What is the most toxic parenting behaviour of all? The question, posed by Mel Robbins, drew a striking response from Dr. Shefali Tsabary, a clinical psychologist known for her work on conscious parenting and followed by over 1.3 million people online, in a podcast shared on Instagram. Her answer challenges a comforting belief: that harm in parenting is always obvious. Instead, she points to something subtler, the moment love begins to blur into control, and a child’s life quietly starts carrying the weight of a parent’s unmet expectations. Scroll down to read more...The answer, in plain terms, is this: one of the most toxic parenting patterns is projecting unmet fantasies, expectations and desires onto a child, then refusing to own it. Instead, the parent frames control as selflessness and disappointment as martyrdom, all while insisting they are doing everything “for the children.”This kind of parenting is especially hard to challenge because it can look noble from the outside. Parents may say they gave up everything, worked endlessly, suffered silently and built their lives around their children. But when those sacrifices are used as emotional debt, the child is no longer being raised, they are being managed. That is where the harm deepens. The child is expected to become the parent’s unfinished success story, the emotional repair project, the proof that sacrifice was worth it. In that setup, love starts to feel conditional. Approval depends on performance. Individuality becomes inconvenient.Children raised in this atmosphere often grow up feeling guilty for having their own preferences. They may learn to read the room before they read themselves. They become experts at pleasing, achieving and avoiding conflict but strangers to their own wants. The most painful part is that they are often told they are ungrateful if they resist. That makes the child’s basic need for autonomy sound like betrayal. Over time, this can create anxiety, resentment, people-pleasing and a shaky sense of self. It is not that parents never sacrifice. Many do. The problem is when sacrifice is used as a moral shield, a way to avoid self-reflection and make the child responsible for the parent’s emotional fulfilment.Healthy parenting does not require perfection. It requires honesty. A parent can say: I wanted more for my life. I hoped for certain things. I made sacrifices, and I need to be careful not to pass that burden on to my child. It also means recognising when expectations begin to sound like obligations, and pausing before they quietly reshape a child’s sense of self and worth.This kind of raw, unfiltered honesty creates a much-needed space. It allows children the freedom to be themselves and to enjoy their childhood, instead of becoming mere vessels filled with the regrets and disappointments of adults. Additionally, it imparts a crucial lesson: love, in its truest form, is fundamentally different from ownership, and genuine care should never come with unspoken emotional debts. The message of this post strikes a chord because it articulates feelings that many individuals experience yet struggle to express clearly. The most destructive form of parenting is not merely characterized by strictness or overwhelming pressure, but rather by the insidious manipulation of a child's existence under the guise of sacrifice, while simultaneously expecting gratitude for the harm that ensues.