Parenting with Purpose
WARNING overparenting ! noun Being so worried about the safety or success of your children that you do too many things for them and prevent them from being independent. *As defined by macmillandictionary.com
How to Resist Overparenting and Set Kids Up for Success All parents dream of seeing their children grow up to be successful and happy. In today’s competitive, high-tech world, parents feel more pressure than ever to help kids make that happen. Is it any wonder that the temptation to control every aspect of a child’s life is also on the rise? Despite good intentions, helping kids too much leads to less long-term success and a host of other problems. They enter adulthood ill-prepared and without necessary life skills to overcome challenges on their own. Overcontrolling parents weaken the bond that can grow with well-differentiated adult children. Protecting that bond matters because loving relationships are the most significant indicator of future success and happiness, according to the longest running study on human happiness – the 79-year Harvard Grant Study. This adds up to one crucial parenting lesson: to set kids up for real success, loving parents must resist the urge to overcontrol and overparent.
A Healthier Way to Parent Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and author of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success cautions parents against getting it backward. “The point,” she says, “is to prepare the kid for the road, instead of preparing the road for the kid.” This change of perspective is good news for exhausted parents frantically trying to manage every detail in a child’s life. Here’s how to resist overparenting and give your children more of what they need to succeed. cont. on p. 22
20 • SanDiegofamily.com • October 2019
Jody Lee Cates