Perhaps all parents overprotect in some occasion, the problem arises when it is a common practice and deprives children to put their skills and abilities into practice, or when we need to act like this to feel useful and important or we need to have control over lives of our children. There are many ways to overprotect but on this list, we have only placed the most obvious signs and characteristics of overprotective parents.
Usually, a father or mother becomes overprotective when
1. They avoid their children any unpleasant situation, difficult or solve their problems for them. An example of this situation is parents who perform their children’s homework or those who intervene when another child “annoys” their child instead of allowing them to defend themselves.
2. They limit or prevent their children from exploring the world by themselves, depriving them of the opportunity to learn, for example:-
- they are not allowed to crawl because the floor is dirty,
- avoid at all costs to take anything to the mouth,
- they do not let anyone give them anything or take them,
3.They have a high tolerance for a multitude of demands and demands that the child shows. They respond immediately to your demands without putting a limit.
4. On the other hand, they limit in excess of the demands of independence or autonomy. They are not allowed to go out on the street because it is too hot or cold, they choose the clothes they are going to wear or the friends with whom they must relate.
5. Overprotective parents continue to do everything when the child is perfectly capable of doing it alone:
- they continue to feed him,
- they are still wearing and wearing or combing,
- they are still accompanying him to the bathroom.
6. They usually answer for the child when other adults address him, depriving him in this way that he expresses his opinion or his wishes.
7. When their children make an error, they ignore, cover or justify. These are typical signs that overprotective parents show.
8. They do not allow their son or daughter to go out with peers of their age, even when they are mature enough to do so.
9. They use fear to have the child under their control. It is typical to hear them say “do not go up there that you will fall and you will hurt yourself”, “if you go, you can only have something bad”,
10. They feel guilty when they do not help their children to solve their problems or difficulties, they feel responsible for everything that happens to them, whether they have fallen in the park or caught a cold.
Effects of Overprotective Parents
Overprotection becomes harmful because it does not allow children to develop emotionally. The overprotection prevents our children from evolving socially while depriving them of being able to reach sufficient maturity to be independent and autonomous people who are worth themselves when reaching adulthood. Overprotection produces feelings of insecurity and low value in children who have been educated under these circumstances.
As we see, over-protection can manifest itself in multiple ways and be caused by many reasons. Some causes of over-protection can be:
- birth of a very desired child,
- illness of the little one,
- the personality of the parents,
Whatever the reason that makes us overprotective we must know its possible consequences and avoid to the extent that we can conduct ourselves in this way. We must promote autonomy and independence, trying to educate from the freedom and responsibility of the actions we do every day teaching the consequences (positive and negative) that our behaviors have.
