Being an involved parent is extremely important but being overprotective parent can hamper child’s self confidence. Parents should learn the skill to identify the difference between guiding kids and spoon-feeding them with solutions to all the problems. Let us take a look at the 5 biggest mistakes made by overprotective parents.Parents sometimes forget the boundary line between loving and protecting their kids and overprotecting them. Overprotective parents unknowingly cause a lot of psychological damage to their children and rob them of the very qualities that are needed to make life a success If you belong to the school of thought that believes that helping kids in all possible ways and shielding them is the only way to show parental love then you would do well to check out the
parenting mistakes below.
1. Solving Problems Even When Help is not Required
Overprotective parents typically try to solve all their kid’s problems. Even if a minor difficulty arises they rush to the aid of their kids and take all the control of sorting out the problem. They also protect their children from any kind of difficulty that they might face all the time thinking that this is for the benefit of their kids. However, the constant support and problem solving slowly corrodes away the self confidence of kids and stuns their personal problem solving abilities.
Later in life these kids automatically expect someone else to come and solve their problems for them. Kids may not require help of parents all the time to solve each and every problem. In fact parents must encourage kids to solve small problems on their own to develop problem solving skills.
2. Manipulate Situations for ChildrenOverprotective parents will interfere with school rules, question the result of contests and raise a row with parents of other competing kids in order to prevent situations of
failure for children. Often parents manipulate circumstances to make their kids seem to be more successful. This is a major mistake as children do not develop a proper perspective about success and forget that success is only achieved after sweat, toil and multiple experiences of failure. In life too, these kids will be ill equipped to be successful through the right means.
3. Filtering Friends Constantly
While parents should always be vigilant about the kind of friends their kids make sometimes they carry on this vigilance to an extraordinary length.
Overprotective parents constantly try to discourage the contact of their kids with other kids that they find unacceptable. However, the problem is that children should be provided right guidance and be allowed to develop the differentiating ability between good company and bad company themselves. Filtering
friends obsessively will only push kids towards making wrong relationship choices in the future or simply losing the ability to identify that a relationship choice is wrong.
4. Lack of Privacy
Overprotective parents do not respect their child’s right to privacy and are constantly crossing boundaries. They are always very curious about every single detail of their kid’s worlds and even go to the lengths of opening personal mail, going through drawers, talking to kid’s friends, snooping around personal stuff etc; to try to find out what kids are up to in their personal lives. Mostly overprotective parents behave in the same way with an 18 year old as they would with an 8 year old.
This kind of behaviour alienates kids from them as they try and devise new ways of keeping their life a secret from their parents. It is good to know what kids are doing and what is happening in their life but constantly being after them can hamper parent-child relationship(especially in case of teenagers). In the long run this destroys that channel of healthy and open communication that should exist between parents and kids.
As time passes parents should use their judgement and provide age-appropriate privacy to kids. However, this does not mean that they should allow kids to do whatever they want. Kids should be taught to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong right from the beginning. There should be a proper set of rules to be followed by entire family. They should know what family values are and they will abide by them if each and every family member respects and follows these values.
5. Risk Evasiveness
Over protective parents are typically very scared of risks as far as their kids are concerned. They also teach their kids to avoid every semblance of risk and to always play safe. While this may actually keep the kids safe it destroys the chance of personal and professional success. The success in today’s competitive and challenging world is highly dependent upon the ability to take calculated risks and overprotective parents destroy the risk taking ability in their kids.
Now that you know about the extensive psychological damage that overprotecting your kids causes the path to a more balanced parental approach will be easier for you. It is just about identifying the difference between assisting and guiding kids to solve their problems and giving readymade solutions to all the problems of kids.
What is the difference between being involved and being overprotective? What are the disadvantages of being an overprotective parent? How to avoid being an overprotective parent? Discuss here.
