Why should you let your child experience hardship? How can you prevent your child from acting like a victim? Why shouldn’t you try to cheer your child up when they’re sad?
There are countless books telling parents how to give their children the best possible upbringing, but psychotherapist Amy Morin realized that there were few—if any—warning parents about what not to do. That’s why she wrote 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do, describing 13 common mistakes and how to avoid them.
Continue reading for an overview of Morin’s game-changing parenting book.
Lessons From 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do
There are countless books telling parents how to give their children the best possible upbringing, but psychotherapist Amy Morin realized that there were few—if any—warning parents about what not to do. That’s why she wrote 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do, describing 13 common mistakes and how to avoid them. Morin also gives detailed explanations about why those mistakes can derail even the best parents and suggestions about what to do instead.
Morin is a psychotherapist, a lecturer at Northeastern University, and the author of several books, including the best-selling 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do. With a background in psychology and mental health counseling, Morin draws upon her professional expertise and personal experiences as a foster parent to provide insights and guidance on developing mental strength and resilience in both individuals and families. Her work focuses on identifying and overcoming unhealthy thought patterns and behaviors, equipping readers with practical strategies for cultivating emotional fortitude, fostering healthy relationships, and raising mentally strong children capable of navigating life’s challenges with courage and resilience.
In this guide, we’ve compiled Morin’s 13 “don’ts” into four categories:
- Managing Expectations and Consequences
- Letting Children Experience Hardship
- Maintaining the Home’s Hierarchy
- Remembering What’s Most Important
This reorganization will clarify the parenting goals that Morin sets in 13 Things and help you to remember the main points, even if you don’t always remember all 13 of Morin’s “don’ts.”
Our commentary will draw connections to self-help books like Atomic Habits to help you implement Morin’s ideas. We’ll also link to scientific articles that support some of Morin’s principles and explain why they work. Finally, we’ll suggest alternate approaches for challenging situations—for instance, if your child keeps misbehaving no matter what you do, it might be a sign of a deeper problem like ADHD.
Introduction: What Does “Mentally Strong” Mean?
Since this is a guide to mentally strong parenting, we’ll start by defining what mentally strong means.
Morin describes mental strength as a combination of self-awareness and self-control. This means you have a good understanding of your thoughts, feelings, values, and abilities, as well as your needs and your shortcomings. You’re also able to use that understanding of yourself to make decisions that lead to a happy and fulfilling life—or, in this case, decisions that set your child up to build such a life.
For example, it’s a common misconception that strong people can handle everything on their own. However, if you’re truly mentally strong, you’ll know when you need help with something and won’t be ashamed to ask for that help. In the case of parenting, this might mean knowing when it’s time to seek advice from other parents or from an expert to address an issue your child is struggling with.
Managing Expectations and Consequences
Several of Morin’s tips relate to managing expectations—your own and your child’s—and setting appropriate consequences for when those expectations aren’t met. In this section we’ll discuss:
- Why perfectionism does more harm than good
- Why your child needs the freedom to make mistakes
- Why responsibilities are necessary for a child’s growth
- The difference between punishment and discipline
Mentally Strong Parents Aren’t Perfectionists
One of Morin’s tips for parents is not to expect—or worse, demand—perfection from their children.
Morin clarifies that having high expectations is healthy; high expectations will push your child to do their best, and build their self-esteem by letting them know what you believe they’re capable of. However, perfectionism has the opposite effect: It sets impossible standards that will discourage and frustrate your child. Even worse, if you expect perfection, you might inadvertently teach your child that mistakes are unacceptable; that any mistake will lead to punishment and rejection. Therefore, it’s important to push for greatness, but not perfection.
The author adds that mentally strong parents understand that their kids aren’t going to excel at everything they do. So rather than push their kids to be the best at everything, they focus on helping them do the best they can do. One simple-yet-effective practice is to praise the child’s efforts, rather than their results—this teaches the child that it’s important to always try their hardest, even if it might not lead to the results they’re hoping for.
