Do you know this mother? She won’t let her children dress themselves because “they do it wrong.” So she lays out their outfits each day, even though, at ages three and six, they are pretty much capable of dressing themselves.

How about this dad? He likes to shoot baskets in the driveway with his kids but he keeps criticizing how they stand and how they shoot, to the point they don’t like to play basketball at all anymore.  Do you know this guy?

Parents don’t have to be mean and controlling. They can be overly helpful and controlling. But the result is the same – unhappy kids who feel unloved instead of feeling loved a lot. These parents are wonderful people. They have high standards and they  try to do everything perfectly. Yes, okay, maybe they’re really perfectionists but why not?  What’s wrong with striving for excellence? What’s wrong with trying to be the very best?

Let me tell you what’s wrong. Let me tell you why being a perfectionist backfires on you and on your kids.

No one likes to be manipulated. You don’t like it and – guess what? – your child doesn’t like it either. Just as you rebel when someone tells you all your faults and seems to know exactly how to fix you, your child rebels too. It doesn’t matter that she’s the child and you’re the grownup. It doesn’t matter that you have more experience and vision. Nobody wants to be someone else’s project. Everyone wants to belong to herself.

Your child is not your property. She’s an independent human being.

So, being controlling and having a lot of rules will create a barrier between the two of you.  It won’t “fix” her but will make her more committed to her own point-of-view. Or, even worse, it will make her completely unsure of herself and totally dependent on you. For life.

A better plan is to guide your child in feeling great about herself, competent, capable, and smart. Give her opportunities to try new things and to see how they work out. Help her develop her ability to pay attention, to solve problems on her own, and to think ahead.

Children who are under someone else’s control never know what to do. Left to their own devices they either go crazy and wind up in detention somewhere or they are too fearful and uncertain to do anything at all. Neither way is perfect. Neither way is the way you envision your child growing up to be.

So, if you’re inclined to fix people, start with yourself. Learn to appreciate and nurture, learn to guide and support. Give up being in control of your child and gradually, with your loving help, let your child be in control of herself.

You and your child. Together you can be the perfect family.

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.

Of course your friends and family want to see your child in your Facebook posts and on other social media sites. But it’s easy to cross the line between sharing your child’s life and exposing his life unfairly or even using his lives as part of some sort of exhibition. There are reasons why social media restrict users to people over the age of 13. One of those reasons is to keep kids from being exploited, even by their parents.

A five-year-old is an Instagram sensation because of his fashion-conscious clothes. Surely this boy doesn’t choose these duds himself. He also doesn’t photograph himself in precociously sophisticated poses. The New York Magazine article that discusses this child’s social media fame reports “There are now five fan accounts dedicated to his style, two of which have appeared in the last month.” Other children didn’t create these fan pages. Adults did. Only adults are responsible for creating this boy’s alter ego and for publicizing his exploits for their own purposes.

Of course, your little posts don’t go to such extremes. But this child’s story is just one of a long line of cautionary tales. Christopher Milne, whose father wrote the Winnie-the-Pooh books describing his childhood exploits, spoke of feeling that his childhood was stolen from him. He wrote, “It seemed to me almost that my father had got where he was by climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and left me nothing but empty fame.”

Children should not be the foundation of a parent’s next career. Parents who create a role for themselves by thrusting their child into the limelight steal their child’s potential. It’s obvious to us that this happened to Christopher Robin. It’s part of the horrifying fun of watching shows like Dance Moms and Toddlers in Tiaras. And maybe it’s clear to us that’s what’s happening in the family of the five-year-old fashion star.

But it’s not always obvious when we’re posting to Facebook or Flickr or other sites. The Internet has a long memory. Images and commentary never really go away. You can take things down but they already exist somewhere else, if other people have copied or shared or even just “liked” your post. So have a care:

1. If your motive in making a post is to expose or embarrass your child – or if it could have that effect someday down the road – then don’t make that post.

2. If your motive in making a post is to demonstrate what a good parent you are by using your child as an example or object lesson – then don’t make that post.

3. If your motive in making a post is in any way to make money from your child – by using her face on your book cover or by repeating her cute sayings or whatever – then don’t make that post.

Your child is a star, of course. She’s a wonderful person with a marvelous future and because she’s your child there’s a bit of pride and glory that shines onto you. That’s lovely. But don’t exploit your child in an effort to capitalize on her in any way. She is your child but you don’t own her.

Only children own children’s lives and it’s up to them to decide, when they’re old enough to make such decisions, what parts of their lives they want to share. No child should be a social media star. It’s a parent’s job to make certain this is so.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.