Guarding against being too protective of kids

“Dear Dr. LeCrone: My wife and I are raising a teenager who says that we are overcontrolling. This is our oldest child so we don’t have any prior experience in parenting teenagers. It seems like our child went from being a sweet, cooperative member of the family last year to someone who wants total freedom now. Can you give us some suggestions in this area?

Dear Reader: Sometimes, parents become so wrapped up in their children they try to take control of every aspect of the child’s life. Certainly it is normal and healthy for parents to want to help shape a child’s future, to encourage healthy values and urge him to live up to his potential.

But some parents become so much a part of a child’s life, they do not give him breathing room for new opportunities including experiencing hardships, rejection, and even less-than-complete success.

These parents assume a rescuer’s role. Some say they want to save the child from the hardships they had to endure.

Loving, but giving a child the freedom of separateness is one of the keys to healthy parenting. True loving develops when a parent loves a child because of his own qualities, not because the child is an extension of the parent.

Rescuing a child from all his mistakes creates a person with an unreal perception of the world. It deprives that child of the tools to make corrections or learn from experiences.

Sometimes overprotection takes on characteristics of smothering. The parent wants to be involved in everything the child is doing. When the child reaches adolescence and seeks the inevitable and normal separation, the parent not only is hurt, but frequently panics. Desperately tries to recapture the closeness they felt in the child’s earlier stages of development, the overprotective parent sets rules, boundaries and limits on the adolescent and the child rebells.

What is the anecdote for overprotection?

• Parents have to back off, to let children make choices. Continuing to select your child’s clothing each morning or not permitting the child to decorate his or her own bedroom are examples of not letting the child make their own choices.

• There are enough big things in life parents must be involved in. These include their children’s non-involvement in drugs, choice of friends, the hours children keep, involvement in church activities, school organizations, their grades in school, etc. If parents use their efforts on the big events and choices and allow the child to make decisions on other aspects of development, the child feels less controlled.

• Parents should realize that ambiguity, with feelings of bitterness and hostility, can develop as a long-term outcome of overprotection. The parents then may develop guilt feelings or try to control even more, which cause more problems and emotional difficulty.

Sometimes, loving a child means letting go.

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 2001