How would you know if your child is capable or competent? And more than that how would they themselves know if they CAN or can NOT make it? Definitely by trying. Yes off course! But most importantly trying by themselves on their own. Not with you holding their hands and assisting them. And more than assistance, being at their service even if they don’t need one.
Certainly our intentions are to help our kids, but lesser we might know that in actual this over functioning is hurting our kids more than helping them. We are unintentionally teaching them to be helpless.
What is learned helplessness in children?
Learned helplessness is a phenomenon where the children learn to believe that they have no control over their circumstances. This results in lack of motivation, difficulty in making decisions, low self-confidence and inability to solve simple problem on their own. Such a child would always show lack of interest in challenging activities and would get overwhelmed by stressful situations. They would always need someone to take care of them and who would always look for an easy way out.
Are we helping or hurting our kids?
Overparenting is being too involved in your child’s life instead of allowing them to explore their environment and learn through experience. What parent does not want the best for their child? Who doesn’t want to protect their kids? But this overinvolvement leads to strong dependency issue as the child grow up. Such overindulgence can take up many forms:
Helicopter Parenting
Helicopter parenting as the name suggests is hovering over your kids all the time. Such parents pay close attention to their kids activities and micromanage them. And by doing so they not only protect them from setbacks but even help them to succeed. They are overprotective and worry excessively for their kids. And constantly intervene in their kid’s tasks to make it smoother for them.
In fact this micromanagement even usher them to make decisions for their kids. From choosing subjects to choosing friends; parent take control of every aspect of their kid’s life. Their need to shield their kids from disappointments doesn’t let their kids make mistakes and eventually learn from them. While helicopter parents not only rob their kids of essential survival skills but they also affect their social life. Since they also manage their children’s friendship and social interactions. Hence the child grows up with undeveloped social skills.
Infantilization
Infantilizing kids means ‘babying‘ them and doing the tasks for them which they are developmentally capable of doing. For example, hand feeding a seven year old or ironing clothes for a teenager. By infantilizing, they basically emphasize on incompetence of their kids in doing independent activities. Thus making the child feel less confident in their abilities to do things on their own without parental help. And this ultimately leads to child being anxious and insecure of making their own decisions and unable to function in their own world.
Perfectionism
We also teach helplessness to our kids by setting unrealistic high standards for them. And when kids are not able to meet those standards despite of giving it all; they feel helpless. This constant stress of performing, ultimately results in demotivation; as the child starts to feel that there is no point in trying. Standard of perfection is impossible to meet as perfection doesn’t exists. Thus our kids can never reach that goal and end up doubting themselves. For them giving up seems doable and they eventually fall in the trap of learned helplessness.
Celebrating Success
Celebrating success is not a good idea. Parents should rather appreciate it. ‘Well done‘, ‘Good job!‘, ‘You did it!‘ should be the ideal response to kids. But many a times parents glorify achievements by singing it to all people known to them. Such a celebration is the enemy of resilience. This behaviour would teach kids to rely on external validation. Also it discourage them from taking up challenges and learn from failure. For they would always look for undue praise for their work regardless of their efforts. Kids must learn to accept success as well as failures in moderation.
Over Nurturing
There are many ways parents over nurture their kids. One is to over function by doing all the chores for them which children are very much capable of doing themselves. This way the child becomes over dependant on parents and is not able to function independently. Which is an essential survival skill for an adult when they are not guided by their parents.
Another form of over nurturing is over protection. Fixing things for them, running to help or shielding them from any form of stress, frustration or setbacks. Over nurturing doesn’t let kids develop problem solving and critical thinking skills. Shielding them from any kind of emotional or physical stress results into a emotionally underdeveloped child. And when life throws stones at them, they seek to be shielded by their caregivers.
Break the cycle of overparenting
Stop the urge to fix
By fixing things for your child you are basically teaching them to avoid accountability. Independence doesn’t come easy. Path to self reliance is swarmed with struggles and failures. Encourage independence by giving them age appropriate opportunities to make decisions and take responsibility. Let them have their own learnings and come out with their own ideas to get thing done. Let them explore their capabilities and make way to learn something new everyday.
Praise the effort not the outcome
By praising kids for their efforts, we are emphasising on hard work over natural ability. Yes, we must applaud them for good grades, but we must not forget to highlight how proud we were when they were staying up late to finish their assignments. And how much we appreciate all the sacrifice they made in their screen time to focus on studies. The idea is to support your child in learning strategies that lead to success. They learn the importance of hard work over taking shortcuts. By praising efforts we are not only promoting perseverance but also intrinsic motivation. Such a child doesn’t look for external validation for their outcomes since they know that you are watching their efforts.
Let them fail
And eventually learn from those failures. Watching your kid fail is worrisome. You worry about their self esteem and peer pressure. You fear that they might give up trying, so you try to take over your kids to ensure that they succeed. This strategy is ultimately going to backfire. Children who are always shielded from failures would never understand what behaviors they need to change going forward. Instead they would learn that they don’t have to take responsibility of their actions because you would always come to their rescue.
Be the role model
Best way to teach our children essential life skills is by modelling through our behaviour. If you want to teach them hard work, you will have to let them see you working hard. When you make poor decisions and don’t beat yourself about it, kids also learn to be kind to themselves when they mess things up. How we cope with frustration and distress influence how our kids regulate their emotions. When we talk about our feelings our kid also learnt to share their emotions.
As parents we all want to raise wonderful individual. We wish to see them succeed in life and in everything they do. And little shift in parenting style can help us achieve so.
"The attitude you have as a parent is what your kids will learn. They don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember who you are." - Jim Henson