For instance, suppose your child struggles with math (as many people do). Even after putting in honest effort and getting extra help at school or home, perhaps they still get a B in math class. A mentally strong parent would recognize that the B was the best they could do, and is therefore a praiseworthy grade; a perfectionist parent would scold and punish the child for not earning an A, further damaging their self-esteem.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Let Their Children Avoid Responsibility
Morin says that another key part of setting reasonable expectations is to teach your child responsibility from a young age, both in the sense of handling responsibilities and taking responsibility for their actions.
First, it may be tempting to let your child have as much free time as possible rather than burdening them with chores on top of their schoolwork. However, Morin says mentally strong parents understand that having such responsibilities from a young age sets children up for success later in life; children who grow up doing chores tend to be harder workers, more self-reliant, and more empathetic than those who are allowed to spend their childhoods doing whatever they want.
Therefore, the author recommends assigning your child chores that are appropriate for their age and holding them accountable for those tasks (we’ll discuss appropriate consequences in the next section).
Second, Morin says mentally strong parents expect their children to solve their own problems (within reason), rather than letting them get away with blaming others and thereby avoiding responsibility. This will sometimes lead to situations in which your child has to take responsibility for solving problems that weren’t their fault; unfortunately, life isn’t always fair, and your child must be prepared for that.
Also note that taking responsibility includes taking responsibility for interpersonal problems. This is important because children need to practice solving conflicts with each other on their own, instead of always looking to adults for help—doing so will allow them to develop problem-solving skills that they’ll need as they grow up, when there won’t always be an authority figure nearby to step in for them.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Take Shortcuts to Avoid Discomfort
Morin adds that, along with teaching their kids responsibility, mentally strong parents take responsibility themselves by avoiding shortcuts and quick fixes to parenting problems. This is because, if your child sees you taking such shortcuts, they’ll learn that it’s OK to shirk responsibility and take the easy way out. Confronting and solving such challenges will be exhausting at times, but the more consistently you choose the best solution over the easiest solution, the more your child will do the same.
For instance, if your child is throwing a tantrum and refusing to do their chores, the easy solution might be to just send them to their room and do the chores yourself. However, in doing so, you’d teach your child that they can escape their responsibilities and that tantrums are an effective tactic for doing so.
Similarly, Morin says that you might be tempted to find quick solutions to stress and emotional outbursts—for example, buying your child a new toy to appease them or taking the family out for dinner to take their minds off their problems for a little while. Like the previous example, these are short-term answers that will backfire in the long run because your child will learn to avoid difficult and uncomfortable situations instead of confronting them.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Mistake Punishment for Discipline
So far we’ve discussed how to set reasonable expectations for your child. However, no matter how reasonable your expectations are, there will be times when your child doesn’t live up to them. That’s when it’s crucial to impose appropriate consequences, with emphasis on “appropriate.”
Morin says that mentally strong parents make sure those consequences discipline their children instead of just punishing them. The key difference is that discipline teaches children how to do better, whereas punishment just makes them suffer. For example, if your child gets angry and yells at you, an appropriate consequence might be to send them to their room until they calm down—this teaches them that they can walk away from upsetting situations instead of lashing out and making things worse. On the other hand, an unhelpful punishment might be to take away something that makes them happy, like their favorite toy; far from teaching your child how to handle their anger, this approach will just upset them even more.
The author adds that effective discipline uses positive consequences (rewards) as well as negative ones. So, while you might have to send your child to their room for yelling at you, make sure to also praise them when they handle their anger more appropriately, such as by walking away to settle down. Some other appropriate rewards might include giving your child an allowance for doing their chores each week or giving them a piece of candy as a reward for a good grade on a test.
Letting Children Experience Hardship
As a parent, it may be tempting to protect your child from hardship and discomfort. However, Morin says that experiencing hardship is a crucial part of growing up: Children need to learn that they will struggle at times, and overcoming problems helps them build the confidence they’ll need to face challenges later in life.
