Eggshell Parenting: What Is It, And How Can It Affect Mental Health?
Being a parent isn’t always easy, as parents often have to find the right balance between structure and autonomy for their children. Despite trying to maintain balance, sometimes parents can skew toward a more authoritarian approach, and their behavior may make a child fear making a mistake or disappointing them. This is sometimes referred to as “eggshell parenting.”
What does the term “eggshell parenting” mean?
The term “eggshell parenting” took off after being used by a psychologist on TikTok, and it refers to a parenting style that makes a child feel that they must walk on eggshells to keep their parents happy. Eggshell parents often have trouble with maintaining their own emotional stability. They may show loving care one moment and lose their temper the next.
Why eggshell parents struggle with emotional control?
An eggshell parent may have difficulty with emotional control for a number of reasons. They may experience mental illnesses like mood or personality disorders, or their own childhood may have lacked dependable emotional support. They may also have had a repeated and ongoing experience of trauma in their own lives.
How eggshell parenting can affect children?
Having moments of frustration or anger does not make you an eggshell parent. Eggshell parenting is when the levels of emotional instability demonstrated by a parent cause fear and uncertainty in a child. This can look like a pattern of love and affection, interspersed with inexplicable rage or bouts of criticism.
Challenges of eggshell parenting
Eggshell parenting can lead to a variety of challenges for children. A child may become unsure about what reaction they will get from a parent at any given time, which may lead to:
Low self-esteem. Because they can’t predict how a parent will react to them, a child can end up questioning everything about themselves and end up with a feeling of poor self-worth.
Difficulty controlling their own emotions. Because eggshell parenting doesn’t provide secure guidance of how to handle feelings, a child can show signs of emotional instability or dysregulation.
An avoidant attachment response. Unstable parenting styles like eggshell parenting can lead to a child to this self-protective attachment style. Someone with an avoidant attachment style can be very independent and experience difficulty building close relationships.
A lack of boundaries. Someone with an eggshell parenting style may have a child who is overly attached to them, as they can have difficulty separating their own emotions from those of their child.
Signs of eggshell parenting
There are signs you can look for to help determine whether you use an eggshell parenting style. Simply becoming stressed or frustrated at times does not necessarily mean you’re developing eggshell parenting styles. Eggshell parenting typically requires creating an ongoing environment of unpredictability and fear.
Here are some common signs to look for:
Your child may have physical symptoms, such as frequent stomach aches, headaches, or difficulty sleeping.
You have a tendency to set extremely high standards for your child.
Your child has difficulty discussing thoughts or feelings with you because they are nervous or fearful of how you will react.
You have a tendency to change rules to suit different moods or situations, which can make your child feel confused about how to behave.
You have a strong emotional reaction to minor situations.
The effects of eggshell parenting on adults and parenting styles
Eggshell parenting can have a negative impact on a child’s well-being, and this impact can follow them into adulthood. Adults who are the product of eggshell parenting may be more prone to depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders. They may also have difficulty building and maintaining healthy relationships due to low self-esteem and an unstable attachment style.
How an eggshell parenting style can be passed down through generations
Another consideration is that this type of parenting style can create a cyclical effect. Research published in 2021 shows that parenting styles can be passed on from one generation to another. A child with eggshell parents can grow up with the same emotional instability that their parents demonstrated and therefore engage in eggshell parenting themselves.
How to avoid eggshell parenting
Even if you were raised by eggshell parents or notice certain tendencies in yourself, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are doomed to repeat the cycle—parenting styles can be changed with some time and effort. Here are some strategies you can use to break free from eggshell parenting:
Build self-awareness. The first step is to find out more about yourself and how you interact with others, including your children. Recognizing eggshell parenting tendencies can lead to taking action toward changing these behaviors.
Heal your relationships. Genuinely apologizing to your child and acknowledging your past behavior may help with the healing process.
Work on stress management skills. Often the instability of a parent’s emotions can spring from unresolved or overwhelming stress in their lives. It may help to implement positive coping mechanisms for stress to avoid taking it out on those around you.
Helping children with eggshell parenting feel safe and secure
Create strong and healthy boundaries. A child with eggshell parents often becomes fearful because they don’t know what to expect. By setting clear boundaries and expectations, you can provide a stable and comfortable environment.
