In today's environment, children are exposed to more pressure from both peers and parents alike to compete better in school and at their extracurricular activities. Because everyone is more competitive, children themselves are often lost in the rat race very early in their lives. Every little achievement may be glorified by their parents and hey, everyone loves to be praised and valued. Because of this, kids tend to want to keep the praises coming and strive harder and harder to be better. Here are some simple parenting solutions you can use to combat the problem of excess pressure.

Parents need to manage the level of pressure and competitiveness in the kids in order to ensure that the child grows up at a healthy rate and not crumble under the stress of both peer and parental expectations. Here are some negative ramifications of an excessive amount of pressure on a growing child.

Children develop over-dependence on parents.

If a child becomes exposed to too much pressure and competition and defines his self-worth by the number of praises by his or her parent, there is an over-dependence on his parents are the child will consistently look towards his parents for approval with every aspect in his or her life. Children like this grow up having low self-esteem.

Children become socially isolated.

Too much competition creates a social line between a child and his peers if he sees friends as competitors. Parents who brag about their kids constantly tend to create a barrier between the child and his peers. Children end up feeling like a tool that parents make use of to show off to their friends and will either develop a complex. Children who are doing well will end up having a superiority complex and end up proud and often belittle friends. With parenting skill, parents can easily administer appropriate parenting solutions.

Children measure self-worth with achievements.

Children will have two possible reactions when parents starting comparing them with their peers. They will either think that their parents value them only because they are scoring achievements or if being criticized, think that their parents find them to be useless.

Parents need to be aware of how their children think and be a little more careful about what and how they talk about such things in front of their kids. What may be a harmless conversation to you is silently detrimental to your children.