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# A Recipe for Ruining a Perfectly Good Kid | April 4, 2013
- URL: https://blog.helpforyourchild.com/a-recipe-for-ruining-a-perfectly-good-kid-april-4-2013/
- Published: 2013-04-04T01:55:29.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-07T21:29:14.000Z
- Author: Dr. John Carosso
- Tags: Anxiety, Depression, Parenting, legacy-no-image

*Written by Dr. John Carosso*

**The Essential Ingredients**

\-**Start** with a fun-loving, intelligent, inquisitive child who wants nothing more than to please his or her parents.

\-**Add-in** a demanding, critical parent.

\-**Keep** adding the parental demands and expectations.

\-**Add** only a pinch of some subdued praise, and praise only for the highest of achievements.

\-**Add** a few hundred cups of ‘you should have done better’ no matter the accomplishment.

\-**Add** a few hundred more cups of admonishment, even when the child achieves.

\-**Add** modeling of a workaholic lifestyle, achievement at all cost, and no room or tolerance for failure.

\-**Stir-in** a perspective that everything is a competition.

\-If someone complains this combination of ingredients is bitter, add a rationalization that “it’s the only way my child is going to become somebody” and “they’ll thank me some day for this…”

\-**Add** a dash or two of parent being emotionally detached, especially for any positive interactions.

\-**Mix** these ingredients together for fifteen years, beginning at a very young age, and try to keep ingredients from boiling over (*won’t be easy*).

**Viola**

Just like that, you’ll serve-up a completely neurotic, anxious, panicked, overwhelmed teenager who must earn straight A’s or it’s ‘the end of the world’; not only has to be in every club and sport but must be the captain of the team and president of the club; and does not know how to relax or calm themselves. You’ll have a teenager who ends-up in my office, experiencing panic attacks, feeling depressed, having trouble with friends because everything is an Olympic-style competition, and feeling that no matter what they do, no matter how much they achieve, that it’s simply not good enough; a feeling that will haunt them their entire lives.

If this sounds too familiar; if you think it’s time to change your order and put-out a new menu, contact me at [jcarosso@cpcwecare.com](mailto:jcarosso@cpcwecare.com)

*God bless*