-2"],"yoast_head":"\nLiving Vicariously Through Your Children?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2019\/03\/living-vicariously-children.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Living Vicariously Through Your Children?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Parents, are you living vicariously through your children? Do you want them to fulfill your unfilled ambitions? Maybe you feel like a\u00a0\u00a0friend of mine who\u00a0said, \u201cI want to give my children the life I never had.\u201d It\u2019s a caring sentiment, but sometimes parents can take this idea too far. 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Do you want them to fulfill your unfilled ambitions? Maybe you feel like a\u00a0\u00a0friend of mine who\u00a0said, \u201cI want to give my children the life I never had.\u201d It\u2019s a caring sentiment, but sometimes parents can take this idea too far. 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Dr. Linda\u2019s fun personality and expertise comes through whether she\u2019s helping her audience stress less or make peace with their thighs! Dr. Linda has her Ph.D. in Urban Health and Clinical Psychology and is a national expert on mental health. She has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders, anxiety, depression and pain management. With 30 years of clinical experience working with couples, families and individuals, she brings her common-sense approach to people who want to live in positive mental health. Dr. Linda is also a bestselling author with 21 book titles to her credit, a radio host of the Dr. Linda Mintle show, professor, national speaker, winner of the Mom\u2019s Choice Award, a national news consultant, featured writer for Beliefnet and hosts her own website. Her academic appointments keep her abreast of current research in her areas of expertise. Her media experience includes seven years as the resident expert for ABC Family\u2019s Living the Life television show and regular appearances on network television and radio. It is often said that being with Dr. Linda is like having coffee with a friend. She makes the complicated issues of relationships and mental health easy to understand and applicable to everyday living. The ease she has with people, coupled with her clinical training and experience makes her a sought-after speaker on college campuses, conferences and special events. Whether she is doing a TV skit with Tim Conway or discussing teen violence with Queen Latifa, Dr. Linda will entertain, educate and integrate faith and mental health in everyday living. Check out her latest book Hope and Healing for Anxiety, a whole-person approach to eliminate anxiety. .","sameAs":["https:\/\/drlindamintle.com\/","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/x.com\/drlindamintle"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/author\/lmintle"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10715"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10719,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10715\/revisions\/10719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}