Excessive Parent Involvement = Chronic Child Dependency (CDD)

cptofthehouse
Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:26:05 +0000

Foxdie, your comments and thread are most relevant as many parents wonder the same thing: are they over involved and overindulgent ? Are we raising a generation of helpless people? At the same time, we wonder if we are involved enough, do we do enough? A priviliged dilemma, I admit. My parents were too challenged with their own lives to worry about their kids. I am a parent with who had her kids spread out, so I have kids who are now in adulthood (theoretically) while I still have some that are children at home in school yet to apply to college. I see things differently now than I did with the older ones, as I see the results rolling in. I remember parents, people critisizing the behaviour and reactions about kids and their parents who were outside the “norms”. Most of those kids with "issues’ and parents who were not addressing them “correctly” have turned out just fine. As we move into the next age range, many of those over involved parents with spoiled kids, not necessarily the same group as those toddlers I described, again were critisized with dire predictions. Most of those kids have turned out just fine. During highschool, I saw the same thing. Parents who micromanaged to a point that professionals made dire predictions. Again, most of these things did not happen, if any. The kids who seem to have had the most problems were the ones whose parents were uninvolved, unaware, and, those kids with mood disorders that seem to hit sporadically. Then of course the usual customers: kids who seemed to always be in trouble with authorities from day one with no action taken from parents in terms of getting professional help and not much care either.
I wonder how much effect at all we have on our children, but at the same time see that not being involved is definitely a good thing. One paradox after another.