Practice patience and non-judgment. It may help to talk to your child often about how they are feeling and about what is going on in their life. You might practice speaking calmly and positively without judging their decisions. This may take time, but you can rebuild trust with your child if you work at it.
Offer positive comments. If you find that you’ve been overly critical in the past, it may help to take some time to honestly praise your child for their accomplishments.
Work with a therapist. Therapy can help with any of the above strategies. A therapist is professionally trained in interpersonal relationships, communication styles, and stress management.
Therapy can be a helpful tool for anyone who has been the child of an eggshell parent, as well as for someone who exhibits eggshell parenting tendencies. With an evidence-based approach like cognitive behavioral therapy, a therapist may be able to help you identify undesirable thoughts and behaviors and work on changing negative patterns.
How online therapy can benefit busy parents: Effective solutions for managing mental health from home
For busy parents who may not have the time or energy to schedule and attend in-person appointments, online therapy can be an effective solution. Studies show that online therapy can be just as effective as in-person therapy, and it allows you to meet with your therapist from home via audio, video, or live chat.
Takeaway
What are the lasting consequences of the eggshell parenting style on children’s mental health?
The eggshell parenting cycle can have long-term negative consequences on a child’s emotional well-being and can lead to mental health issues in adulthood. Perhaps the biggest risk is the risk of developing complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or C-PTSD.
How do you know if you're an eggshell parent?
There are some common characteristics of eggshell parents. Here are a few signs most eggshell parents display:
Unpredictable behavior
Inconsistent boundaries
Intense mood swings
Inability to remain calm in the face of intense emotions
Easily frazzled or easily triggered
Some eggshell mothers or fathers are dealing with mental health conditions that can affect a parent’s ability to regulate their emotions. Many parents who receive treatment for these conditions learn to adopt a healthier parenting approach.
How to deal with an eggshell parent?
There may be no such thing. Since managing a parent’s behavior is often out of a child’s control, and also not their responsibility, it can be impossible at times to deal with an eggshell parent. It may be necessary to seek professional help in situations involving young children. As the child grows into a young adult, they may attempt to set some clear and healthy boundaries with their parent. For example, if a mother threatened to disown them as a child for being gay, the individual could set boundaries around discussing their sexual orientation or partner with their mother in the future.
What does eggshell parenting mean?
Psychologist Dr. Kim Sage explains eggshell parenting as a parenting approach that leaves children feeling like they’re on a roller coaster, and not in a good way. In these cases, the parent’s unpredictability leaves children feeling like they’re constantly walking on eggshells. They may seem like the child’s best friend one moment and the next they’re in a fit of rage.
The result? The children walking on eggshells and constantly monitoring the environment for signs that things may get out of control. This task is made almost impossible since the parent’s mood often seems to respond to inconsistent themes and patterns.
Moreover, the resulting hypervigilance has many negative physical and emotional effects, including disruptions to the child’s nervous system. From their own experience, many young adults reflect that it might have been easier had their parents been chronically angry rather than deal with the eggshell parenting cycle of ups and downs and mixed messages.
What are the long term effects of eggshell parenting?
Psychologist Dr. Kim Sage notes that the long-term effects of eggshell parenting could include parentification, where the child becomes, in some sense, the parent. That is, the child may attempt to care for the parent in a way that helps regulate their unstable moods.
This is, of course, a toxic dynamic that could leave children without any real safety or nurturing for themselves. A child may feel responsible for the parent’s mood from an early age with no one to attend to their own needs. The potential outcome of this relational state is social anxiety, isolation, and mistrust of others down the line, explains Sage. Essentially, they may feel like there is no safe space for them.
What is the most effective parenting style?
Most experts agree that the authoritative parenting style is the most effective.
What does it mean to be an eggshell person?
An eggshell person could be very sensitive and easily triggered or offended. They may be highly unpredictable, which can put a strain on relationships. Sometimes, this can stem from past trauma or a deep belief in your own mind that you are unlovable.
What is bubble parenting?
Bubble parenting is another term for overprotective parenting.
What is a shadow parent?
A shadow parent refers to a parent that may be physically present, but emotionally unavailable to their children.
What is egg shell therapy?
Eggshell therapy refers to a type of therapy developed for highly sensitive or emotionally intense people. It involves teaching these people to embrace these characteristics rather than conform to society’s ideals.
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