Here’s a list of 11 emotionally harmful things that parents should make sure to never do to their child or children:
1. Hugging a child to assuage the parent’s loneliness, while making the child think the affection is for her or him.
2. Telling children whom and when to kiss and hug. “Come on now, give me a kiss”; “Are you going to kiss Uncle John? Good girl.”
3. A parent acting hurt when a child doesn’t want to kiss or hug. This creates enormous guilt in the child, who unconsciously gathers that the parent’s self-esteem is tied to the child’s display of love.
4. Not teaching children that they have a right to say no to touch from anyone, including caregivers.
5. Objectifying a child by showing embarrassing photographs of him or her to others in the child’s presence. This is particularly mortifying to an older child.
6. Great concern and obsession with a child’s body, diet, physical development, and appearance.
7. Excessive interest in bowel movements, urination, hygiene, menstrual periods.
8. Commenting on body development in front of a child. “I think Jeanne is going to be full breasted, don’t you?”
9. Frequent enemas given inappropriately or by a parent who becomes sexually aroused in giving them.
10. Inappropriately controlling what a child wears to please others. “Now you have to wear the pink dress to Grandma’s. It’s her favorite.”
11. Squeezing pimples. Women talked about parents, usually mothers, seeming to be obsessed with a daughter’s face and having a compulsive need to do something to it. “I just wanted to scream at her to leave my face alone.”
12. Forcing diets or repeatedly commenting on fatness or thinness.
13. Blocking moves toward autonomy and separateness with constant admonitions to be careful. “You might drown”; “You might get run over”; “You don’t want to go play with them.” By using guilt a caregiver may tie a child to him or her, narcissistically using the child to fill his or her emptiness. Of course children must be taught to be careful, but too many parents block their children from age-appro-priate ventures and from developing an inner identity in the interest of possessing and controlling them.
14. Forcing children to talk about their feelings. It is an intrusion to coerce a child into participating in frequent “heart-to-heart” talks to fulfill a parent’s need for intimacy.
15. Flirting with a child or with the child’s friends.
16. Using a child as a best friend.
17. Having a child sleep with a parent after a spouse has gone away. The child ends up feeling like a replacement for the partner, which has sexual connotations and causes confusion about the child’s role.
18. Sudden withdrawal from daughters when they reach adolescence. This is extremely common, especially with fathers who can relate to a daughter as genderless until she develops a woman’s body. Uneasy about his own sexualfeelings for her and unable to deal with his dis-comfort or shame, a father may withdraw from her. The childexperiences his behavior as a profound rejection of her womanhood. She may then play out her longing for a loving father in sexual relation-ships with other men.
Source: Women, Sex, and Addiction: A Search for Love and Power, by Charlotte Davis Kasl