Overprotecting your child or always being around your child to save them from any kind of challenge or discomfort. Are you also a parent who wants to protect their children from harm, hurt, unhappiness, bad experiences, rejection, failure and disappointments? I am sure that none of the parents wants their child to face difficulties of surroundings, but overprotecting your child is actually going to spoil your child badly.

Few signs that you are an overprotective parent:

• You immediately comfort your child after a simple fall that produces no distress.
• You have strict rules that do not allow your child to get dirty and you strictly follow the punishment & rewards system.
• While society has become difficult to live in presence of kidnappers & other threats, you can’t control them. But you can control your child to go out and spend time with friends & socializing outside.
• If your child is slower to understand or do homework, you complete his/her homework on behalf of them, so that your child is not feeling discomfort & it finishes faster.
• You want to protect your child from all failure & fear. You don’t want them to be in a position where they are inadequate, unprepared, or miserable in any way.
• You spend most of your time in doing your child’s work and it hurts you most when your child fails anywhere.
• You constantly look at how teachers or others are treating your child in comparison to another child. And want them to focus extra on your child for their performance.
• You want your child to ask you for each and every small decision.  You are not happy that your child is maturing & doing things on his own.

Side effects of overprotecting your child :

• It encourages children to lie frequently to match the high expectation of parents to avoid getting in trouble.
• When parents are scared of small things, the child also becomes over scared of doing anything. They avoid healthy risk-taking too, which harms their development.
• Overprotected kids grow into materialistic & manipulative adults. They do things only for their profit; they don’t judge whether it is right or wrong.

It takes a big heart to allow your child to employ self-reliance; but these children are confident in their skills, risk-takers, gems at heart, and creative and therefore, they are more likely to follow their dreams and grow as happy & healthy human beings.

If you are a new parent looking for help, visit resources.