Hey, we get it. You likely read the headline of this newsletter and bristled at the insinuation that you might be a hostile parent. No one wants to be described as “hostile”, especially when it comes to their parenting style. But it’s smart to understand the definition because, while discipline is necessary, when parents use overly harsh forms of it — like, say, isolating a child for an extended length of time, yelling too much, or doling out a punishment that is too harsh for the crime — they can set their children up for failure. Consider this: A recent study found that kids subject to harsh discipline and other forms of hostility at age 3 were 1.5 times more likely to have high-risk mental health symptoms by the time they turned 9. And many of the signs of hostile parenting are much more subtle than you may think.