Mentally Strong Parents Aren’t Overprotective
It’s natural to want to shield your child from hardship. However, Morin says that not letting children experience pain—both physical and emotional—sends the message that they’re too weak and fragile to deal with such pain. This often leads to adults who spend their whole lives trying to avoid ever feeling bad and resorting to unhealthy coping mechanisms like drugs to do so.
Therefore, mentally strong parents allow their kids to experience adversity, then provide the guidance and support they need to cope with it. This way, their children build confidence in their ability to handle pain and hardship, rather than becoming afraid of it.
For example, an overprotective parent might forbid their child from trying out for the school soccer team because they’re afraid that their kid will get hurt. The child then internalizes the message that they can’t handle danger and grow up to be a timid adult who’s afraid to take risks.
Conversely, a mentally strong parent would encourage their child to try out for the team—and, if they do get hurt, help them to endure the pain and recover from the injury. That child would then internalize the opposite message: that they’re strong and resilient, so they can afford to take risks because they’ll be able to handle whatever happens.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Base Decisions on Fear
Morin says that parents generally become overprotective because they’re afraid for their children, which is natural and understandable. However, that leads to another of her “don’ts”: Don’t base your parenting decisions on fear. She adds that if you’re making decisions to protect your child from embarrassment, discomfort, or failure—in other words, anything short of actual danger—then you’re letting fear drive your parenting.
This is harmful because fear-based parenting decisions tend to stunt a child’s development. Children of fearful, overprotective parents never learn to take care of themselves or make their own decisions; they grow up completely reliant on their parents’ protection. Therefore, when they lose that protection as adults, they don’t have the skills or the confidence to make their own way in the world.
Furthermore, says Morin, fearful parents tend to micromanage everything, thereby stifling their children’s freedom and self-expression. This kind of overbearing parenting style often leads to frustrated, resentful children.
For example, an anxious parent might insist on choosing their kid’s outfit every day, long after the child is capable of getting dressed on their own. The parent might be afraid their child will become the target of bullies if they choose their own clothes, or they might worry about the child getting a bad reputation by projecting the “wrong” image with their clothing choices.
Fearful parents also view any small act of rebellion—for instance, if the child from the previous example were to sneak a different shirt to school—as a sign that they need to become even stricter. Since they’ve already decided that the “risk” their child took is unacceptable, they conclude that the only solution is to tighten their control and make sure their child never takes such a risk again.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Protect Their Children From Mistakes
On the topic of perfectionism, another of Morin’s tips is to not fix your child’s mistakes for them.
Morin says that messing up—and facing the consequences—is one of the most effective ways for children to learn. Therefore, it’s crucial that you don’t jump in to fix every little mistake your child makes.
For example, if your child forgets their homework at school, don’t drive them back out to get it. Letting your child experience the embarrassment of admitting they didn’t do their homework, and the shame of getting a zero on that assignment, will go a long way toward making sure they’re more responsible in the future.
Furthermore, Morin says the single most important lesson children learn from making mistakes is how to recover from such mistakes. In other words, by allowing your child to make mistakes and learn from them, you’ll help them to develop resilience, independence, and problem-solving skills.
Conversely, children who grow up shielded from consequences tend to develop into anxious, uncertain adults. Because they never learned how to deal with mistakes, they become terrified of doing anything wrong once that protection is gone. As a result, they often become perfectionistic and unwilling to take risks.
Finally, Morin adds that even though you aren’t protecting your child from their mistakes, you can still offer them much-needed support during this learning process. One way to do this is by telling them about times that you made mistakes and learned from them; this will help instill the idea that nobody’s perfect, mistakes are a part of life, and the truly important thing is how to turn those mistakes into personal growth.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Enable Victimhood
Children who don’t yet have the skills to cope with hardship and discomfort often play the victim; they exaggerate their failures, overstate their pain, and insist that they can never succeed because the whole world is against them. Morin says that you shouldn’t indulge that kind of self-pity because then your child might never grow out of their victim mentality—psychologists refer to this mindset as learned helplessness.
