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Are You Overprotective?
by Dr. Benjamin Spock
reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P.
A child who is frightened by separation--or anything else--is very sensitive to whether her parents feel the same way about it. If they act hesitant or guilty every time they leave her side, if they hurry into her room at night, their anxiety reinforces her fear that there really is great danger in being apart from them.
Special care, not special worry
This may sound contradictory after I've said that a parent must reassure a frightened two-year-old by sitting by her bed as she goes to sleep and by not going away on anymore trips for a number of weeks. I mean that parents must give her this special care the way they give special consideration to a sick child. (See: Fears Around Age 2.)
But parents should try to be cheerful, confident, unafraid. They should be looking for signs of the child's readiness to give up her dependence, step by step, and encourage her and compliment her. This attitude of theirs is the most powerful factor in getting her over her fear.
Overprotective feelings occur mostly in very devoted, tenderhearted parents who are inclined to feel guilty when there is no realistic need for it. Sometimes the most important factor in overprotectiveness is the parent's inability to admit that she or he sometimes feels resentful or angry toward the child.
How anger can cause overprotectiveness
The parent and child who are afraid to recognize that there are naturally moments when they have mean feelings toward each other, when each wishes that something bad would happen to the other, have to imagine instead that all the dangers in the world come from somewhere else and grossly exaggerate them.
The child who is denying the meanness in her parents and in herself places it all in monsters or robbers or dogs or lightning, depending on her age and experience.
And she clings tightly to her parents for protection and to reassure herself that nothing is really happening to them. And a mother, for instance, may suppress her occasional mean thoughts and exaggerate the dangers of kidnappers or home accidents or inadequate diet. She has to stay close to the child to make sure the dangers don't strike, and her anxious expression convinces the child that her own fears are well-founded.
It helps to admit to feeling angry
Of course, the answer is not for parents to take out all their angriest feelings on the child or to let her be abusive toward them. But it certainly is helpful for parents to recognize the inevitability of their occasional mean feelings toward their child and to admit them to each other and to themselves.
It helps to clear the air if parents occasionally admit to a child how angry they felt--especially if the anger was not quite fair. It's good to say to a child once in a while, "I know how angry you feel toward me when I have to make rules like this for you."
Other reasons for overprotectiveness
There are many other reasons why parents become overprotective. When a child has had a serious illness or accident, parents often feel, ever after, that that child is especially vulnerable. Even if the illness has not been serious from the perspective of the doctors, the sense of vulnerability can last for a long time.
Often children face real dangers or difficulties, which call for a high level of protectiveness. For example, you might live in a dangerous neighborhood. If there is a lot of tension between parents, they may feel that this is a psychological danger against which they need to protect their children.
It can be very hard to know what is an appropriate level of protectiveness and what is overprotective. What is most important is that you are aware of this issue and try, whenever possible, to allow your child to deal with the challenges and problems that she is ready to deal with. Be careful that the need to protect her from certain specific dangers doesn't turn into a habit of overprotectiveness in general.
Using separation anxiety to control
A child clings to his mother because he has developed a genuine fear of being separated from her. But if he finds that she is so concerned about his fear that she will always do anything he wants for reassurance, he may begin to use this as coercion.
There are three-year-olds, for instance, who are anxious about being left at preschool and whose parents not only stay at school for days, but stay close to the children and do what they ask to reassure them.
After a while you begin to see that such children are exaggerating their uneasiness because they have learned to enjoy using it to boss their parents around. A parent can say, "I think you are grown up now and aren't afraid to be in school. You just like to make me do what you want. Tomorrow I won't need to stay here anymore."
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Adapted from Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care
Reviewed August 15, 2004
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