Being An Over Protective Parent

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Many of us may have come across control freak moms and dads who hover around their progeny, seemingly being overprotective. The more their teenage children yearn for independence and complete freedom, the closer they would drag them into their clutches.

Overprotective parents like to shield their kids from every hardship or adversity that life throws in without even realising that they are inadvertently harming their children. This tends to bring in a negative effect on the child as it sends a wrong message to the youngster who starts feeling that the world isn't a safe place to live in.

Alternatively, this can also make the kid undergo behavioural or emotional issues such as anxiety or fear. This kind of parenting style does have severe negative influence on the children since they would never grow into a confident and independent adult.

Over parenting doesn't mean that you are helping the children to learn from their mistakes. It means that you are indirectly repressing their learning process by taking away from them the important life skills to develop a healthy personality and learn to overcome life's challenges. Being protective is good, but when it goes overboard it can have a bad effect on the child's self esteem.

Overprotective parenting techniques have damaging effect on the children because they would never learn to cope with difficult situations and deal with problems optimistically. This parenting style can make the child believe that he/she is not competent enough to deal with things on their own. Most importantly, this also makes the child become too dependent on the parent when it comes to decision making and guidance.

Here are some of the signs of overprotective parenting.

Overprotective parents are always watchful
Overprotective parents will always keep a close watch on their kids. They rob the responsibilities away from the children, thus increasing the risk of childhood anxiety disorders. The child who is being constantly protected will come to the conclusion that the world is unsafe and he/she will never take the chance to develop skills to become independent and deal with life. Parents' over protectiveness can dishearten the kid from healthy risk-taking experiences like enjoying playground activities with friends.

Children will sink in depression
Overprotection is the parents' continual authority over the kid. Over parenting style may amplify depression in children regardless of all the love, affection and utmost care given by the parents. Children are likely to attract symptoms of anxiety and depression as their overprotective parent provides too little scope for them to build up independent actions or freedom. Overprotective parents want to guard their children from hurt, unhappiness, bad experiences, rejection, failure and disappointments.

Children lose confidence
Parents never allow the kids to resolve peer conflicts and they constantly mediate to diffuse the situation. Children should learn to work out the differences with their friends or siblings on their own than rely on their parental moderators. Overprotective parents hate to see their kids struggle in tasks that they eventually take charge for them and as a result children lack confidence. Children can cultivate confidence and competence when they deal with some things on their own.

Low self esteem
Children of overprotective parents can suffer from poor self esteem. These parents don't allow their children to face challenges on their own capability. Strict parents always deny opportunity for their children to grow and evolve.

Squashing children's happiness
Overprotective parents make every effort to provide stress-free life for their children; however this frequently has the opposite effect. There is not much happiness in overprotective homes because parents never try to create a stress-free environment as they constantly crave for perfection in their children's lives.

Delayed growth
Most strict overprotecting parents prefer to do everything for their kids that they thwart the maturing process. Overprotection can make the child become unprepared for the real competitive world. Moreover, when the child gets into the real world, they are scared to handle it. It is the basic job of every parent to make their kids independent and industrious adults, however most overprotective parents don't do that even after the children have graduated or entered the job world.

Most overprotective parents should draw a line since it has certain damaging effect on their children's growth and maturity.