Overprotecting Children: Why it Does More Harm Than Good Every parent wants to protect their child from getting hurt, whether it’s scraping a knee or losing their best friend. As parents, it’s your job to watch your child grow, learn and make mistakes. Children must make their own mistakes in order to learn from them; if they don’t do this, they won’t be able to tell right from wrong when they become adults and take on the world without the guidance of their parents. Protecting your child is good, but some parents may be a bit overprotective and shelter their child a little too much. Is it possible that overprotecting children is doing more harm than good? Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm says that children today are requiring more protection than children in prior generations. If you think about it, today’s parents …show more content…
According to Amanda Morin, one way to ensure that you don’t overprotect your child is to not fear first. Whether it’s your child taking his or her first steps or going on his or her first date, they’re always going to be trying new things, so you might as well get used to this early instead of holding your child back because of your own fears. Another one that many parents do is set their own rules or guidelines to ensure that they don’t do everything for their child, but that their child does certain things on their own. Another huge way to avoid over-sheltering your child is to simply let your child make their own mistakes. It may be hard for you to watch them make mistakes, but how else are they going to learn? Everybody makes mistakes, but he important thing is that we learn from them. Instead of keeping your child from trying new things where they could fail or make mistakes, take a step back and let them do it. This will help your child become stronger and more independent, allowing them to learn necessary life skills
Parents do not want to disappoint their children, so instead of saying “no” they say “of course honey”. These children grow up unaware of the concept that they can and will be denied something in their future. When the time comes they don’t know how to take it because they lived their whole life getting everything they wanted. Children also grow up without the understanding of how to properly process pain and discomfort. Gottlieb interviewed a teacher and she said that if a child fell on the playground, adults had to rush over to aid the child before he or she had enough time to process what happened. The teacher did not point this out because she thought that parents should ignore their children, instead they should let their children process what happened and how to deal with it independently. When parents make a huge scene, their children think something serious has happened and panic. Gottlieb believes parents should give their children room to deal with a situation without intervening until it is
Coben states, “…overprotective parents fight their kids’ battles on the playground, berate coaches about playing time and fill out college applications…” (19). This is a weak argument because it inadvertently suggests that overprotectiveness
Tina Fey says “Guide her and protect her … at any age” (239), when she is discussing a wish that she has for her daughter. Yes, most mothers want their daughters to be safe at all times, but they have to trust that the little girl has grown up into a woman who knows how to stay safe on her own. Once a child reaches adulthood, it is only in her best interest that the parent should not hold her back from doing what she wants, as long as her intentions are good. If a mom tries to hold a daughter back, the mom will be the reason that she did not reach her full potential of life. For example, if a daughter’s passion is rock climbing, very possible, but her mother is too scared to let her daughter adventure out of the safe zone her daughter will never truly know if she would have been good or not. Once a woman is able to make intelligent choices about life, she should no longer rely on her mother to make decisions for her, but to only rely on her for advice. When a woman begins to make her own choices, which will be the start of her making her own path to
Safeguarding is a term which is broader than ‘child protection’ and relates to the action taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility. Safeguarding is defined in Working together to safeguard children 2013 as:
Moreover, I think taking risks in the lives has a lot of benefits for development or education. We need to give responsibility to our child because they are taking risk and assuming responsibility which often goes hand in hand for example “giving a child her first pocket knife at, say age 9 not only gives her the advantage of experiencing a little risk play with a sharp object. It signals that she’s responsible for keeping herself and others safer”. Michael Ungal 28.
When Amy Chua, a professor at Yale, wrote her personal memoir in 2011 called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, controversy arose regarding the topic of an extreme parenting type called a “Tiger Mom” (Tiger Mom). When The Wall Street Journal posted an excerpt from Chua’s book on their website, it received over 7,000 comments both positive and negative including death threats (Extreme Parenting). In her book, Chua describes is forcing her 7-year old daughter to stay up all night without bathroom or drink breaks until she was able to play a certain piano piece (Extreme Parenting). Her daughter rebels, drops violin, and takes up tennis (Luscombe). Extreme parents exert great pressure on their child to meet expectations, and if they are not met, the child may be punished (Hatter). The MacMillan Dictionary defines a tiger mom as “a very strict mother who makes her children work particularly hard and restricts their free time so they continually achieve the highest grades,” (Tiger Mother).