Therefore, the author recommends encouraging your kid to learn and grow from their struggles. For instance, you might help them figure out why things went badly and how they can avoid that problem in the future. You can also guide them toward positive, productive action to improve their situation. Then, instead of learning that they’re a helpless victim of an unfair world, your child will learn that they can always improve and try again.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t “Fix” Their Children’s Emotions
Another temptation Morin warns against is the urge to cheer up your child whenever they feel sad or hurt. This is important because, much like children need to learn how to cope with physical pain and risk, they also need to develop the skills to handle their painful feelings. Therefore, it’s important to let them experience and learn to cope with a wide variety of emotions, from frustration and embarrassment to boredom to grief.
So, instead of trying to make your child feel better right away, the author suggests offering validation and support when they’re struggling. Let your child know that it’s OK to feel what they’re feeling, and that you’re there to help them through it—but not to fix the problem or to somehow make the pain go away.
What to Do Instead: Build Skills and Offer Support
What does it mean to help your child with their feelings but not to make them feel better? To illustrate this concept, here are three suggestions that Morin offers about how to help your child when they’re upset, and prepare them to deal with their own emotions when you’re not there.
1. Build your child’s emotional vocabulary. Encourage your child to talk about what they’re feeling. Get specific: for instance, are they sad or just disappointed? Are they actually angry, or would it be more appropriate to say they’re annoyed or frustrated? Morin adds that the most effective way to do this is to talk about your own feelings in the same way, so your child will learn new vocabulary and understand that it’s OK to discuss their feelings with you.
2. Coach your child on appropriate ways to handle their feelings. All emotions are valid, but that doesn’t mean all behaviors are valid. For instance, it’s common for an angry child to throw a temper tantrum—they scream, cry, break things, and so on. In this case, your role as a parent isn’t to stop them from being angry, but rather to teach anger management skills like talking to someone, writing about their feelings, or finding a safe outlet for their anger such as a punching bag or pillow.
3. Come up with ways your child can influence their own emotions. You can’t manage your child’s emotions for them—however, finding ways they can make themselves feel better is helpful. Everybody is different, so Morin says you’ll have to work together with your child on this one: Brainstorm things your child can do when they need to calm down, cheer up, or otherwise regain control of their feelings.
Maintaining the Home’s Hierarchy
Along with protecting your child from hardship and discomfort, you might be tempted to do whatever else you can to make them happy. However, indulging your kid’s every whim can lead to a spoiled child and a miserable and unbalanced household. In this section, we’ll discuss Morin’s tips for avoiding that situation: Don’t overindulge your child, and don’t let your child’s decisions override yours.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Overindulge Their Children
Morin says that one sure way to disrupt the balance of power in your home (and to raise a spoiled, selfish child) is to treat your child like they’re the greatest person in the world by praising their every action and granting their every request.
She adds that, naturally, you want your child to be confident and strong-willed, but there’s a fine line between confidence and entitlement. A child who thinks they’re exceptional—more important or somehow better than their peers—is likely to grow into a self-centered adult who’s constantly frustrated that the world doesn’t just hand them everything they want.
The way to stop self-assuredness from twisting into self-importance, says Morin, is to shift your child’s focus toward others; get them to think about how they could help people and make the world better, rather than what they believe the world should be doing for them. For example, a gifted student could reframe their intelligence as an opportunity to help struggling classmates, rather than seeing it as an excuse to coast through school.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Base Decisions on Guilt
Morin says there will inevitably be times when you feel guilty; perhaps you think you’re failing as a parent, or believe you’ve made some terrible mistake. However, don’t try to assuage your own guilt by overindulging your child because that will foster their feelings of self-importance and entitlement.
