This is a worthy seven-point article from Forbes. The topic is 7 parenting behaviors that stunt their children’s growth. Here are the titles to the sections:

1. We don’t let our children experience risk

2. We rescue too quickly

3. We rave too easily

4. We let guilt get in the way of leading well

5. We don’t share our past mistakes

6. We mistake intelligence, giftedness and influence for maturity

7. We don’t practice what we preach.

Immediately after reading this Forbes article, I stumbled upon this parenting article from The Atlantic: “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy.” Lots of common ground between the two articles.

[U]nderlying all this parental angst is the hopeful belief that if we just make the right choices, that if we just do things a certain way, our kids will turn out to be not just happy adults, but adults that make us happy. This is a misguided notion, because while nurture certainly matters, it doesn’t completely trump nature, and different kinds of nurture work for different kinds of kids (which explains why siblings can have very different experiences of their childhoods under the same roof). We can expose our kids to art, but we can’t teach them creativity. We can try to protect them from nasty classmates and bad grades and all kinds of rejection and their own limitations, but eventually they will bump up against these things anyway. In fact, by trying so hard to provide the perfectly happy childhood, we’re just making it harder for our kids to actually grow up. Maybe we parents are the ones who have some growing up to do—and some letting go.