Parenting is not always easy, but surely not always difficult. Some parents simply raise their children as they were parented. Perhaps an even greater number parent in opposition to how they were raised. In either case, this will cause difficulties in the parent-child relationship. As parents, it’s easy to get tangled up by our beliefs about what kids ought to do. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter what kids, in general, should do, what most kids can do, what we did at a certain age, or even what a child’s younger sister can do. We have to deal with the child in front of us as an individual with certain differences. If we look at the child’s perspective, we can think about the expectations that we impel on our children as parents. As parents, we need to understand that each child is unique and thus are his capabilities. Parents therefore have expectations that they hope their children will live up to. As a child develops so do the expectations get higher. Different parents have different standards of what they expect from their children. Some place the bar very high whereas some give their children a free reign. It is extremely important to understand our children as individuals with certain abilities and based on our understanding of our children we should alter our expectations accordingly.

The parental expectations start from the time a child is born. At first the parents have certain developmental/ biological expectations for the child. As the child grows up there is a shift from expectations related to the development to expectations related to development of personality.  During the developmental years, the parents need to know that they need to go slow with their expectations and keep an open hand while putting down their expectations. As much as parents wants the best of their kids they should not set the bar so high that it de-motivates their children Expectations should be just ahead of the children capabilities so that they so as to not feel pressured or underestimated.

The main objective of parent expectations could be to make their children independent and lead a successful life. The major expectation that parents have for their children is that they may excel in life. Be it academically, socially or even spiritually, our parents want us to become the best we can be.  Different children are gifted differently and so expectations should be based on individual capabilities and differences. Parenting is not easy and every parent wants their child to grow up to be happy, independent and a high achiever. Parents should however be careful on how much expectations they place on their children because too much may discourage and too little may deliver little. Thus it is very important to be realistic and optimistic on the expectations of their children bearing in mind that every child is unique.