The Negative Effects of Overprotective Parents on Children
Understand the dangers and risks of overprotection to children. Learn the effects of overprotective parents on children and how it can negatively influence their future.
Protecting the people we love is essential – even in the animal kingdom, there is this instinct. But overprotection is a completely different thing. Child protection should be reduced as children grow older.
When overprotection on children maintained or increased, it can be extremely harmful. Thus, it is important to know how to differentiate protection from overprotection.
Many confuse overprotected children with love, without understanding the consequences that this kind of behavior may have on their children’s lives.
In today’s post, we will share some implications and negative effects of overprotective parents on children’s social and emotional development. Keep reading!
The Negative Effects of Overprotective Parents on Children’s lives:
Delay in development
Some attitudes, apparently harmless, but it hurts without realizing it. For example, taking the child to the bathroom before he/she even signals, this need may make his/her unable to identify her own physiological needs.
Another issue is when we do for children the tasks they already have the ability to do alone (eating, bathing, dressing). This is called overprotective parenting or helicopter parenting.
The Negative Effects of Overprotective Parents on Children
When this happens, we end up preventing them from training some skills, disfavoring the development of maturity and independence.
When we try to help, anticipating what will happen, we take the chance that the child learns from his own mistakes.
Also Read: How to help your child to do well in School
Consequently, we hinder learning, which comes from the perception of the positive and negative consequences of our own actions, as well as contracting the creative capacity.
It is true that parents do not want their children to suffer. However, ease is not always synonymous with happiness.
If we do not let children face some challenges now, how will they meet the challenges that will prevail in the future?
If they cannot fight for what they want, how will they feel victorious in the face of conquest, brave and confident to move on, to unravel the world?
Emotional dependence
When we do not allow children to help with housework, we can lower their self-esteem without realizing it. This is another negative effect of overprotective parents on a child’s emotional behavior.
Many children even ask to help their families and feel capable and happy to be part of it, for collaborating, but helicopter parents do not allow them.
You just have to find functions that adjust to their ability, according to age, to develop their sense of responsibility rather than dependency.
Many family members surround the children with protection for fear of being hurt by playing outside.
With this attitude, we stop them from taking risks, interfering with the development of the capacity to make decisions and to know what is best for them.
Read Also: 4 Types of Parenting Styles and their Effects on Children
When there is overprotection, instead of seeking their own answers, they grow up depending on others, waiting for their problems to be solved by others, without believing that they are able to solve the issues themselves. Many end up having difficulties communicating, expressing their opinions, and having initiative. These are the main negative influences of overprotective parenting on children’s lives.
Related: How to Nurture Your Child’s Mental Health Development
Social isolation
Overprotection can trap you. Some controlling attitudes can become an obsession, suffocating, and undermining maturation.
Accustomed to always have the protection of an adult, even sleeping alone can become frightening. This constant feeling of alertness increases the stress and anxiety in the children.
When we prevent children from participating in social activities such as school trips, we are communicating that the world is dangerous, that the child is not safe away from us and thus we transmit our own fears to them. This can lead to insecurity and socialization difficulties. Thus these children grew socially isolated in the future, this is the third negative effect of overprotective parents on children.
Also Read: What is Social Anxiety Disorder and how can it affect your life?
Thus, it is important to pay attention to this type of conduct with children and young people. Because in the pursuit of individuality and independence, many end up rebelling and moving away from the family. Others end up taking refuge in alternative worlds such as video games and the internet.
Difficulty coping with frustrations
By overprotecting, we create our children in a “bubble”, presenting them with a distorted view of reality.
Accustomed to receiving everything, they end up having difficulty understanding that in life many things are beyond our control and that many achievements require effort and dedication.
The fact is, we ended up trying to avoid frustrations in the now by letting them have frustrations in the future without having developed an emotional maturity to deal with them.
Moreover, as they grow up thinking that the function of the people around them is to do their will. They end up blaming others for their own problems. With this, it becomes difficult for them to perceive their mistakes and try to do something to improve.
Also, Read 3 tips on how to talk about corruption with your child!
Therefore, avoid being overprotective parents and always reflect on your attitudes in the education of your children. Seeking a balance between protection and the development of their autonomy.
Let them learn from their own experiences, to cope with the challenges of our world.
This can help them to be confident, happier, and more self-satisfied.
What is good parenting? Read and discover positive parenting tips and advice on child relationships, parenting styles, and more.
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