Are you in danger of over-parenting?
Do you have a Whatsapp group for your kids where parents discuss every dressing up day and homework project?
Do you cut up your toddlers’ food to make it easier for them?
Do you help your four year old get dressed?
Done sometimes, these things are fine, necessary even, to show your children how to do something and that you’re supporting them. Done all the time and they aren’t, because your child isn’t learning to do things themselves, they’re learning that you will always do things for them.
That’s overparenting.
My parents came from working class roots. My dad was the first in his family to go to university. Both of them love their food and wine. Every Sunday we’d have a family meal, starters, main course and dessert. We’d all pitch in, laying the table, cooking, clearing and washing up. I remember many a painful moment of being told to eat properly, of struggling with my knife and fork. As we got older, they would take us out to restaurants, on special occasions proper fancy ones. I learned about different cutlery, I learned about wine, I learned table etiquette.
I remember one of my moans about ‘why I had to do a stupid thing like use the right knife when they all did the same thing’. My dad replied that when he started work, he had to go to various work dinners and didn’t know what to do. He felt embarrassed and inferior. He saw how important the social side of work was and wanted me and my sister not to struggle like he did, but to feel comfortable in those situations. And I do.
Now I’m nearly forty. I can remember many times over the last 20 years where all that knowledge, that seemed so pointless at the time, has given me confidence in situations where others, even my bosses, have struggled. It feels a bit like being comfortable in a foreign country when the people you’re traveling with aren’t. All because of the conditions my parents created for me, their refusal to do things for me.
Raising a child is the longest game.
When we overparent there are two things going on. First, we don’t want our child to suffer, so we sort things out for them. We remind them their homework is due and make sure they do it so they don’t get told off. In this bucket I’d also include your child nagging you to do something for them because they don’t want to put in the effort, risk failure, spend time doing it instead of playing. An act of short term protection can, if often repeated over the long term, become an act of harm.
Secondly, and more interestingly, we do things for them in the name of efficiency. It is always easier and faster for us to do things for our children when they are growing up. But the point of growing up is to learn how to be self-sufficient. The process of learning these skills may seem inefficient (when you are nagging them to pick up their towel/put their laundry away/write milk on the list after they finish what’s in the fridge). Our culture is so geared up for efficiencies, for productivity, of making the most of every minute and then rushing to the next thing. Yet, with our children we need to make space to be inefficient. Here’s a secret. It’s in the inefficiencies that we create moments of care, love, connection, achievement, celebration, learning and laughter. The things that we’re being so efficient in order to make time for. Life’s weird.
I know, I know. All this is easy to say, but very hard to do when you have a train you have to catch in the morning. We’re not talking in absolutes here, or even a clean percentage of time to do it for them vs. getting them to do it.
Life is messy.
Some days you can leave them to do their chores, some you’ll have the time to support them in doing a task, and other days you’ll just have to do it for them. But if your 8 year old can’t tie their own shoelaces and your 10 year old only remembers they need the loo 5 minutes after leaving the house, when exactly are you going to teach them?
