Over Care and Protection of Parents and Family Members May Result in Behavioural Issues in Children

Overprotective parenting is often done with the purest of intentions. Parents want to make sure that their children are protected from harm in order to grow into capable, resilient and self-confident adults.

Unfortunately, though, quite the opposite effects are created in children of overprotective parents and family members that follow them well into adulthood. In fact, over care in parenting does more harm than good.

You would always think that your child is the most special child, however, for others, he/she is just another child. By making him/her feel entitled, parents unknowingly lead them to bad behaviour which may cause social isolation. You protect your child from each and every imaginable danger out there. This can make your child fearful and afraid of initiating anything, from making new friends to trying new activities.

What Is Overprotective Parenting?

As the word suggests, there is an immediate negative undertone by the prefix “over”. It implies that care and protectiveness is exaggerated, and anything that is overdone can have adverse effects.

Overprotective parents also called as helicopter parents want to always ensure that their children are not physically or emotionally hurt. They protection need for their children wants them to hide the children from harm, pain, unhappiness, negative experiences, rejection, failure and disappointments.

They attempt to do this by:

• providing constant surveillance and restrictions
• controlling their child’s environment and actions as well as who they choose to spend their time with
• being over-involved in their child’s daily life and decisions
• inspire safety and dependence over autonomy and exploration
• emphasizing that they always know what is best for their child

Their purpose is to protect them from anything that could risk their well-being.

So they build a golden cage around their children to keep them safe from harm, but it is a cage nonetheless. As a result, later on in adulthood, these children may not be capable of spreading their own wings and fly.

What can be some implications of overprotective parenting for adult children?

1. Low Self-Esteem and Self-Worth

It would sound quite conflicting, and surely the exact opposite of the intentions of these parents. And yet it is true that adult children from over caring households have low self-esteem and self-worth. These children may lack the resilience and confidence that are essential qualities to face the world.

By showering their child with attention and love or otherwise being strict to keep them safe from harm, these parents aspire to show their children just how precious and valuable they are that is why overprotective parenting is prone to the “special little snowflake” phenomenon that characterizes the generation of millennials. That’s how these children often develop an ungrounded sense of entitlement.

2. Prone to Anxiety and Depression

Overprotective parenting leads to oversensitive adults. This kind of parenting has a major role in the development, maintenance and aggravation of children’s anxiety and is also linked with a higher occurrence of anxiety and depression in adult life. The underlying message that overprotection transfers to children is that they are not really capable, competent or good enough in order to manage life by themselves.

Why it makes perfect sense is because overprotective parenting stems from anxiety, to begin with. The parent is well aware that the world is not a perfect place and hence worries excessively that their child can be easily hurt physically or emotionally. Thus they strive to protect them. All this fear and anxiety gets projected and transmitted onto the child. Then the child internalizes it and learns to be anxious and fearful of anything new and unknown out of their comfort zone.

Overprotective parents want children to avoid fearful situations, instead of confronting them without realizing that it is a definite way to overcome fears and build self-esteem. Even worse, they might eagerly step in to assist their children in any situation that they think children need help with but this results in the child being fearful to deal with situations by themselves, and expecting that someone will always come to their rescue.

3. Shame and Doubt

When a child grows up shielded and protected with most decisions being made by parents, the young adult grows up with a deep sense of doubt and shame of anything they do. They may be overly sensitive and hyper-vigilant to criticism and disapproval, second-guessing themselves most of the times.

4. Approval-seeking and People-pleasing Tendencies

It is logical that, when a child grows up constantly scrutinized for his / her behaviour, they learn that in order to be happy, they need to have the approval of others which starts from parents.

Overprotective parents love dependency more than independence which can create insecure adults. They always strive to ensure that they are liked and validated by others while making their decisions. They put themselves second and invest more in pleasing others. It can have quite devastating effects on interpersonal relationships.

It is quite likely that they may often be unhappy and unsatisfied in relationships, because they do not dare to stand up for themselves, out of fear of abandonment, rejection or disapproval.

5. Risk-Taking Behaviours

Children of overprotective parents live under pressure all the time, so it can result in they being either excessively fearful, timid, reserved and aversive of risks as adults or a wild rebellious phase may occur at some point in their lives while in teenage once they are truly away from the “nest”.

This period may usually be intense and full of impulsive high-risk behaviours known as “excessive sensation-seeking”. It can be extreme sports, alcohol and drug abuse, wild partying, promiscuous sexual behaviours simply anything to compensate for the lack of freedom they experienced earlier on.

6. Perfectionism

Overprotective parents often display inclination towards narcissistic tendencies with their children. They try to reinforce that everything has to be perfect at all times, or else punishment or affection withdrawal may follow. Their approval and gratification becomes conditional. It becomes dependent on the actions of the child implying that they have to be perfect and excel everywhere in order to be accepted and loved by their parents.

Later on, this perfectionism is mirrored by children as well and they may have difficulty letting go of control because they didn’t have any sense of control while growing up. Therefore perfectionism may become the style of living to regain the sense of control over their lives.

7. Insecure Attachment Style in Relationships

Overprotective parenting impacts the attachment style of the children. Our attachment style is the way we learn to emotionally connect and form bonds with our parents in childhood. It can also be influenced by positive or negative experiences with relationships.

Parents that reinforce a secure attachment style to their children provide a strong and secure base to them from where they can freely explore. These parents encourage Independence and guarantee emotional support when the child needs comfort and safety while dealing with threat.

Overprotectiveness does not correlate to the above definition of secure attachment hence leads to insecure attachment. Most of the times it is associated with anxious and ambivalent attachment in children, where the child is not encouraged to be explorative of the outside world and relates to his/her parents in a clingy and anxious way.

This converts into a dismissive attachment style in young adults where they avoid relationships or feel uncomfortable if a romantic relationship gets too intimate. Emotional closeness is undesired because it unconsciously triggers caged memories from the past.

In conclusion…

Overprotective parenting undoubtedly affects children devastatingly on multiple levels: their emotional growth, the development of a healthy identity and Sense of Self, self-esteem, style of social interactions and relationships, and more.

Hence remember that it’s okay to let your children fall sometimes once they have given their 100% efforts, support them by not holding them to stop the fall but by letting them know the right way to deal with the after-effects of fall.

Happy Parenting to you all!!!

Author Details

Author Name – Deepti Arora

Occupation – Owner and DMIT Expert at Disha Deepan.

Website Link – https://dishadeepan.com/

Email – deepti@dishadeepan.com

About the Author – Deepti Arora is a very experienced DMIT expert at Disha Deepan. She provides expert counselling for career, parenting, academics, corporates, partner compatibility, stress management, and lifestyle management based upon the biometric analysis of an individual.