To think a lot (most) people have inaccurate views of what an ‘overprotective’ parent is?

[Prinade]

And this included me until recently - well around 7 years ago when I looked into this further.

For ages I thought an overprotective parent was like a fluffy, cuddly mother who gets a bit anxious about her child going to late night parties etc. My mum admitted her ‘overprotectiveness’ led to my mental health and psychological/emotional problems as a young adult. However, her interpretation of ‘overprotective’ parent is a parent who buys the child loads of material things like toiletries and soaps etc!!

Overprotectiveness is actually a seriously negative style of parenting that really thwarts development. It also stops the child developing initiative. For example. I can remember being 11 and one Sunday suggested doing something to my parents but I can’t for the life of me remember actually what it was. It was nothing unreasonable or outrageous - but my mum said

“no you’re seeing Rachel today.” Rachel was a very middle class girl from a well educated background who my mum was desperate for me to be friends with. I hated Rachel - she was bitchy and irritating and as individuals we were very different. Rachel and I ended up being ‘friends’ until roughly speaking the age of around 16/17. It was awful - if I even showed any level of ‘dislike’ of this friendship with Rachel I was shouted down immediately very sharply by my parents.

My development as a teenager was thwarted by thinking that friendship was something that people did out of obligation rather than genuinely wanting to and I was the victim of the most vile bullying.

I read an academic paper on parental behaviour and they used this sentence over and over ‘parents behaviour wasn’t abusive or overprotective - using both these words interchangeably. I think abusive and overprotective behaviour from parents are similar because they have the same effect on children. Overprotectiveness could be said to have a sinister motive as well in that it gives parents more control.

I’ve read also that adults who were overprotected as children have much more difficulty getting out of abusive relationships as adults presumably because they have greater difficulty making independent decisions - presumably because independent decisions were shouted down’ by their parents as a child - I was met with extreme disapproval for just saying as an adult that I’d disliked the school I’d gone to !

my mum was blatantly abusive - but my Dad who’d been overprotected as a child - felt he had no choice but to stay with her.

Don’t get my wrong I think ordinary ‘protectiveness’ from parents is great - it shows that they’ve got their kids’ back - but over protectiveness if anything is negative and can make kids much more vulnerable. It’s not about shielding kids from difficult situations - it’s about thwarting their sense of initiative

Have you posted before? Your thread is so familiar. If you have then you need therapy. Overprotectiveness and controlling behaviour aren’t the same. Similar, yes but that are not the same thing.

i don’t think you’re understanding it correctly either

when I read more about it it’s also about controlling the child’s social sphere too much and disrespecting the child’s emotional boundaries
yeah, in relation to ‘protecting’ them. Not just in general. The aim is to protect them and the result is being controlling.
that doesn’t mean all controlling is being protective.
it does not sound like being protective was your mum or dads aim and so no, controlling you and disrespecting your boundaries was not them being overprotective.

pps are - perhaps unkindly - referring to your post as waffle, but what they’re trying to say is that your post doesn’t really make sense; your thoughts are clouded either by misunderstandings or incorrect beliefs and stories

Yes, she's posted before. There's a link on the first page!

It seems like yet another case of "didn't get the response I wanted on the first one so I'll try again under a different name.

OP, your understanding of overprotection (which is one word) is wrong. Almost everyone is explaining this to you. Why won't you accept that?

Insisting on a particular definition might actually stop you from overcoming childhood issues instead of solving them.

I don’t think your personal example is ‘overprotective’. It’s controlling which is something different.
Words that are used to mean something in general society are what they mean. If the majority of people use ‘overprotective’ to mean a parent who doesn’t r let their child go to the park in case they get injured/dirty/kidnapped, or who won’t let their 14 year old take a bus on their own, or never lets their kids go on sleepovers etc, then that’s what it means.
Words do have a different sense in academic papers. But the definition would be clear to those authors and their intended readership.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. I do get annoyed at people throwing around mental health disorders as a kind of joke: ‘that’s my OCD coming out’ when people talk about vacuuming every day, which is totally not what OCD is, but overprotectiveness is not a word normally interchangeable with ‘abuse’, though extreme forms can be abusive. It can lead to dissatisfaction with life and ability to cope.
If you refer to academic papers you should provide a link. To overprotect to the extent it prevents a child from developing normally and suffer mental health consequences is not what one generally means when using that word in common parlance.

