Generally, the overprotecting attitude of parents comes from their anxieties. A few parents constantly fear that something can harm their kids. And, that’s why they constantly protect their kids. Do you possess any signs of overprotective parents?
Here is a tell-tale questionnaire every parent should use, to identify if they are employing an overprotective parenting style or not!
- Do you keep on creating ‘safe zones’ for your kids?
- Do you choose your child’s friends and fight your kid’s battles?
- Do you constantly supervise your kid’s actions?
- Do you try to prevent your kids from making any mistakes?
- Do you spoon-feed your child for every little need?
If your answer for all these questions is a Yes, then surely you are a helicopter parent, who is famously known as an overprotective parent.
This parenting style may have adverse effects on a child’s overall growth. Let’s see what the signs of overprotective parents are and how to address these signs.
Sign-Creating Too many Safe Zones
- Protective parents create too many safe zones to guard their children.
- Often these safe zones can be seen as parent’s strict rules and regulations. Parents set these rules to safeguard their kids from any probable dangers.
Effects:
- Kids of such parents are always under pressure. They constantly try to follow parent’s guidelines.
- Such kids often develop low confidence. They struggle to make decisions on their own due to the early age of pampering.
Solution:
- If you are creating too many safe zones, you should stop it and allow your kids to make a few decisions by themselves. This will help to boost confidence and kids’ self-esteem will stay intact.
- You should use smart ways to tame your child. Eg. Use child monitoring apps if you want to restrict kids device usage. Use spelling and grammar apps if you want to improve his language.
Sign-Choosing child’s friends and battles
- Overprotective parents try to settle their kids with the best company. They always try to choose kid’s friends and if needed, they can team up with the child to fight his battles too!
Effects:
- When parents intrude kid’s friendships and battleships, kids get irritated and start suffocating due to the lack of freedom.
Solution:
- As a parent, you should know your kid’s friends’ names but choosing his friends or fighting his conflicts to protect him is a bit too nosy behavior.
- Let him be friends with his type of pals and, if something goes wrong when he fights his conflicts, he will learn from his experience.
Sign-You constantly oversee your kid’s activities
- The intention of helicopter parents is to make their kids the best and they think their constant supervision will improve their child’s performance.
Effects:
- Constant supervision of parents infuses choking feelings in kids. They can’t even express it in a fear that parents may withdraw their love and attention.
- Kids get used to such conditional love and when he gets mature he exhibits people-pleasing tendencies.
Solution:
- Do you have the habit of constant check-ups on a child? Try to divert your attention from kid’s performance and find ways to engage yourself.
- It is best if parents and children both exercise “Me time” at certain intervals.
Sign-Parents prevent kids from making any mistakes
- Overprotective parents hover around their kids to prevent them from making any mistakes.
- It is good to motivate the child for accurate performance but preventing him from any possible mistakes is harmful.
Effects:
- After giving so much attention do you worry why sometimes your kids act silly?
- We all learn from our mistakes. When you prevent kids from failing or making mistakes they can’t learn lessons which they should, at an early age. Such kids act hesitant and can’t make any decisions without parents’ help.
Solution:
- Allow your kids to learn from their mistakes. Let them learn to lose in a few things. They will understand and discover things through their experiences.
Sign-You do spoonfeed
- Do you always help your kids in his school work? Do you make his bed and keep his room clean?
Effects:
- Instead of educating your child about the importance of taking responsibility, you babysit him for every little thing. When these kids become mature they have tough times taking responsibilities.
Solution:
- Try to involve your child in a few household chores. Let him make his bed and teach him how to clean his room. This will help your kids to be independent at an early age.
To sum up, let’s not forget that overprotective parent have purest intentions while raising their offspring. What they need to understand is their job is not to protect the child but to raise a kid that knows how to ensure his own safety in any given situation.