The Psychology Behind Overprotective Parenting

“A parent may tell her child to stay indoors all day in order to avoid being exposed to a sickness...When we think about this psychologically, however, a parent is implicitly saying to the child “I do not trust you to go outside because I don’t think that you are careful enough to not get this sickness.” Being an overprotective and controlling parent is really just telling your child what you want him or her to do and how you would act in a certain situation. This behavior may produce children with very low self-confidence and leads them to assume that they should depend on others” -Little Fish in a Suffocatingly Small Pond: The Causes and Effects of Parental Overprotection on Children by Piancentini.

This quote really struck me when I was doing research on Finding Nemo. Yes, I am fully aware that parents sometimes show love through their overprotectiveness but there is a point where it is negative for the child. What is interesting about this study is that children actually become more dependent on their parents because they are the ones who make the decisions. I thought that children of overprotective parents tend to rebel, like Nemo in the movie. However, there are slight nuances that I did not fully understand. In Nemo's case, Nemo showed that he was dependent when he was separated from his dad. The same thing is analogous to kids with overprotective parents. They might seem to rebel in front of their parents but once they are separated they are unable to fully be independent. This type of parenting could pose a negative impact on the child. The child would probably mature and grow up fine but he or she my be less willing to take risks. Only when we take risks we can grow.