How can I tell if I'm making mistakes in parenting?

Awareness of mistakes: Parenting is a matter of gut instinct – but also a question of your own insights and experiences. If you're unsure, it can help to look back at how you were raised: What shaped you, what did you like and what didn't? These insights often help you avoid parenting mistakes.

Never stop learning: Apparent parenting mistakes sometimes only become noticeable when there are already problems with your child. It's still not too late to learn from your mistakes. What's important is that you can admit—to yourselves and to your child—that your behavior was not right.

Self-confidence: Advice comes from all sides about what children need and how to best support them. Trust your competence as parents and raise your child in the way that feels right for you and your family. An authentic stance on parenting is a solid foundation.

The biggest parenting mistakes and how you can avoid them

Parenting mistakes

Most parents will agree that there can be no universally valid parenting standards: Every family works differently and every child is unique in their personality and needs. So there are no clear rules about what is good and right in child-rearing—though there are a few things parents should generally avoid.

Please don't …

Better like this:

• Withholding love: Love should never be conditional. Threatening a child with '...then I won't love you anymore' or deliberately excluding them as punishment hurts their feelings and deeply shakes their trust in their parents.

• Showing emotions: Let your child know that you are angry or sad, or that their behavior is driving you crazy—but never question your love and don't hold their behavior against them. You are the adults: When in doubt, you should take the initiative, approach your child and end the conflict.

• Lack of appreciation: A self-painted picture, helping with cooking or tidying up—children are constantly trying things out and want to be praised for their successes. Parents who ignore these efforts or take them for granted harm their children's self-confidence and long-term initiative.

• Genuine recognition: Recognition is a basic need of children, but they quickly notice when praise is exaggerated or not sincere. Trust your child and let them have their own experiences—only then can they develop their abilities and a healthy self-confidence.

• Lack of guidance: If rules only apply in certain situations or can be bent with enough shouting, it not only makes family life harder, it mainly unsettles the children: they don't really know what to expect and try even more to push the boundaries.

• Be consistent — in every respect: Even if it means a fight now and then, you should enforce rules consistently. Conversely, that may mean critically examining your own upbringing and considering which rules are really sensible or family-friendly. Being consistent also means keeping your word to your child, both with promises and with announced punishments.

• Unrealistic expectations: Children who are under performance pressure or constantly forced to compare themselves with others quickly lose the joy of learning—and also the sense of who they are and what makes them special.

• 'You're okay just the way you are': Support your child in their personality and give them space, time and your trust to develop their abilities. It should be okay if they don't share your preference for sports or find learning to read harder than their classmates: Try to support your child rather than trying to make them 'the same'.

• Physical violence: Children can drive their parents literally crazy. Still, you should never vent your anger with violence. Pushing or hitting not only humiliates and frightens children, they will sooner or later adopt the violent behavior themselves.

• Appropriate consequences: No one is infinitely patient and understanding. If you're about to explode, take a moment to breathe. A 'punishment' for misbehavior must be comprehensible to your child and should above all never call your relationship with each other into question.

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