Over protectiveness can be controlling but it is done with good intentions to prevent harm.

Being controlling is not done with good intentions. It’s done to control and give the controller power.

Over-protection is a form of being controlling and it's putting the parent's need for security over the developmental needs of the child.

It is harmful. It undermines social confidence, the ability to make social bonds and self-discovery.

Fortunately for me I got some normal experiences of freedom with extended family, and some loopholes such as doing things through school that cost her little inconvenience, and taught me a lot about normal function in life.

I was recently advised that I should stop running for my own safety... I'm in my mid-40s, have run for over a decade without incident, and if I was a preditory male, I'd need an incredibly huge amount of patience to loiter in an overgrown alpacca field waiting for a lone woman to jog through on an obscure right of way that barely even sees dog walkers (a photo of the alpaccas triggered the comment)
The end result is that I don't really want to tell her much and for the past 25 years accounts of my life have been edited to avoid critique and concern for my safety (or the DCs')

She only let go when really pushed. I was finally allowed to catch a bus to school (2mi away) in y11 (bus stop visible from house) because she'd broken her arm and couldn't drive. Wasn't allowed to walk ½ a mile into (a nice) town with a friend until 15. She went mad when I went to the park with a friend at 14 walking with their dog while around their house to "play".

Fortunately I wasn't daft and had enough skills to suss life out at university and not sink into anxiety about how dangerous the world was. Heck I even worked out how to use the launderette washing machines without breaking them 🏅

The goalposts between me and older DB were very different, both for personal freedom and what we were allowed to do for ourselves. A lot of sexism tied up in it, and he was allowed to do things many years younger because he was male. He also had a more gregarious social group and was inclined to push boundaries. Not that I had the means to get in with more gregarious peers.

The motivation might associated with love and care but it is an act of control of their own anxieties and traumas and not recognising the developmental needs of the child.

Now parenting an autistic teenager, I'm doing a lot of gentle nudging him forwards in his personal development at a pace he can adapt to. To over-protect him because he has additional challenges would be very damaging to him. If I replicated DM's boundaries, he would fail to make that huge leap into adulthood that would be allowed to open up.

The title of your post shows that you don’t understand what overprotective parenting is either.

Your examples are not over protective parenting.

Your mum engineering friendships with what she thinks are better girls is controlling and infantilising if she thinks that you can’t make friends with “good” girls. If your friends at the time were the type to get into trouble with the police then it could be protective parenting but you didn’t say that in your previous posts so I’d label it as controlling.

Over protective is not allowing your child to take risks that most kids that age are allowed to take. For example a 15 year old who is not allowed to stop take a bus alone when the majority of 15 year olds will have been doing it for years. It makes the parent feel better and the child feel worse as they are kept “young” and not as capable as their peers.

Protective is about knowing your child’s capabilities and making a decision that doesn’t set them up for failure. For example if a parent had a 15 year old prone to frequent panic attacks on crowded buses, they might drive their child to school so that the child can avoid getting a panic attack on the way to school. They want to protect their child from embarrassment when their peers witness and possibly film the panic attack.

The over protective parent is prioritising their feelings and the protective parent is prioritising their child’s feelings.

Thank you - excellent post and examples 🙌

@Prinade
Overprotective parents don't "shout down" their kids or control and abuse them. Quite the opposite. Forcing a friendship is far from being over protective. I don't think you fully understand what it means.

I wanted to search for your post again because despite my views/posts on this thread, I do get what you mean actually about the word in common parlance being the ‘proper’ interpretation of the phrase. I was over 35 before I understood there may be a more technical/academic meaning of the phrase

Your post is confusing and reminds me of the other thread a PP has added a link to and asked whether you started that thread too.

Overprotective to me is a parent interfering where they don't need to.

When I was a kid and we played in the street there was a mother who hovered at the kitchen window If it looked like her kid was getting a hard time eg getting bowled out when playing street cricket, she'd shoot out and tell the other kids that they were doing it wrong.

Now, as an adult, it's parents getting involved in job interviews. No, you can not come along!

Yes I totally - especially with your first sentence - my mum forced friendships when I would’ve find better without these false ‘friends’