In modern Western countries, adults take the responsibility of managing children’ behaviours, activities and the environment as protecting children from significant injuries. Also, parents are likely to pay more attention to protect their children from external injuries such as traffic accidents, stranger’s dangerous, personal accidents and other factors (Wyver et al., 2010, p.264). Under these kinds of protections, children lose many opportunities for free play and lead to the increase of childhood obesity as well as inactivity health issues (Wyver et al., 2010, p. 263). Beside the protection from parents, the features in the childhood environment are less risky for children to play with. For example, some Western countries such as the United Kingdom uses the rubber playground to reduce the rates of children injuries (Wyver et al., 2010, p. 265). The surplus safety from both parents and environment minimises children’s chances and experiences of encountering risks. In some way, the surplus safety infringes children’s right of play and silences their voices on their lives. Wyver et al. (2010, p. 263) argue that the surplus safety is negative to children from both legitimate anger and child development anger. Surplus safety may not substantially build the child-friendly
One must teach their kids about the dangers of strangers and what to look for and how to respond if a stranger approaches them. Children must be able to become individuals as children and not be overprotected because it can shield them from learning and adapting to the real world. Overprotecting a child can not only hinder their social skills, but could also affect them mentally. Rosin states that “the real cultural shift has to come from parents. There is a big difference between avoiding major hazards and making every decision with the primary goal of optimizing child safety (or enrichment, or happiness). We can no more create the perfect environment for our children than we can create perfect children. To believe otherwise is a delusion, and a harmful one; remind yourself of that every time the panic rises” (Rosin 2014). Our society is a dangerous one in which precautions must be put into place especially to keep the children safe. Rosin is trying to explain to readers that by overprotecting your children, it stops them from figuring out things they didn’t know about. The overall idea about adventure and doing things by yourself is to learn and adapt. If a child is not able to experience certain activities with little to no supervision, then it will leave them at risk down the road. Children’s
protection and control parents have over their children. A huge problem that we face in today’s
Child abuse refers to lack of care or any type of emotional, physical or sexual mistreatment that results in emotional damage or physical injury to a child or a youth. In most countries, children are considered to be anyone below 18 years of age. Child abuse can occur directly by harming a child or indirectly by failing to prevent the child from any form of harm or injury. Child abuse can occur either in the family set up, in the community set up or in an institution such as a school. Also, children can be abused by adults or by other children or by people who know them or people who are complete strangers to them.
According to me every parent wants the best for his or her child. One of the most effective ways to protect your child is to make sure
(Kakar 6) This is an excellent point. If parents do not care for their children and show them the ways of life, how could they expect them to know any better, and more importantly, how could they expect them to pass on the knowledge to their own children? Parents, more than anyone, hold the key to shaping the ideals and minds of their children… and until society gets that key fixed, the problems of child abuse will always remains.
Many individuals are taking the process of process of parental licensing into their own hands, despite their contributions being made up in mind only, however, it is thought that counts. One respective person believes that a restriction on having children should begin at the earliest stage of one’s life: birth. As soon as a child is born, doctors should “go in and turn off their spickets” (McRedmond). In the later stages of life, this would prevent several cases of teen pregnancies, seeing as though it would be an impossibility for women to get pregnant. Then, when a women eventually becomes ready enough to think about having children, they should go through a testing process, perhaps similar to Sherman’s ideas of interviews, writing, and demonstrations of capability. If they pass, they “get their spickets turned
Social work has many areas of study. The area of study this paper is going to focus on is child welfare. Child welfare is essential in empowering children and families by trying to keep them together in a safe and healthy environment. The writer feels that child welfare can be helpful when it comes to children’s well-being even though child welfare has been questioned by many. In this paper the writer will discuss the historical background on child welfare, and its relevance to social welfare. Adoption, foster care, abuse and neglect will be discussed in this paper as they make up child welfare. The current perspective of child welfare that was collected from the sources will be touched on as well as the social and political responses to this
Parenthood is a huge factor in any child’s life, If you were to ask me, a parent decides who we are without either the child or the adult knowing it. The parent’s role also requires discipline, and this is where things get rough in parenting, as so I’ve been told. When the child is disciplined enough and in the right way, they are willing to pass this wisdom on to their children in the future. But when a child is discipl...