STILL - Counselling

Which method is more effective?

Your boy will grow up to be just like you.

None of us want our children to grow up with fractured self esteem.

Yet... could you be unintentionally damaging your child's self-confidence?

Try not to make these common mistakes that parents make, without realising how destructive it is, to the child's developing sense of self.

🍀What is uninvolved parenting? Uninvolved parenting, also called "neglectful parenting", is one of the 4 parenting styles identified by psychologist Diana Baumrind. It’s defined by low warmth + low control.

Parents meet the child’s basic physical needs — food, shelter — but are emotionally absent, unresponsive, and make few demands. There’s little communication, supervision, or nurturing. It differs from permissive parenting because there isn’t warmth or indulgence. The parent is detached, often due to stress, depression, substance use, or their own unprocessed trauma.

🍀How it psychologically damages children

🌿Attachment insecurity + emotional dysregulation

Kids need a responsive caregiver to co-regulate emotions and form a secure base. With uninvolved parenting, the child learns “my feelings don’t matter” or “no one comes when I cry.” This creates insecure-avoidant or disorganized attachment. As a result, they struggle to identify, name, or soothe emotions.

Example - A 6-year-old falls off a bike. An uninvolved parent might not look up from their phone. The child learns to suppress pain and stop seeking comfort. By teens, that kid may explode over minor stress or shut down completely because they never learned emotional skills.

🌿Low self-worth and learned helplessness

Constant lack of attention signals to the child: “I’m not worth noticing.” In developmental psychology, this undermines self-concept. They often internalize “I’m invisible” or “I’m a burden.” Without expectations or guidance, they also don’t build competence, leading to learned helplessness.

Example - A 10-year-old gets report cards, makes art, or wins a game, and the parent never asks, looks, or shows up. The child stops trying: “Why bother? Nobody cares.” By high school, they may have chronic underachievement and say “I’m just dumb” — not because they are, but because no one scaffolded effort.

🌿Poor social skills + risky behavior

Parents model boundaries, empathy, and social norms. Uninvolved parents don’t, so kids miss that training. They often struggle with peer relationships — either clingy/attention-seeking or withdrawn/distrustful. To fill the void, many turn to external validation: gangs, early s*x, substance use. Studies link uninvolved parenting to higher rates of delinquency and substance abuse because there’s no supervision + high emotional emptiness.

Example - A 14-year-old is out till 2 AM, no curfew, no check-ins. She starts drinking because friends give her the attention she doesn’t get at home. There’s no adult to notice the smell on her clothes or her falling grades.

🌿Cognitive and academic deficits

Warmth + expectations drive learning. Uninvolved homes lack reading time, help with homework, or value for education. Kids show lower executive function, language delays, and poorer school performance. The message becomes “school doesn’t matter.”

Example : A 2nd grader can’t read well. An involved parent would practice or get tutoring. An uninvolved parent doesn’t notice. By 5th grade the gap is huge, and the child labels himself “stupid,” further withdrawing.

Damage isn’t usually from one moment, but from chronic absence. Kids adapt by becoming self-reliant too early, “parentified” or hyper-independent: but under the surface they carry anxiety, depression, and trust issues into adulthood.

Prevent harming children physically and emotionally, by prioritizing emotional regulation, using meaningful and positive discipline instead of harsh punishments, and fostering a safe, loving and secure attachment. Focus on understanding the child's developmental needs rather than perfection, and repair ruptures by apologizing when you make a mistake.

Doing little chores as kids, builds self-efficacy and competence. When kids complete age-appropriate chores, they get direct proof that “I can affect my world.” Psychologist Albert Bandura called this "self-efficacy" - the belief in your ability to handle tasks.

Folding laundry, feeding the dog, or sweeping gives concrete wins. Unlike praise, it’s evidence they generate themselves. Over time, that internal data becomes “I’m capable,” which buffers anxiety and fuels motivation in school and friendships.

It also strengthens executive function and responsibility. Chores are disguised brain training. They require planning, sequencing, and delaying gratification which are core executive functions the prefrontal cortex is still wiring up.

