How Negative Comments Harm Your Child

Along with producing many meditation CD/MP3’s, such as Meditations for Abundance and Love: Volume I Deserving and Volume II: Manifesting (available here at: http://bit.ly/meditat3), I have also written a best-selling book, The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict,  available in print or PDF  at inlovewithme.com/books,  or on Kindle through Amazon at http://amzn.to/TIRGz4. Individual chapters are also for sale on http://inlovewithme.com/books/e-book-chapters.

Here is an excerpt about how negative comments harm your child:

How Your Negative Comments Harm Your Child

I remember very clearly what I was told as a child: “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all.” And quoting from a well-known source, the Bible, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matt. 7:12).

Guess what parents? This rule now applies to you. This is crucial for you to follow now more than ever. Here’s why— when you speak negatively about your child’s other parent, your child feels that you are in effect speaking negatively about them.

You are bashing your child and their self-esteem every single time you bash their other parent.

Why is this true? Because your child loves this other person. They are physically and emotionally related to him or her or has a history with their other parent. They identify with their other parent on a physical and/or emotional level. What this means is that every time you lash out at their other parent, they feel that what you are saying applies to them, too. Your behavior directly effects your child’s self-esteem. If your child hears again and again how horrible their other parent is, this person who they are half of, over time, the child will begin to believe they are also bad. It also makes your child feel very sad inside to hear a person they love talking negatively about another person they love. This hinders their ability to feel they can freely love both of you.

Shannon R Rios MS is a successful Life Coach and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She coaches parents as a life coach through her life coaching business www.inlovewithme.com so that parents can move forward and create healthy lives and relationships with themselves, their children and others. She is also the founder of www.healthychildrenofdivorce.com

If you enjoyed this article, her best selling book on parenting after divorce and healing after divorce is The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict and can be found here: http://inlovewithme.com/books