Parents want the absolute best for their children. From providing the greatest material belongings to excellence in education, parents sometimes frazzle their nerves with endless questions. Do they provide the best things to the little ones? Will their child ever develop essential skills? Understanding and helping a child to try new things lets them learn new skills in life. Being overprotective, over-indulging and over-scheduling their children all the time fuels parents to fall into the trap of overparenting.
Psychologists agree that it is normal to the doting parents being overprotective and overindulged in their children’s day-to-day activities. Parents give too much love and praise to their children, making them happy all the time. To a certain extent, it may be fine, but this may contribute to the child’s vulnerability to fragility.
A Child Psychologist states that some signs may define that you may be Overparenting your child.
- Extreme Responsiveness: Parents praise their children too much. It describes that the parent sometimes becomes over-responsive to the child’s every need. They try to make them happy all the time. Parents believe everything that a child says. Usually believing everything a child says sometimes becomes a problem in schools. So when children come home and say “I’ve got a detention that I didn’t deserve.” Parents start believing the child over the teacher may cause the child not learning from his/her mistake.
- Self-Assurance: Child Psychologist, Locke states that excessive emphasis on making a child expert develops a degree of low self-assurance in the child. It is also a sign of overparenting. As an example, he indicated that the expectation for children to be fashionable may be seen in that “children no longer have multiple permissions to be shy,” with parents and guardians catastrophizing characteristics. To this, Locke refers to psychologist Martin Seligman’s ebook “The Optimistic Baby.” The ebook states that there is a link between feeling good and doing well but argues that “you can’t make a child feel good to do well.”
Calling another children’s parents when their child is not invited to a party or becoming concerned when a toddler is not selected for a sports team are examples of these interventions.
- Age-appropriate Limitations: Do you often see that your child can’t do the same things that other children of the same age can do? Can your child’s friends easily go to a school camp and your child can’t? To your knowledge, it can be a red flag for you, Locke said. Children mostly develop five essential skills: resilience, self-regulation, responsibility, and resourcefulness.
A 2012 study, co-authored by Locke, surveyed 128 parenting professionals about Overparenting. A lack of resilience, sense of entitlement, transference of high parental anxiety, and inadequate life skills development were among the effects of overparenting observed in children by respondents to the survey. Referring to the bonsai analogy, Locke says exposure to the elements can make a tree stronger. It can help children face challenges irrespective of age.
On the Final Note, Locke adds that “your role as a parent needs to get less and less as your child steps up.”
