Why do some parents live their lives through their kids?

From what I have seen, it is a bit of a competition thing. Like ‘look what my kid can do’ ‘mine’s better than yours’ kind of thing. It happens a lot with parents that never felt as though they had a talent. So they live through their child. As soon as the poor kid shows any interest or talent in something, they are pushed to be the best and often seriously injure themselves in the process. The same thing is seen in child beauty pageants.

You will often find that the child will leave home as soon as possible to get out of that atmosphere. Then the parents will buy an expensive show dog or cat and live through that.

It’s like they never got a chance to show-off at school or in their job. So they make up for lost time with their child.

I think its a bit of both.

The kid could really dream of doing something, and the parent gets involved and pushes them to do it.

It could also be though that the parent couldn’t do something, but they wanted to get as close to the experience as possible, so they make their kids do it.

I have a teacher whose father was in World War Two. After the war, there was stuff he couldn’t do, so he pushed his son to do it. That was so he could get the experiences he was never able to have.