Over-protective parents 'damaging kids'

[Sayf Udeen]

Over-protective parents 'damaging kids'​

OVER-PROTECTIVE parents are being blamed for damaging the health of their children by refusing to let them engage in the same activities they enjoyed as kids.

Dubbed the "helicopter" parents because they are always hovering, many of today's mothers and fathers frown upon allowing their children to go outside, dig in the dirt, climb trees or build cubby houses.

But experts agree that, rather than preventing illness or injury, over-cautious parents are actually harming their children.

Olympic swimming champion Shane Gould, who has just finished a masters degree in environmental management, and Wollongong University academic Karen Malone said that helicopter parents were hurting their children's health by not allowing them to engage with nature.

They said that "nature deficit disorder" contributed to increased cases of ADHD and obesity, lower resistance to diseases, the slow development of cognitive skills and concentration, lower levels of empathy for living things and delayed balance and agility skills.

Associate Professor Malone said the university's child-friendly cities program gave children cameras to take pictures of their favourite parts of their neighbourhoods.

"Most photographs were taken from inside a car," she said.

"During our research I asked kids how they wanted to spend their time.

"Sixty per cent said they wanted to play and less than 10 per cent wanted to use technology [such as video games].

"Children aren't being offered enough choice. It's not the X-Box or the computer or the TV but the parents who are at fault."

Ms Gould said parents incorrectly thought they were doing the right thing by keeping a close watch on their kids.

"Children need to explore and make mistakes and discoveries," she said.

"When they are very young they have an inbuilt program to go under things, under bushes. As they grow, they have an inbuilt program to climb."

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/n ... 5911091505

I'm not even a parent and I could have said this.
It's common sense.

"Children need to explore and make mistakes and discoveries," she said.
Agreed - so LET THEM.

 

[Sunny]

"Children need to explore and make mistakes and discoveries," she said.
Agreed - so LET THEM.

I agree quite wholeheartedly with this statement. If children aren't allowed to explore the world, then how will they know what they're in for in the future?

 

[katy perry is hot]

All parents do this nowadays. It's not even like when I was younger anymore. And that was only like 10 years ago. Parents are crazy now. No sleepovers at other kids' houses is a big one that i've heard from a lot of parents. I work with two women who are mothers and one of them has an older kid and the other has younger and the one with younger kids is freakin insane.

 

[nextzone]

Well, parents are afraid that their kids will get raped by this insane guy. However, how are we going to learn if our parents don't let us feel the consequences of our actions? If they protect us too much, we will not be tough enough to live by ourselves, and end up in the basements of our mother's house. I feel it is happening to my younger bro. He's over ten years old and is still afraid of the dark and does not do anything without Mom or her permission. We need some room to grow; not a brick on our heads until we are 20.

 

[Callum93]

I must be absolutely fucked then.

 

[NBK*Twitch]

All I can say is,I am glad I was born in the early 90's. Man I had so much fun as a kid.

 

[Deleted member 1609]

I don't think that overprotective parenting is always "damaging" to kids. It also is not necessarily the cause for kids turning into scared shells. My parents were not really very overprotective, and I'm still afraid of everything. I'm also a very dependent person. Don't always assume that overprotective parenting is the cause of everything; some people are just cowards.

 

[Sayf Udeen]

All I can say is,I am glad I was born in the early 90's. Man I had so much fun as a kid.

Kid of the 80's here. And yes, very glad it was THEN and not now.
I'm not going to be one of THOSE parents. <_<

 

[nextzone]

I don't think that overprotective parenting is always "damaging" to kids. It also is not necessarily the cause for kids turning into scared shells. My parents were not really very overprotective, and I'm still afraid of everything. I'm also a very dependent person. Don't always assume that overprotective parenting is the cause of everything; some people are just cowards.

Some kids, you just can't change, I agree. But if parents do not encourage children to do more, then that is how they are going to end up: cowards. Encouragement to try something new will get rid of some timidness. It works. I would have hid in the corner of my classroom all of the time if it wasn't for trying new things.

 

[MissTake]

I was a kid of the 70's........SHUT UP :roll:

Back in the day we were out playing from the age of 5-6, only in for meal times, by the age of 8 I had a front door key of my own, I'd think nothing of wandering off around my area, playing in fields, across the park, by the age of 11 I was walking to other towns, shopping in town with friends, gone for hours on end....
My days would start by digging out some dirt from between the cobble stones in the back with lollypop sticks while waiting for friends to turn up, I spend several hours practising my handstands and cartwheels along the edge of the kerb, my friends and I would find some spare ground to make up shows and dances, we'd probably spend an hour or too swinging upside down on the playground bars then we'd go to find a decent tree to climb and make ropes swings, maybe go into the bushes with a group of kids to build a den, come 6pm we would all go home for tea. After food we'd all meet up again in the back and play Tin Can Alley (a bit like hide and Seek) with a few of the older kids before we were called in around 8pm for a good wash before bedtime.

There were no game consoles as such, well maybe just the Atari? Mobile phones didn't exist, neither did computers as we know them nor cd/dvd's, heck the Betamax video recorder didn't show up until 1984!. We all knew the dangers from Paedophiles but it never stopped up from going out, our parents never stopped us from going out, we were virtually shoved out the front door.

Childhood obesity was virtually unheard of, parents didn't freak out if they hadn't seen their kids for a few hours........Today's parents worry about child safety because the horror stories are right there in their faces now, every newspaper and internet page has some nasty report about child abuse etc. Statistics have proven that kids today are no less safe than they were 50 years ago, it's just that we are so much more aware of the dangers they may possibly face. As with most things in this world today, we are of the opinion that prevention is better than cure.

I so wish my grandkids could live the life I did as a child, healthy carefree, adventurous, confident and happy. If I were to send my boys out like that I would have fingers pointed at me and I would be the bad parent/grandparent, the hysteria and paranoia is just so sad. :sad: