Over protective parenting, (which can also be coined as helicopter parenting) is becoming more common in today’s world. It is only natural that parents of today feel the need to keep their children safe from harm. However, there is a silver lining between being a protective parent and an over protective parent and how it can have its effects on the child.
Overprotective parents become overwhelmed with the idea of keeping their child safe. They become fearful about the potential dangers …show more content…
They become heavily dependent on their parents. Children then don’t have the confidence to persevere when faced with challenges as they fear the embarrassment of failure and loose the motivation (Schiffrinl, 2014). Thus, the child becomes resistant to taking risks, being creative, experimenting and exploring, leading the child to feel anxious in their environment. Thereby children consequently can’t cope well in stressful situations, thus greatly impacts the child’s social-emotional development Social-Emotional development plays an importance in the child’s development as it enables them to be self-aware of their thoughts, feeling and how to deal with stress. Overprotective parents can’t seem to see the importance of building social-emotional intelligence. Instead they shield their child from potential harm in contrast to guiding them how to overcome and solve …show more content…
Guiding the children and scaffolding the child’s social-emotional development and independence will build resilient and competent individuals, as Linda McSweeny writes “Rather than over-protecting, parents need to instil a bit of grit in their children” (The age, 2013).
References:
Belonging, Being and Becoming, The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia, (2009), 1st ed. [ebook] Australia. Available at: https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/belonging_being_and_becoming_the_early_years_learning_framework_for_australia.pdf [Accessed 20 May 2015].
Gere et al., 2012, Overprotective parenting and child anxiety: The role of co-occurring child behavior problems. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 26(6), pp.642–649
Laurin, J. et al., 2015, Early Forms of Controlling Parenting and the Development of Childhood Anxiety. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(11), pp.3279–3292
McSweeny, L, 2013, Their fragile future (Pulse), The Age (Melbourne, Australia), p.5. Naglieri, J.A., LeBuffe, P.A. and Shapiro, V.B., 2013. Assessment of social-emotional competencies related to resilience. In Handbook of resilience in children (pp. 261-272). Springer