Identifying Over-Involvement and Becoming More Appropriately Involved in Your Child's Life

Parents who are appropriately involved in their children's life support their achievement and their mental and emotional health and model successful social interactions. Unfortunately, some parents are so exhausted from work and household management that while they are present in their children’s lives, they are seen by their children as constantly distracted and, therefore, not genuinely involved. Slowing down is good for everyone. It is during quiet, unstructured, and unpressured time that true connections between parents and their children are forged. (Levine, 2006)

While it is good to be involved with your children, there is such a thing as over-involvement. The classic example of this is the “helicopter parent” who hovers over her children not allowing them to live their lives without constant parental interference. Examples of the overly-involved parent include the following:

• refusing to leave after the preschool teacher has strongly suggested that it is in the best interest of the child for the parent to leave for the day;

• writing a note every day to your child’s kindergarten teacher telling her what your child has been doing since school let out the previous day;

• chaperoning every school field trip for your elementary-school-age child;

• waking a 12-year-old every day for school instead of requiring him to use an alarm clock;

• sitting with your tween while he does his homework and offering advice/commentary;

• knowing the dates of every test and the due dates for every paper that your teen has been assigned; and,

• pressuring your teen to apply to elite colleges to which he has no interest in going.

Some parents see their teen seen primarily as a reflection of themselves rather than as a valuable individual in his own right. Especially in the teen years, parents can be over-involved in some areas and under-involved in others. For example, they can hound their teen about his grades but ignore his need for social support, approval, and loving kindness. Also, anxiety over academic achievement is often at the top of the list of parents’ worries. Because of this, they can at times be more concerned with how their teen does and less with who their teen is. This does the teen a huge disservice.

In addition, parents who are excessively concerned with their teen’s academic achievement can put so much pressure on him that he can develop an unhealthy perfectionism. Unhealthy perfectionism is that which leads to a variety of problems including sleep disruption, anxiety, and psychosomatic complaints as well as to depression and even suicide. In addition, because adolescents are often highly self-critical, parents’ criticism can lead to short-term achievement gains but at the cost of significant long-term damage to the teen’s self-esteem. It is not the high expectations, per se, that cause the problem, it is when love is seen as conditional on achievement that teens suffer. (Levine, 2006)

It is very important to note here that while children of parents who are very bright, extremely driven, and highly successful in their fields are likely to be successful, they are statistically likely to be less successful than their parents. (Levine, 2006) This is not a reflection on either the parent or the child, it is merely an artifact of statistics and should not be “blamed” on the teen/young adult or his parents. The Prudent Parent teaches and models what it looks like to work hard and to care about doing a good job, and she is accepting of whatever it is that the child accomplishes. Furthermore, she lets him know that she recognizes and genuinely appreciates his efforts. Anything less can lead to fractures in the parent/child relationship.