Instead, the author urges you to carefully examine your feelings of guilt. Determine whether those feelings are justified, or if you only feel bad because you failed to meet some impossible standard. For example, every child gets hurt sometimes, so there’s no reason to feel bad because you didn’t stop your kid from skinning their knee—and there’s certainly no reason to buy them an extra treat to make up for it, no matter how much they try to guilt-trip you about the injury.
On the other hand, writes Morin, if you conclude that you did do something wrong, that’s a chance for you to demonstrate accountability. You can apologize to your child, make whatever amends are appropriate, and let them see you handling your feelings in a healthy way. This will help your child learn to examine their own feelings of guilt and respond to them appropriately.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Let Children Run the Household
According to Morin, another common way parents upend their home’s hierarchy is by giving their children too much authority: letting the child’s decisions override their own or letting the child make decisions about things that shouldn’t be their choice. For example, it’s fine for a kid to decide what to do during their free time, but not to decide whether they’ll go to school that day.
This is important because, once you surrender your authority, you also surrender your ability to discipline and teach your child. In short, if your child learns that they don’t have to do what you say, they’ll have no reason to listen to you anymore.
Morin says you can maintain the hierarchy by setting clear boundaries and expectations. She advises you to be firm, but also to remain calm and avoid being drawn into arguments—simply make it clear that you expect your child to follow the rules you’ve set, and there will be consequences if they don’t.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Lose Sight of the Big Picture
Morin says that, now more than ever, people tend to get so caught up in the demands of everyday life that they start forgetting the beliefs and values that are most important to them. This brings us to her final “don’t”: Don’t lose sight of the things that matter most.
The author advises you to occasionally step back and consider whether your child is learning the values you hope to teach them—does their behavior line up with your morals? If not, Morin says you may need to think about whether your behavior lines up with your morals, because your child will learn much more from how you act than from what you say. For instance, if you say that you value honesty, but frequently lie to your child to protect their feelings or avoid unpleasant conversations, you’re sending the message that convenience is more important than honesty.
To illustrate this point, Morin cites a 2014 Harvard study about values. Researchers surveyed parents about which values they most wanted their children to demonstrate, as well as asking teenagers what they thought their parents valued most. The results showed a striking disconnect: Most of the adults said they valued kindness above all else, but most of the teenagers believed success was their parents’ top priority. Clearly, many of those parents had gotten caught up in the frantic pace of day-to-day life and lost sight of the big picture.
What to Do Instead: Try Making a Mission Statement
How can you keep your core values in mind while dealing with the countless demands of modern life? Morin suggests borrowing a common business practice by creating a mission statement for your family.
Start by talking with your spouse, or any other adults you live with. Discuss which values are most important to you, and decide what ideals you want to embody and pass on to your child. Next, call the entire household together in order to get your child’s input; ask them things like what it means to be a family, what you all can achieve together, and what your family can contribute to the world.
Once that’s done, work together to create a short, simple mission statement that describes your family’s ideals and goals. One such mission statement might be, “We will be honest with ourselves and with each other. We will be kind to everyone. We will never turn our backs on those who need us.”
Display your family mission statement someplace where everyone will see it regularly, and it will serve as a reminder of what matters most.
Exercise: Consider Morin’s “Don’ts”
Now that you’re familiar with Morin’s “don’ts” for parents, as well as some ideas about what you can do instead, consider how—or if—you want to implement these concepts in your own parenting.
- Which of Morin’s “don’ts” do you think you struggle with the most?
- What’s one specific thing you can do to implement that “don’t” more effectively? For example, if you have a hard time letting your child make mistakes, perhaps you could ask your partner to point out when you’re being overbearing and help to rein you in.
- Do you strongly disagree with any of Morin’s “don’ts”? Which one(s), and why? For example, maybe you disagree with her insistence on giving your child more responsibilities because they already have enough to deal with at school, and you believe that home should be a place to rest.
