Overprotective care – care that is too much

Hyperprotection is a serious pedagogical problem of our time. Of course, to a greater extent it lies in the sphere of family relations. But teachers, as a rule, in one way or another come into contact in their work with this area and can provide real help to parents in matters of education. Let’s try to figure out what hyperprotective behavior is and how it can interfere with the teenager and his parents.

The current generation of teenagers is radically different from their parents. Think back to our school days: moms and dads worked, came home late, they barely had enough energy to find out if the lessons were ready. We led our own lives: walking with friends, going to clubs and on dates, doing homework without help, and preparing for tests.

Now a lot of things have changed. Not every parent will let a child go alone to the club, and the club can be at the other end of town. Parents want to give the child everything possible, and free time for many teenagers is less and less. Many mothers do not work, fully devoting themselves to the family.

And in this new reality is a new, previously little-known problem – hyper.

Hyper and its types
Upbringing in the family can be described with different characteristics: how many requirements are imposed on the child, how he is encouraged or punished, what he is allowed or prohibited. One of these characteristics is the level of care. It shows how much effort, attention and time parents devote to their child. Well-known experts in the field of family relations E. Eidemiller and V. Justikis call hyperopedic such style of upbringing in which extremely much time, forces and attention are given to children. In reality, this manifests itself in the fact that parents help their son or daughter too much.

Of course, any child needs help and care from mom and dad, and not every hint or reminder is a manifestation of hyper-petulation. Care becomes superfluous when parents do things for the child that he or she can learn to do on his or her own, or when the child feels weak and worthless as a result of that help. There is often a popular belief that exclusive parental attention is necessary for successful development. This is true if we are talking about infants up to one year of age. After this age, a child needs a balance of independence and parental care, and this balance changes with each year of life: more and more independence is needed.

Two types of hypertrophy
In psychology, there are two types of hyperopedic care. The first type is called indulgent. In this case, parents do not just do a lot of work with the child, they do it in a very gentle form, trying to limit the teenager as little as possible. The needs of the child become the most important, mom and dad are ready to sacrifice their interests for his sake. In addition, as a rule, in indulgent hyper-opposition, the child is not prohibited almost anything. In extreme variants of this type of hyper-peddling, the mother of an eighth-grader can call the class teacher of her son and ask him to check that her son ate, and the grandmother of a graduate refuses to go to the hospital to be able to see her granddaughter off to school.

In the second type of hyperopedic behavior – pre-minimizing – parents not only help the child too much, but also constantly supervise him. Mom or dad constantly command the teenager, demanding or forbidding something, as a rule, not being interested in the opinion of the child and not allowing him to show initiative. It is often accompanied by negative comments about the child. Here is a typical example. A mother and her thirteen-year-old daughter came to visit, and the hostess asks the girl, “What kind of salad should I put for you?” The mother interferes, not allowing her daughter to say a word: “That one, without mayonnaise, and she has already gained weight over the summer.

Why does hyper-parentalism arise?
When a child is very young, parents do almost everything for him: they feed him, dress him, play with him. Gradually, the baby’s abilities grow: he or she learns to walk, dress himself or herself, and can already play by himself or herself. Every year, it needs less and less help from adults, and the task of parents is to adapt to the new level of the child’s development, reducing the amount of tutelage. But adaptation is not always possible – and then parents continue to take care of the child just as actively, helping and prompting.

The reasons for this may be different. Some are trying to give their children what they did not get themselves: for example, a grandmother worked and almost did not get involved in the lives of her children, who grew up, became parents themselves and are now ready to spend time with their child around the clock. Events in the family life may also influence it: if at some point parents were very worried about their child (say, he or she was seriously ill or had an accident), if the child was hard (say, was born after a long treatment or IVF). Personal traits of parents also play a role: the boss mother, who is accustomed to supervising her subordinates, often has the same strict control over her children.