Can you name an example of bad parenting?

The brother wasn’t so lucky. One day in his final year of high school, he came home with a failing grade. Math, I believe it was. His mother told him he couldn’t play the hockey championship finals, as punishment. The one game he’d trained for the whole year. He lost it — in one flare of anger, he hit her with his hockey stick. It hit her temple. She fell down the stairs. And died. Kid was tried as a juvenile, I believe he wasn’t yet eighteen. No idea what became of him. But you may say, his mother’s ambition and desire to live vicariously through her own children is what killed her. She kept pushing a boy into doing things he wasn’t built to do. Into excelling in fields and areas he wasn’t made to excel in…

When I was in elementary school there was one girl whose mother was one of those “Tiger Mom” types. Always reaching for the stars. Only the best was good enough. And we barely noticed it, at the time. Because her daughter did well. She was the type of girl who was quick to catch on, had a near-photographic memory and excellent recall — school would have been fairly easy for such a girl either way, even without a mother always kicking her butt to do more.

Her son, however, was a different creature. He wasn’t the bookish type at all.

What does it mean if someone asks if it’s pink?

Too many parents make this mistake — they try to mold their children, like clay, to become exactly what they want them to be. Their ambition is limitless, their disappointment and insults a neverending reservoir of bitterness. They push and push their little puppet. Until the child either succeeds in realizing these lofty dreams the parents have dreamed for it… or until the child, unable to secure victory, breaks.

So he got grounded. A lot. Got scolded a lot. It wasn’t ever good enough. Even a grade that, for a guy like him, was pretty solid? Wasn’t good enough. Because it wasn’t the highest. Because wasn’t the best in his class. His classmates would go on schooltrips and he’d be stuck at home, studying. The only thing he truly loved was sports. Athletics. He excelled in them, and he was particularly good at hockey. Only on the field was he free to be himself, if only for an hour or so. His sister, meanwhile, continued to perform outstandingly — by the time she finished high school, she went to an American university on a scholarship. No doubt grateful to be away from her overly involved mother.