Want your kids to be happy and successful? Well, then couples should spend less time striving to be perfect parents - and instead try to be perfect spouses.
Be perfect spouses and not perfect parents, if you want you children to touch the pinnacles of success and happiness; that's the latest advice on parenting.
The advice comes from family therapist and Wall Street Journal writer David Code in a new book entitled To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First.He said that kids become demanding and dissatisfied if they receive too much attention from over-anxious 'helicopter parents' who hover over them constantly.
Instead, parents should leave their children to forge their own path and instead focus on having a fulfilled marriage to provide them with a stable backdrop, Code suggested.
His book argues that parents who channel all their energy into their children are not only doing themselves a disservice but their offspring too.
"Today's number one myth about parenting is that the more attention we give our kids, the better they'll turn out," the Telegraph quoted Code as telling The Observer.
"But families centred on children create anxious, exhausted parents and demanding, entitled children. We parents today are too quick to sacrifice our lives and our marriages for our kids. Most of us have created child-centred families, where our children hold priority over our time, energy and attention.
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Code said that the 'greatest gift' parents can give their children is to set them an example with a healthy, happy marriage.
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TAN