Are You Overburdening Your Child?

In today’s competitive world, we want our children to be good at everything. We sign them up for countless classes and programmes, take them to sports clubs to make sure that they do not lag behind in sport, and even expect them to learn things that are way too advanced and complex for their age.

We want our child to be the best at arts, music, dance, academics, sport, communication, mathematics and a bunch load of other innumerable things. It is a good thing to encourage your children to participate in extracurricular activities rather than just sending them to school, but at the same time, you ought to make sure that you do not expect too much from them and over-burden them in the course of things.

Here are some things that might give you an indication that you are indeed, overburdening your child and need to take remedial steps to prevent the same from happening in future:

1. Frustration at the smallest of things.

If your child gets annoyed at the smallest of triggers and is constantly irritated, it mirrors their inability to communicate something that is troubling them. You need to sit down with them and figure out the cause for the same. More often than not, it is because of the excessive burden put onto them by academic expectations from parents or other factors.

2. Sudden loss of appetite.

Your healthy little flower suddenly stops taking the nourishment that it requires and withers. If the same thing is happening with your child and the cause is not any disease or physical ailments, it could be because they are mentally tired and occupied. Being constantly busy and slumped with multiple things could make your kids lose their appetite and resort to unhealthy eating schedules.

3. Forgetfulness and loss of speech.

As mentioned earlier, one of the signs of you overburdening your child could be their inability to communicate. In such cases, you need to talk to them and figure out what it is that is bothering them. Also, one of the other signs could be forgetfulness. If your child needs constant reminders for the smallest of things and is becoming very absent-minded, it could be because too much is expected of them.

4. Hides things.

Children love to receive praise as it makes them feel loved and adored. On similar lines, they hate it when they receive a scolding or are held accountable for something that went wrong. So as to receive praise and avoid episodes of scolding, children at times hide things from their parents to be on their better side. This can have grave consequences on their future development and upbringing. To remedy this, be more open with your children and make sure that they feel comfortable sharing things with you. This will allow them to tell you if and when they feel extremely pressurized.

5. Have degrading scores and performances.

Stress is good on a certain level and after a while, it becomes a bad thing. Likewise, if your children are facing more stress than what is good for them (necessary), they might underperform at school or in other activities.