Protection and overprotection should not be confused. Our protection is vital for our children who, when they are young, need us for almost everything.
All animals instinctively care for their children and protect them for a while, when they can take care of themselves, begin their journey around the world and move away from their parents.
- In the case of humans.
- This protection lasts longer and more often.
- What was originally used to care for and protect children becomes really detrimental to their mental health.
- So let’s talk about overprotection.
We could say that overprotecting a child is going beyond protecting and meeting their basic needs and care, it means thinking about the child, making decisions for him and solving all his problems, is living for the child, but he is a person who needs to develop his skills to live in this world.
It’s these parents who keep telling their kids every day, “Don’t do this, can you hurt yourself?,?You’re not going to sleep in your friend’s house, because I don’t know this family?”Aren’t you going on this tour because animals can be dangerous?and many others don’t.
On the other hand, these parents are very permissive as they are generally unable to establish clear limits and rules that children can understand and internalize, moreover, if children break these evasive rules, they do not establish specific consequences for fear of harming their children. , when in fact the consequences are used to educate.
They don’t demand that children have obligations or responsibilities by saying they “don’t want to do it,” “they don’t know how to do it,” “the poor guy’s too small. “
These are the dysfunctional beliefs of overprotective parents. They believe that by overprotecting their children, they take care of their self-esteem, their mental health, that they do not create problems or frustrations and they will be happy children because “they will not miss anything. “
If we spend our entire lives warning our children of all dangers, no matter how unlikely or insignificant, we will create fearful people who will live in fear of anything that might happen.
Also, if you’ve never taught them how to deal with and solve their problems for themselves, they won’t be able to do it as adults and can even become dependent on someone to help them in difficult situations.
As we said earlier, if you don’t teach them to make their own decisions, manage their own life, or solve their problems, it will always depend on someone because they don’t know how to do it on their own.
This creates self-esteem problems because the person realizes that they can’t solve problems alone, doesn’t take the lead in any situation and will feel “useless,” because they always need someone by their side.
Because his parents have always given him everything to avoid suffering and frustration, they cannot tolerate frustrations and have not learned that things in life don’t always go the way we want them to.
It may be that under the protection of the family, the child believes that he has everything and that his parents are a kind of servants who are there when they need it.
But sooner or later, life in society will show you that this is not the case and that there are things that will hurt you and cause you frustration, most likely you react with anger, demands and even aggression to frustrations, which can lead you to difficulties in social relationships and in life in general.
If we always anticipate to the child what will happen or not, if we don’t let him get it wrong to learn, if we do everything for him, obviously we override his ability to learn.
If before the child wants to urinate we take him to the bathroom, he will not learn to identify his physiological signs by himself when he needs to go to the bathroom.
If we don’t let you go, you’ll never know what to do or what not to do. People learn from the positive and negative consequences and experiences. Therefore, it is indisputable that the child needs to experience the world to learn to face it. better with the future.
We can unlearn everything we learn, and that’s very positive, if you were an overprotected child it’s your responsibility to re-edit and grow as a person.
And you, who are a parent and identify with this article, still have time to change your mind and help your child become an independent and happy person. Do not overprotect it; it’s the best gift you can give him.