Photo: WeHeartIt
Science confirms this awful truth.
By Nicole Weaver — Written on May 15, 2015
There are many things you can get from your parents, and you have to accept the good with the bad. You take their looks, maybe even their voice, but that's all genetics.
What type of things do they pass on from their parenting decisions? Well if you're an anxious person then you can thank your parents' choices for that!
A new study followed 900 fraternal and identical twins who had children. They found children had more in common with their parent than with their parent's twin. It has little to do with genetics!
So, what are parents doing to raise their kids to be so nervous? Kids notice when their parents are worrying so they begin to adopt the same behavior.
Also, leaning on the side of helicopter parenting tends to do them harm. The researchers found shielding kids from what the parent fears, or allowing the kid to drown in their own anxieties, leads to anxious children.
So, what should parents do instead?
"The right thing to do is to help the child have opportunities to take on challenges and tasks appropriate to their age and level of fear," explains the study's co-author Thaila Eley to Quartz. "So they have the opportunity to learn that they can actually cope with this situation after all."
Sounds like pretty sound advice. If you are an anxious parent, don't get too down on yourself. Science also says you're pretty smart!
