Are parents overprotective, is it really good or bad for their children?

The desire to protect children from all dangers is a natural instinct of parents. However, excessive protection can have a negative impact on child development. This parenting style is known as overprotective or helicopter parenting. Prohibiting children from playing in the park for fear of getting dirty and injured, refusing to teach children to ride bicycles for fear of falling children, and always wanting to monitor children's movements are some signs of excessive parenting.

Adverse impact on children due to overprotective care

Everything that is superfluous (over) certainly not good. Likewise with parenting, even though the intentions and intentions are good. Thus, overprotective care actually has more negative impacts than positive impacts. What are the bad effects that might arise if parents are too protective?

1. Being timid and not confident

Excessive parental fear causes children to have the same fear. In addition, the involvement of parents in everything that the child does makes the child live in the shadow of the parent. As a result, children are afraid to do things beyond parental supervision.

This does not only have an impact when the child is young. The parenting style you choose will carry over and shape the child's personality into adulthood. So, children who used to be raised by parents who always restrained and forbade them will grow up to be discouraged, afraid to take risks, and have no initiative.

2. Living with dependence and unable to solve the problem on his own

Lauren Feiden, a psychologist specializing in parent-child relationships from the United States (US) states in Psychcentral that overprotective parenting is a problem that can make children become addicted and unable to deal with the problem on their own.

This is because parents always interfere in every challenge faced by the child so that the decisions taken depend on the parents. Children will always rely on their parents in determining or getting things done.

3. It's easy to lie

Parents who are too restrictive can encourage children to lie. The problem is, parents must also be realistic and realize that children also need sufficient space to develop themselves. Without this space, children will look for loopholes and eventually lie so they can escape their parents' restraint.

In addition, if what the child does is not in accordance with the wishes of the parents, the child (consciously or unconsciously) chooses to lie as an effort to avoid punishment.

4. Stress and anxiety easily

A survey conducted by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Pennsylvania State University in the US, reported in The Mercury News shows that anxiety disorders or anxiety are the main mental health problems experienced by students. From a survey conducted of one hundred thousand students, 55 percent of students wanted counseling about symptoms of anxiety, 45 percent about depression, and 43 percent about stress.

It turns out that one of the contributing factors is parenting styles in the form of excessive supervision of children's academic and non-academic activities. Even if your child has not done anything wrong, being watched constantly can make your child anxious because he is afraid of making a mistake.

How do you balance boundaries and freedom for your child?

As explained above, basically protecting children is a good thing. However, overprotecting her could prove to have quite a number of ill effects. Therefore, there are several ways you can do to prevent the above impacts. Parents can set boundaries for their children as well as provide a balanced portion of freedom through the following tips.

Encourage older children to be more independent, for example to go to a shop or school on their own (but you have to secretly follow and watch them from behind).
Helps calm children down in negative situations.
Provide opportunities for children to face and solve their own problems.
Encourage children's potential and abilities by supporting children to do positive things that they like, even though it means they have to come home later because of taking classes.
Provides understanding that failure is something that must be faced and used as a lesson.
Building good communication, one of which is by listening to children's stories.
Be assertive when the child crosses predetermined boundaries, for example coming home late at night without notifying first.
Trust in children. You must learn to calm yourself down and have more confidence in your child's maturity so that he can develop properly.