It exists in modern parenthood a deeply disturbing tendency that often masquerades as a supreme virtue, which is an immoderate, almost aggressive pride.
At first glance, there is nothing more natural and noble than a parent beaming while watching their child's first steps, first read sentences or sporting achievements. However, in psychotherapy in practice, we often meet the flip side of that coin: disappointed, and later also adults, who were emotionally crushed under the burden of that "pride".
The problem arises the moment the child's success ceases to be a source of personal joy and becomes fuel for parental vanity. Then we are no longer talking about support, but about a specific type of emotional confiscation in which the child's identity is sucked into the parental narcissism.
When a parent says, "I'm so proud of you," they often unconsciously set a condition for closeness. The child, with that inherent, almost superhuman sensitivity to the parent's inner states, unmistakably detects that he is loved and seen only when he produces results that make the parent important in the eyes of the environment. At that moment, the child ceases to be an authentic subject with its own pace of development, fears and wanderings, and is reduced to the level of an object, a precious trophy or medal that the parent proudly hangs on his chest in order to heal his own unrepentant defeats or a sense of life's unfulfillment.
Marketing parenting and children as projects
We live in an era defined by the dictatorship of visibility, where every segment of privacy is treated as material for public presentation. In such a world, the child has become the most valuable marketing project.
Social media are full of parents who "take pride" in their children's every blink, but if we scratch beneath that glistening surface, we'll find kids who feel like they're on a constant live broadcast. When parental pride is constantly for sale, the child loses the right to his inner world, to that intimate space where he grows in silence, without the pressure to be "exceptional" every moment.
This process of domesticating the child through success is crueler than any overt strictness. While a child can rebel against open violence or punishment, defense against "pride" is almost impossible. How do you rebel against someone who keeps telling you that you are the best, the smartest, and the most beautiful? The child feels that every failure, every five that becomes a four, or every sports injury, would be a direct blow to parental stability. It begins to bear responsibility for the parent's happiness, which is a burden that no child's spine can sustain in the long term without consequences.
Loss of right to commonness
Probably the greatest gift a parent can give their child is not faith in their genius, but permission to be ordinary.
In a world that celebrates only top results, we have forgotten the beauty of mediocrity, the right to do something just because you enjoy it, and not because you have to win. An overly proud parent erases that space. For him, a child's hobby must become a career, a child's drawing must be a masterpiece, and a child's imagination must have a clear utilitarian purpose.
When a child's right to normality is taken away, the right to make mistakes is also taken away. And precisely mistakes, stumbles and clumsy attempts are those moments in which real resilience and an authentic value system are built.
A child who is allowed to make mistakes and still see a parent who is calm and present, learns that his value is not a marketable category. On the other hand, the child of the "proud" parent learns that love is fragile and depends on the latest ranking. It creates generations of young people who suffer from chronic anxiety, always wondering if they are still good enough to hold the attention of those who love them.
The development of a false self
In psychology, there is a term that describes the state in which a person develops a facade to meet the demands of the environment, while his authentic being remains hidden and undeveloped. Excessive parental pride is the ideal basis for the development of this "false self". The child becomes a superb actor, learns to recognize which parts of him cause parental delight and emphasize those parts, while deeply repressing sadness, anger, helplessness or simply disinterest.
The problem arises decades later, when these "successful" people come to therapy with a sense of pervasive emptiness. They've achieved everything (they have careers, degrees, status), but they don't feel like they're living their own lives. They are the rest of the children who are still looking for confirmation of their parents' pride in every mirror, unable to feel their own desire. Their inner voice has been drowned out by their parents' cheers for so long that they have forgotten what it sounds like. It is the silent tragedy of those who were always "pride and joy", but were never truly themselves.
The social pathology of success
This phenomenon is not only a family problem. It is deeply rooted in our wider community which has become functionally illiterate for intimacy.
We are a society that values the facade more than the structure. In such an environment, a child who is "successful" serves as proof that the family is functional, even if there is emotional coldness or complete alienation within those four walls. Pride then serves as an anesthetic. He allows us not to see the child's suffering because we are too blinded by the flash of his medals.
It often happens that parents who themselves were deprived of attention or experienced severe social injustices, try to achieve some kind of historical reparation through the child.
"My son will be what I couldn't be," becomes the catchphrase that binds the child's hands. It is a strategy of silencing the child's individuality in the name of something higher, family justice.
But, the child is not there to fix our lives, nor to correct the crooked Drina of our past. It is there to live out its own destiny, even if it was diametrically opposed to what we imagined for it.
The need for parental modesty
What is the alternative to this fatal pride? It is a kind of wise, quiet presence that we might call modesty. A humble parent is one who is able to step aside and observe their child with curiosity rather than expectation. It is a parent who is not proud of the child as his property, but rejoices in the child as an autonomous human being.
Instead of the sentence "I'm proud of you", which emphasizes parental feelings, it might be more healing to say: "I see how hard you worked and I see how happy this makes you".
Such a change of focus returns the child to his success. It then realizes that the achievement is its own, and that the parent is there as a witness, not as a judge or co-owner of the profits.
Authentic closeness is not built on a common triumph over the world, but on the ability to be next to each other in silence, in failure and in very ordinary, unproud moments of everyday life.
After all, our children do not belong to us. They are entrusted to our care only for a short time, and our most important task is to equip them with the inner strength to leave us and live lives that we may not be able to brag about on social networks, but in which they will be truly present.
Defense of the child's right to his own way, without the obligation to feed our vanity,
it is the ultimate act of love and the only way to nurture subjects capable of freedom. Everything else is just posing on the ruins of childhood that we devoured with our own pride.
The author is a psychologist
