1) Spoiling kids
There is no doubt that parents love their kids and want them to have all the things they didn’t. However, this comes at a price. A ton of well-intentioned parents have ended up spoiling their kids to such a degree that the kids aren’t even happy with all the stuff they have. This causes them to never be satisfied and always want more. Junior doesn’t need one more piece of crud, what he needs is some special time with his parents. Think of it this way: How will they ever be prepared for disappointment throughout their life—or learn to be thankful for anything?

2) Inadequate discipline
When you’re too lazy to adequately discipline your kids, you pass the little devil you’ve created on to your relatives, coaches, teachers, and his friends’ parents. It’s not OK to let your kids treat your house like it was a Jump Planet because that’s exactly how they’ll treat other people’s homes. They should also be much better behaved when they leave the house and visit elsewhere. I’ve lived through this nightmare first-hand, with the same kid at my house treating my $1,500 couch like a trampoline, and then calling my daughter “ugly” while the kids were eating dinner. All within a 15-minute span. If you don’t discipline your kid, someone else will—and you won’t like it.

3) Failing to get involved at school
School is where your kids will spend more time than any place besides your home. It’s also the place that will have the most responsibility for shaping their life—from teachers and their peers. That being said, how can you not want to be involved in what’s going on there? It doesn’t matter if it’s you or your spouse: Your family needs to have a presence at that school. And don’t use work as an excuse—take a vacation day if you need to. You’ll see immediately that it’s time well spent. You should also have at least an e-mail relationship with their teacher. It’s a great way for that teacher to see that you’re interested in your child’s development, and the teacher can alert you to anything concerning that may be going on with your son or daughter. Your kid’s teacher may take a much more active role with your child if they know you’re keeping close tabs.

4) Praising mediocrity
While we all want to encourage our kids to do well and build their self-esteem, there is a point of going too far. Building a child’s self-esteem is great, but having a big party for a mediocre accomplishment skews what they view as a real achievement. One big place I see this is in sports. A participation trophy for anyone over the age of 6 just ends up devaluing the meaning of a real trophy. It’s happening in my own household. While I was against trophies for my 7-year-old son’s basketball team, a few moms overruled. My son has played exactly four seasons of sports and has earned more trophies than I did in my 40 seasons growing up. Something is out of whack.

5) Not giving kids enough responsibility
Your kids shouldn’t be expecting any payment for doing chores around the house. It’s a home, not a hotel. That being said, an allowance is a great idea … for extra work. They should be pulling their weight as part of the family. If they grow up without enough responsibility, how in the world do you expect them to hold down a job, or get through college? When they get “of age,” make sure they’re taking some of the burden off you around the house—from unloading the dishwasher to picking up dog crud in the backyard. While they’re not your slaves, they sure aren’t on vacation, either.

6) Not being a good spouse
How you treat your husband or wife is very important to the way your kids will develop relationships, especially as adults. If you treat your spouse poorly, or if your only way to settle any kind of dispute is to yell and scream at each other, you’re teaching your kids to handle themselves the same way. Kids learn from watching you much more than they learn from listening to you. If you treat your spouse with love and respect, it will also show your kids the value of their family. It will also make them feel their family is a safe haven in what can be a dark, scary world.

7) Setting unreal expectations
When dealing with kids, you need to set reasonable expectations for them—especially the little ones. If you want to go out to a nice dinner and expect your 2-year-old to sit there like a little prince, you are setting yourself up for major disappointment. Also, if you have visions of a football star and your son weighs 80 pounds and likes to play the clarinet, you need to reset those expectations. Don’t have unreal expectations for your kids: The expectation you should have is for them to be happy.

8) Not teaching kids to fend for themselves
Many parents tend to baby kids these days and cater to their every need, and that eliminates the value of hard work and becoming independent as they grow into adults. I fear that we’re raising a generations of wimps. Kids nowadays expect everything to be done for them, from cleaning their room to band-aids for hurt feelings. Teaching them to toughen up and do things on their own doesn’t mean that you love them less; it means you love them more.

9) Pushing trends on kids
Let kids be kids. Parents shouldn’t push their trends or adult outlook on life on their kids. Just because it was your life’s dream to marry a rich guy doesn’t mean we need to see your 4-year-old daughter in a “Future Trophy Wife” t-shirt. The same goes for the double ear piercing—that’s what you want, not them. Teaching kids about your passions is great, but let them grow up to be who they are. And yes, this goes for you pathetic stage parents as well. It’s hard enough for kids to figure out who they are in the world without you trying to turn them into what you couldn’t be.