Remembering to take trash out every Tuesday, stopping play to wipe the table, or managing multi-step tasks like setting the table all practice impulse control and working memory.

In family systems theory, it also signals “You’re a needed part of this team,” which counters helplessness and builds a healthy sense of responsibility vs. entitlement.

Moreover it deepens connection and reduces entitlement. From an attachment and Adlerian psychology lens, contributing to the household meets a core need: belonging through usefulness.

Kids who do chores report feeling more “part of the family” and less like passive guests. It also inoculates against narcissistic entitlement. When effort links to shared outcomes “because I watered the plants, they’re alive”, children learn empathy, interdependence, and gratitude.

Most importantly, you’re not just raising a cleaner room; you’re raising a person who can see others’ needs and meet them.

As parents and educators, we need to understand how to read the child's body even if there are no words.

Children often communicate distress through behavior long before they verbalize it. In developmental psychology, this is tied to “affect regulation", where kids may not have the language or emotional safety to name what’s wrong, but their nervous system leaks clues.

Watch for baseline shifts like changes in sleep patterns, appetite, energy, or play. A usually chatty kid going quiet, a social child avoiding friends, or sudden irritability over small things can signal overload.

Pay attention too, to “somatic complaints” like stomachaches, headaches, or fatigue with no medical cause are common ways anxiety and depression show up in children. The key is pattern, not one-off moments. If the shift lasts >2 weeks and crosses settings from home to school to with friends, it’s worth leaning in.

Always create safety for what’s unspoken.

From an attachment perspective, kids reveal more when they feel felt, not interrogated. Instead of “What’s wrong?” try “connection before correction”: sit alongside them during a low-stakes activity like drawing, legos, a drive etc, where eye contact isn’t forced.

That lowers threat and lets their defenses drop. Notice micro-expressions: avoiding eye contact, slumped shoulders, forcing smiles that don’t reach the eyes, or “over-bright” behavior that seems like performance.

Psychologist John Gottman calls this “emotion coaching”, where you name what you see without judgment: “You’ve seemed really tired after school this week. I’m here if your brain feels heavy.” That gives them language and permission. You’re not mind-reading; you’re reflecting what’s observable, which builds trust so they’ll eventually tell you themselves.

Are you a Primary School Teacher? The importance of having posters in the classroom to not condone bullying, is under-stated, especially in Sri Lankan schools. But you can make a change and thereby transform the culture in your classroom.

Psychology tells us that behavior follows norms, and norms are shaped by what we see every day.

Anti-bullying posters aren’t just decoration — they’re “environmental cues” that prime the brain.

Social psychology research shows that visible reminders of expected behavior increase bystander intervention and reduce aggression because they make the social rule explicit: “In this space, we don’t hurt each other.”

For kids, especially in primary school, the classroom environment is a key reference point for what’s acceptable. Posters work on the principle of priming: when a child walks in and repeatedly sees “We are upstanders, not bystanders” or “Kind words only,” that language gets encoded and is more easily accessed in a heated moment on the playground.

They also signal psychological safety to vulnerable students. A child who’s being targeted scans the room for signs of whether adults will protect them. A clear, consistent anti-bullying message on the wall communicates: “The adults here see this, name it, and don’t allow it.”

That reduces the chronic stress and hypervigilance bullying creates, which frees up the brain for learning. Posters alone won’t stop bullying, but silence does condone it. Visible standards make it harder for harmful behavior to hide and easier for kids to live up to the culture you’re actively building. Moreover posters on the side of the child who is being bullied, re-inforce confidence, independence, courage and strength to handle the bully effectively, knowing the actions of bullying are rejected and not acceptable within the classroom.

Don't write off your child when he loses it. Let's teach our child how to handle hot-emotions and that we regulate ourselves even in the face of anger. Remember, he is young, developing and does not know the skills to conducive behaviour until we role-model it and also engage in teaching him with love, so it helps him understand.