In recent years, parent groups have become the main way for primary and secondary school parents to communicate with schools, allowing parents to keep in touch with schools at any time.
But after going to college, there is still a group of parents, parents in the group to discuss their children's achievements, share their children's excellence, and even directly help their children in the blind date, it is inevitable that people will make people mutter: Is this really necessary?
Children leave home for college, parents stay at home, suddenly difficult to adapt to the feeling of "empty nest", building a parent group is indeed a way to fill their emptiness and alleviate anxiety.
But for college students, these parents have gone beyond the normal level of parenting, a highly caring and controlling model known in psychology as overparenting, which also includes frequent tracking of the child's whereabouts, excessive nervousness about the child's academic performance, and so on.
Chinese Parental Overculturing Scale[7]
As with our daily experience, the researchers found that parents' feelings about over-parenting tend to be positive, but children's feelings about it are negative.
In a 2018 psychological study in the United States[1], researchers recruited 302 pairs of parents and children, compared the degree of parenting and the feelings of both parties, and found that over-parenting parents were indeed more likely to feel support and help for their children, while their children, on the contrary, felt less support than children who were normally raised.
Over-caring for children is the wishful thinking of parents, and for children, it is likely to be a help.
Over-parenting makes children feel that they are "not OK"
Intervening in a child's supposedly independent life is more likely to make them lose their autonomy and self-efficacy.
A 2017 study[2] found that college students' school acclimatization is related to their parenting.
The researchers measured college students' self-efficacy, academic and social adjustment levels, and the degree to which they were over-parented, and found that the higher the level of over-parenting of parents, the lower their self-efficacy, and the more difficult it was for them to adapt to academic and social life in college.
The more parents care about their children, the easier it is for children to feel that they are "not OK", and there are many reasons behind this, such as parental care and care will deprive children of the opportunity to cope with setbacks.
Based on his years of experience in reinforcement learning research, psychologist Bandura proposed the concept of "self-efficacy", which describes a person's subjective belief in their own abilities, and the higher the self-efficacy, the more confident they are in solving problems and coping with life.
Success is an important source of self-efficacy, especially after overcoming difficulties, and over-parenting parents help their children clear the way to success, but as Bandura puts it in his book Self-Efficacy: The Implementation of Control, "If people experience success so easily, they will be in a hurry and easily frustrated by failure." ”
Over-parenting parents' control over their children can also lead to their children's "early closure of identity" - before they have time to explore what kind of person they want to become, they are indoctrinated with their expectations and suggestions by their parents[6], such children lack self-goals and direction, everything needs advice from authority, lacks opinion, and is more difficult to adapt to university life.
Self-identity mainly refers to a person's inner cognition of self-uniqueness, in the development of identity, the most ideal result is to let the child in the independent exploration, find the person they really want to become and the goal they desire to achieve, and firmly strive for it to achieve the state of "identity acquisition".
Under high control, it may be possible to raise children who meet the norms, but it is difficult to have children who are self-identical. Because the acquisition of self-identity requires a pursuit that conforms to one's own inner strength, this pursuit must be contrary to the opinions of the parents to a certain extent, and the parents of high control make the children dare not produce this contradiction, and they cannot achieve the acquisition of self-identity.
Therefore, for parents, it is better to be confident in their children and believe that their children can make decisions for themselves, so that children can feel that they are really "OK"!
Over-parenting makes children "giant babies" in relationships
The relationship between parents and children not only affects how children see themselves, but also how they see others, and over-parenting often makes children frustrated in intimate relationships.
A new study this year[3] investigated the effects of over-parenting on love and marriage, using a scale to measure participants' attachment style and degree of over-parenting, as well as marital love.
It was found that overcultured people have stronger anxiety and avoidance tendencies in intimate relationships, they are more likely to worry about being abandoned on the one hand, they need to frequently confirm their partner's love for themselves, and on the other hand, they want to flee when their partner is too close, avoiding facing important problems in the relationship.
Not only that, but the higher the degree of over-parenting and the later the age of marriage, the more difficult it is to establish stable emotional relationships.
This phenomenon is likely to be brought about by the separation of children and parents, the relationship between overcultured parents and children is too close, when children get used to this relationship, they will have similar expectations in their own intimate relationships, hoping that the other party will always pay attention to themselves like parents and take the initiative to meet their own needs.
