Overparenting

This has become a huge problem in many schools. Parents by definition are concerned and caring about their child. But has it become too much? Perhaps it has really become the time of the helicopter parent! I was reading a most interesting article on over parenting and the responses of schools. The article examines two new books (How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims and The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey) written by two educators who are also parents. This makes it a good read for both parents and teachers.

As teachers, we often receive calls or message concerning our students. We all have heard about projects left behind, lunches coming, sports gear coming for an after school game, and a variety of others. But of late the reasons and extent of this seems to be increasing and it makes me wonder about the resilience of the generation!

Lets just examine a couple of cases that come to mind that occurred over the last 12 months. In Hong Kong we are very much a "society of helpers". This can be taken in many ways, but I refer to the fact that many children have a helper who effectively manages their life. Sitting in my office, I see a helper arrive with a lunch box for a 11 year old. Not really strange when you think about it, but when I chatted I found out that she was sent with "fresh" food and wanted to deposit it directly into the child's locker. This was not going to be an isolated occurrence, but likely to be a daily one! A chat ensued regarding locker security and leaving the lunch box at our guard's office for collection.

Perhaps the most interesting "coincidence" was that a group of parents decided to make a visit to the same city as their children during our experience program. The trip is designed to help the children develop some independence and resilience strategies. I was leading the trip and had advised the parents that it would be counterproductive to have them visit or contact the students during the trip, but I suspect that regular calls and conversations formed part of the student's "free time". One teacher who accompanied me on part of the trip, had an urgent call from a parent on the morning of their departure from Hong Kong asking her to transport "an emergency supply of sweets" for her child.

The reason I bring these up is that the opportunity for the students to develop all important skills. I think it also sends a message to the child about trust and the fact they are not able to make decisions. One of the goals of the trip was to provide a safe environment for the child to "make mistakes" and learn strategies that will assist the development of resilience. In essence you put up walls and say that when this problem occurs use this method only - the child is not able to use their curiousity and creativity in providing an alternative that maybe a better solution.

It almost seems as if the idea of making a mistake in abhorent. Taking a risk in terms of trying to solve a new challenge is surely one of the gifts we wish for our children? But by the same token, don't let me see you failing! The concept learning from our mistakes seems to be something we wish to keep from our children and I think we do them an injustice by doing so. I think the picture says it all - failure is a state of mind for teh fixed mindset. But for the growth mindset, failure is a chance ot learn. I think if you google the lives of many of the greats of the past (in whatever field) you will find that they had the growth mindset. They tries and failed, but they kept on trying!

I wonder about:

• the long term effects of overparenting?
• how overparenting affects the resilience of a child?
• whether we are hindering or developing resilience skills in our children by overparenting?