I have a long time friend who has unrealistically high expectations for her daughter.
My friend, a perfectionist by her own admission, expects everything her daughter does to be perfect and if she falls short it is because she was lazy and didn’t put enough effort into the task.
My son, would be the first to say that I was extremely demanding of him, but my friends expectations even leave me feeling awful for her daughter.
I’ve heard her scold her daughter when her daughter was approaching her for help on homework to tell her that it wasn’t difficult and she just wasn’t trying hard enough. My friend has told me stories about giving her daughter the task of washing the dishes, but then they wind up arguing because they weren’t washed well enough because her daughter didn’t spend enough time and effort on it. When her daughter was in elementary school she took martial arts and had developed a martial arts routine for the school talent show that she was excited about, her mother made her drop out a day or two before the show because she hadn’t spent enough time practicing. Her daughter, now a young teen, has become a cutter and been in therapy a couple different times, which I can understand because even as an outsider, I see that nothing she has done has ever lived up to her mom’s unrealistic standards.
People DON’T like to be told how to parent their kids. Is there a polite way to tell someone who has been a lifelong friend that they’re being far too demanding and need to back off a bit?