10) Not following through
I have trouble with this one sometimes. If you’re telling your kids that they’ll be grounded if they paint the neighbor’s dog one more time, you’d better follow through. Unfortunately, following though on punishments or promises makes your life a little more difficult, but building trust is what’s most important. If you’re not true to your word, your kids will assume anything you say is just talk. Then you have a real problem on your hands. You’ll also end up with kids who don’t trust their parents.

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In theory, I agree with each of them. I just skimmed through what you posted, but I also think that even if parents make ALL the mistakes possible, sometimes the kids turn out okay, anyways and vice versa.

I also skimmed and it all looks like stuff I agree with especially the first.

I agree with these, though I'd modify 2 to include excessive discipline.

QFT

I disagree about allowances, actually. I think that the writer is thinking of an allowance as a reward for something the kid should be doing anyway. That's not how I see it, though I do believe that kids shouldn't treat their home as a hotel and should be expected to chip in regardless of renumeration. I see the allowance for chores idea as being an educational tool, showing kids 1) how money is earned for doing specific tasks and 2) giving the child the opportunity to learn how to spend, save, and budget. I suppose that to avoid this pitfall, some chores could be required and others linked to allowances.

but of course when giving an allowance it shouldn't happen that the child would have had less than before. I don't think that children should be forced to use their allowances for things that they would otherwise have to spend. an allowance should be mostly for the things that the kid wants.

that was a problem with my mother. my brothers often ended up having allowance/paychecks "borrowed" for needs or they had to spend it on things they needed like text books/backpacks etc. and they just ended up with less than before the allowance/job.

I think this is actually what the author means.

And I personally don't think that you necessarily have to give a kid an allowance to teach them fiscal responsibility. Just talking to them about your own finances (in general terms) and being a good role model is enough.

Let's say you want to teach them about saving money -- you could clip coupons with the younger ones; look at prices to see if a larger sized version of a product is cheaper than the smaller version for the older kids, and finally talk about savings accounts and how much college is going to cost for teens.

Kids often get money for birthdays, Chanukah, Purim, etc., that you can use for hands-on exercises.

personaly I think you should involve teenage children with family finances instead of keeping them in the dark. show them just how much goes for what bill, the rates for each bill, help them get a working knowledge of how much these things cost, as well as food prices etc.

and I suppose it would be nice to give them an opertunity to practice somehow too.

I think kids will naturally learn about money-conscious by watching their parents compare prices, decide if it's worth the money, etc.

I always gave my kids a basic allowance; this was unconditional and did not get reduced for bad behavior otherwise they would have been left with nothing every week (!) and more tempted to steal from my purse. I felt it was important that they had some money of their own to spend as they liked without it being linked to behavior or chores. I did not pay them for normal chores like bathing and dressing younger siblings, emptying the dishwasher and washing dishes, but anything extraordinary (eg sorting out my own extremely messy cupboard of video cassettes dating back to prehistoric times) would earn them extra.

Regarding 2. (discipline) I have a gripe against parents who treat their own homes like touch-me-not palaces where the kids must sit like statues so as not to ruin the white leather sofas, but when they are in my home they feel they can let them loose to wreck the place. Or conversely, parents of small children who have the inbuilt survival technique to be able to totally ignore their kids wrecking their own homes, so think that 's fine in other people's homes too. I am past that stage of life and I like my home to stay in one piece now.

8. (teaching children to fend for themselves) You have to tailor this to the area in which you live. In Shaarei Chessed it is safe to let kids out on their own and roam the streets playing from dawn till dusk, which was how it was in my area of London when I was a kid. However now in NW London parents are paranoid about pedophiles, and other wierdos, so kids are often wrapped in cotton and not allowed out to climb trees or go to the park unaccompanied. This is the time we live in, not the parenting.

Otherwise I pretty much agree.

It’s very easy to say these things when you’re outside the situation. Growing up. I couldn’t believe what my brother got away with, for example. I swore I’d never treat my kids like that – and then I had my own and it wasn’t so easy.

Oh I am so scared of being a parent!

I love her so overwhelmingly; how will I ever be able to discipline her.

However, I am perfectly able to critique others' parenting skills. Which is basically all this article is doing, anyway. Every child, every house, and every situation is different, so I am wary of generalized rules like these.

It's tough!

I'm with RH. Even if this article may have some good points, the tone is all wrong. Way too strident and judgmental.