How To Avoid Overprotection?

Overprotection is not something parents tend to avoid. Rather, it exists because it occurs naturally and often unconsciously. Most parents tend to overprotect their children in some way. Although something that might be considered harmless is sometimes overdone, and can lead to unwanted consequences for children.

The effort of parents to keep their children in care is greatly appreciated, children deserve and need it. Besides, it’s their responsibility. However, there comes a time when the little ones must become independent, be responsible, aware and able to solve most of their problems.

Teaching children to take care of themselves is the best gift we can give, so overprotection is something we should avoid. While we know that our help is very valuable in children’s development, we must be aware that we are not always in a position to help and that is why it is important that they are able to cope without our help.

Overprotection can be avoided

The first step to avoid overindulgence in protecting our child is to treat him as a capable being who deserves to learn. Being aware that it is our duty to teach him to develop in life can improve the tasks that our role entails. If this is also difficult, we must know that we can closely accompany him throughout the process and be able to fill ourselves with pride when we see how he becomes independent.

Leaving certain obligations in the hands of children is an important step for them to learn basic issues of coexistence and livelihood, in addition to allowing us to observe their abilities. Once we are sure that there are many things that little ones can do on their own and without risks, little by little our fears will start to disappear and, consequently, so will overprotection.

Overprotecting children can have consequences on their behavior and development. They tend to become insecure people with little ability to take on responsibilities in the future. Likewise, it is also possible that they develop a low tolerance for criticism, do not accept their mistakes and end up blaming others for their mistakes.

In any case, if you feel that you are part of the overprotective parenting group or want to prevent this from happening, these recommendations can be helpful in improving this situation:

• Teach them the value of things. Sometimes parents believe that children will grow up happy if they give everything they ask for, and in fact it’s a common mistake. Overfilling your desires is a common way of pampering them. This prevents children from learning the value of the things they receive because they don’t have to make any effort to earn them.

• Help him deal with frustration. It is common for overprotected children to have problems accepting their mistakes and low tolerance when they do not receive what they ask for. If you have already overprotected your child, you will have to start this task from scratch. It may not all go well in the beginning, so it’s important that they know how to deal with the feeling caused by failure since childhood, so they won’t have to “fix” later, which will be much more difficult.

• Give them the opportunity to learn for themselves. Children are able to succeed on their own in many ways. We may think that they are fragile, or not that they will know how to act in a given situation, but if we have set a good example they will certainly take it for granted. Remember that some problems that come up can be solved by themselves, so give them the opportunity to solve them.

• Let them be responsible for their actions. No matter how well-behaved the children are, they will always do something or make some kind of mistake. This can be used to teach that our actions have consequences. Avoid solving their problems when they are directly responsible for them to understand that in the future they will not have someone to solve everything.
• Do the activities with them to learn and you can see how they are able to develop on their own . Doing useful manual activities are important for developing imagination and other skills.
• Don’t be afraid to let them discover the world. Stay in a follow-up position, watching your steps without the need to intervene every moment.