My daughter was at the district science fair when a hubbub erupted at a neighboring student’s project. A dad was arguing with one of the judges about her critique of the entry. It became pretty clear that Dad was the one who’d done the project – especially when in his outrage he started mixing pronouns, shouting, “When I attached these wires …,” instead of, “When he attached … .”
This, my friends, is overparenting.
Overparenting, aka helicopter parenting or black hawk parenting, first came into the public consciousness in the late ’80s/early ’90s and is, basically, getting way too involved in your child’s life.
Overparenting is marching into a high school counselor’s office to demand a switch to Spanish class (“more practical”) instead of French, for which the child actually showed passion. Overparenting is forcing parent-child sit-down meetings with another family to hash out the kids’ friendship problems – when said “kids” are in high school. Overparenting is driving to school twice in one day because your eighth-grader forgot her absence note, then later because she wanted water – even though water is amply available at school. (That last one was me, if you must know.)
I bring it up not so we can judge other people’s parenting – we can do that on our own time – but so we recognize it in ourselves. Because, as the evidence rolls in, it’s becoming clear that overparenting isn’t the way to go.
The helicopter must land
“The detrimental effects of overparenting include narcissism, entitlement, low self-efficacy and poor coping skills in young adults because they’re used to other people doing things for them,” said University of Arizona’s Dr. Chris Segrin, who studies the phenomenon. It’s also associated with lower family satisfaction and lower-quality parent-child communication. And the effects of overparenting, he said, continue to show up later in life in the form of higher levels of anxiety, depression and substance abuse.
And as for the benefits? “We’re not seeing a whole lot,” he said. “The best-case scenario are studies showing no difference between overparenting and not, but those findings are pretty rare.”
How does a basically kind and good impulse turn into something so detrimental?
“Often, a parent is overinvolved, over-serves the child as an act of love: ‘Let me take care of you.’ said Leah Macpherson, a certified Positive Discipline Parent Educator in Long Beach. “But sometimes the unwritten message the child receives is, ‘You’re not good enough, you’re going to blow it, so let me handle it,’ which can be profoundly discouraging. We output kids who are unable to manage relationships, processes, workloads independently, and are terrified of making mistakes. They’re literally stuck, lacking in confidence and tethered to their parents at a time of life they should be becoming their own person.”
Resist the urge to hover
So how do you know when you’re crossing the line?
“The hallmark of overparenting is not being able to resist the urge to step in and solve problems for your child as they come up, particularly problems that your child is able to solve on their own,” said Dr. Aaron Montgomery, psychologist at the Child Guidance Center in Santa Ana.
Segrin sees this happening in his own classroom when parents contact him to haggle over a student’s grades. “Sometimes I get calls from students later apologizing and saying, ‘I never dreamed they were going to call you,’” he said.
Practice loving neglect
The ideal, I suppose, is knowing when to step in and when to practice some benign neglect. If your kid can do it or can learn to do it (and remember as they get older, this encompasses practically everything), let them.
“The No. 1 tip is: Back off,” Segrin said. “A lot overparenting is a failure to adjust to the level of parenting as the child grows. Start letting them take on more and step back as children get older.
“The second tip is: Do a very careful self-examination and delve deep into why you might be doing this. Many people are chasing after their own demons. They are living their dreams through their children and don’t want their kids to experience the same disappointments they did.”
In my case, I don’t think I am forcing my kids to live my dreams, mainly because I was kind of a lazy child and had few dreams beyond scoring a few extra Oreos, but I still have plenty of work to do on the “back off” tip.
Rising from the flames
I realized how remiss I was on this count when I discovered that my daughters didn’t know how to light a match. At ages 13 and 15! So the other day, I let the 13-year-old try lighting a candle and they both cringed in fear as the match flamed. It was kind of pitiful.
When I was a kid, lighting the dinner candles was a rotating chore (the coveted one, being clearly superior to table setting.) I got burned – a lot – due to various ill-advised experiments involving fire, hot candle wax and my skin. But I learned how to work safely with fire and matches, a skill that served me well in my almost-20-year smoking habit. Which is not the point here. The point is, as Segrin puts it, “Children need opportunities to fail; that’s how they learn.”
So when my 15-year-old wanted to create a fall ambience via her Dollar Store cinnamon candle, I insisted she light it herself. She was so terrified (I know! I blame myself.) that we negotiated down to her just taking the already lit match from me and lighting the wick. Two matches later, the candle was lit, but she looked stricken.
“Hey, you didn’t burn yourself!” I said cheerfully. “No, but I burned my SOUL,” she answered. She meant it as she said it, but once it actually came out of her mouth so dramatic and dark, we all laughed.
I wish I had figured all this out earlier and raised scrappier kids who could light a match without the whole family being on high alert. For now, I’m happy with a little less overparenting, a lighted Dollar Store candle and the shared appreciation of a well-played comeback.
