As the New Year rolls around, it’s good to think about how you want to live your best life, come 2020. Maybe you’ll make a few resolutions. Maybe you’ll spend some time contemplating what’s most important to you and what you want to pursue in the coming year and the coming decade.

If you’re a parent, you might be contemplating the best way to raise your children. You probably already have some pretty clear ideas about how to grow happy, healthy, successful kids but like all good parents, you want to learn more so that you can do better by them.

The most important thing to know, going into the next year and the new decade, is that good parenting isn’t just about loving your kids. There are things you should do and things you shouldn’t do, if you want your kids to fulfill their greatest potential.

Obviously, children need to feel loved, appreciated and protected. They also need guidance and boundaries in order to learn good values and appropriate behavior. They need to learn how to take responsibility for themselves, bounce back from adversity and deal with the consequences of their choices.

Knowing all of this makes it easier to understand what would be the most damaging things parents could do to their children. If you want to be the best parent you could be, you might want to memorize this list of what never to do to your kids.

Do not ever:

1. Neglect them, because that would make them feel unlovable;

2. Fail to protect them, because that would make them feel worthless;

3. Abuse them, because that would fill them with shame and self-blame;

4. Abandon them, because that would make it impossible for them to learn how to handle themselves in the world;

5. Over-protect them, because that would make them anxious, overwhelmed and incapable of taking care of themselves;

6. Do too much for them, because that would prevent them from ever developing competence or confidence;

7. Reward every behavior and cushion every fall, because then they’d grow up over-entitled or with a selfishly distorted idea of how life works;

8. Violate their boundaries, because that would fill them with confusion and self-loathing;

9. Give them mixed messages, because that would make them start to feel crazy;

10. each them to hate, because that would make them forever angry, alienated and miserable.

Children are the world’s future. We need to cherish them and foster their development so that they can grow up to be and do their very best. That’s why the above list should be memorized by every parent and parent-to-be.