How people-pleasing develops in young children? Signs to spot and what parents should do to avoid it

Parenting is not an easy task. Whether you're a first time parent or are an experienced one, there's bound to be challenges that you will eventually learn to overcome. Furthermore, some mistakes are inevitable, however, can be avoided through patience and practice. Especially when it comes to people-pleasing behavior in kids, it is preventable. You don't want to see your child complying to things they don't want to, suppressing their feelings and giving up on their opinions just to make others happy.. Do you?

As important as it is to be socially involved and on good terms with people, it is not necessary that you have to push down your own emotions and feelings to keep everyone else content. This is often a trait children develop due to several reasons.

Also read: Things your kid needs to know before going to college

According to Dr. Nicole LePera, a psychologist and a social media influencer, people-pleasing is a result of childhood emotional neglect.

Taking to Instagram, she explains, "When children are emotionally neglected, they unconsciously abandon their sense of self in order to maintain their relationship with the parent figure."

She adds: "This is how people-pleasing develops, because without a true sense of self the child maintains a false sense of self through other people's validation and approval."

Emotional neglect or rejection refers to a relationship pattern wherein a person's emotional needs are consistently ignored, invalidated, disregarded or under-appreciated by another individual. That said, childhood emotional neglect (CEN) is the parent's failure to meet their child's emotional needs during the early years, which according to the expert can cause a people-pleasing attitude.

A young child looks up to their parents or parent figure for guidance and support. If they commit a mistake, they'll look for ways to make amends. But while they're at it, parents must support them in their endeavours, rather than using guilt, shame or punishment to make them realise their mistake. Being consistently critical of them can harm their self confidence and lead to self doubt. This becomes the primary reason why they depend on other people's opinion of them, and seek their validation.

In the Instagram video, Dr. LePera also discusses how developing people-pleasing behaviour can also affect one's adulthood.

"Children continue this pattern into adulthood, where they choose career and partners and various other major and minor life choices based solely on gaining approval. They deeply fear criticism, upsetting anyone or disappointing people because dissaproval threatens their sense of self!" she explains.

Here are some parenting mistakes that can lead to a people pleasing behaviour in kids.

- Belittling your child emotions

- Disagreeing with their thoughts all the time and being mercilessly straight forward about it

- Getting angry with them all the time

- Giving them rewards for being compliant and obedient

- Chiding them from disagreeing with your opinion

Here's how to spot a child with people-pleasing behaviour

- A child who has low self-esteem and has a low opinion of themselves

- The child finds it difficult to say "no"

- They're always apologetic even if they're not at fault

- They struggle with being real and pretend to please others

- Always seeking people's validation

According to Dr. Nicole LePera, here are some ways to heal people pleasing:

1. Begin to connect to yourself, your own needs, + your own body. This step is most important because as a child your needs often weren’t met. Healing involves starting to meet your own needs before the needs of others.

2. As a child, disappointing someone may have meant you were punished, shamed, rejected, or completely ignored. This was scary + painful. As adults, recovery is about understanding that disappointment is part of life. And adults are capable of feeling disappointed.

3. Boundaries are your friend. People pleasers don’t have boundaries because they typically weren’t modeled them. You aren’t responsible for how people react to your boundaries - that’s their responsibility.

4. Notice each time you make a decision. From simple decisions (what’s for dinner, what to wear on a date) to larger decisions like (career choices, where to live, who your partner is, or how handle a crisis situation) notice how often you involve other people. If you find yourself getting constant advice in input it’s likely you’re overly concerned with perception. Before asking others for input, sit with yourself. Begin to ask yourself what you want, you think, you need. This is the path to self trust.