However, this is often unrealistic. The result of this mentality is often the failure of expectations, and the more such feelings, the more negative it becomes for intimate relationships and marriage.
In an emotional relationship, a healthy relationship should be equal and resilient. For over-parented children, it is important to realize that it is difficult for a partner to do it, and it is not necessary to always care about themselves like their parents.
Avoid over-parenting and set ideal boundaries
To avoid over-parenting, the most important thing for parents and children is to set boundaries for parent-child relationships – to be clear about what children should do independently and what they can turn to their parents for help.
Relationship Boundary | Stand cool Heero
As a college student, when you find yourself trapped by your parents' over-parenting of yourself, it's time to find an opportunity to talk to your parents.
Parents often have idealized cognitions about their children, such as thinking that children are obedient and willing to obey their own suggestions, but many times, children are only forced by the authority of their parents to passively cooperate, afraid that their ideas will be denied.
Children need to realize that "setting boundaries in parent-child relationship" is not "rejecting parents to hurt parents", parents can't do whatever they want in your life, nor does it mean "you don't love them and don't care about them". There's nothing wrong with insisting on making decisions about your life, and you don't have to feel guilty about it.
In the case of insisting on defending boundaries, you may wish to try to be flexible with your parents to "make a deal", for example, when you find that your parents are embarrassed when you are dating for yourself in the parent group, you may think about it, maybe your parents are worried that they are not good at socializing and do not know how to meet new friends.
Instead of passively shirking or coping, it is better to tell my parents that I will not go on a blind date arranged by you, but I can actively share my usual amateur life with you, so that you know that I have my own life arrangement and am not lonely.
As children can understand their parents' positions more, their excessive concern for themselves is likely to indicate that they long for their existence to be valued and hope that they are still needed by their children.
So when you find that parents are over-parented, you can try to care about the lives of parents, and maybe parents will realize that we have grown up and no longer need to protect and care for the next generation as much as we do with children.
For parents, it is also necessary to gradually accept the fact that the child has reached adulthood, and he is getting old, although he has more experience, but the child has a fresher vision, the parent is no longer the standing authority in the child's mind, may wish to make the relationship more equal and free, learn from each other like friends.
Parents also need to gradually "let go" emotionally, just like weaning babies, not having to meet all needs, so that children are psychologically independent and have the ability to self-soothe, so that they have more room to accommodate new relationships and develop a resilient and secure attachment model.
Children leaving their warm little homes and entering university campuses full of unknowns are important life transitions, and in contrast, the parent-child relationship has also reached a time when it needs to be transformed.
As Gibran said:
"Your children, in fact, are not your children, they are born of life's desire for itself;
What you can give them is your love, but not your thoughts, because they have their own thoughts;
What you can shelter is their body, but not their soul, because their soul belongs to tomorrow;
You can do your best to become like them, but don't let them become like you,
Because life does not go backwards, nor does it stay in the past. ”
bibliography
[1] Tricia J. Burke, Chris Segrin & Kristen L. Farris (2018) Young Adult and Parent Perceptions of Facilitation: Associations with Overparenting, Family Functioning, and Student Adjustment, Journal of Family Communication, 18:3, 233-247, DOI: 10.1080/15267431.2018.1467913
[2] Darlow, V. , Norvilitis, J. M. , & Schuetze, P. . (2017). The relationship between helicopter parenting and adjustment to college. Journal of Child & Family Studies.
[3] Jiao, J. , & Segrin, C. . (2021). Overparenting and emerging adults' insecure attachment with parents and romantic partners. Emerging Adulthood, 216769682199771.
[4] https://parents.au.reachout.com/skills-to-build/connecting-and-communicating/things-to-try-building-trust/set-realistic-boundaries-with-your-teenager
[5] Alport Bandura. (2003). Self-efficacy: The Implementation of Control. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press.]
[6] LING Hui,ZHU Puxiang,LI Xinli & ZHANG Jianren. (2010). A study on the relationship between self-identity and parenting style of college students. Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology(06),786-788+791. doi:10.16128/j.cnki.1005-3611.2010.06.039.
[7] Leung Janet T. Y., & Shek Daniel T. L. . (2019). Hierarchical Factor Analysis and Factorial Invariance of the Chinese Overparenting Scale. Frontiers in Psychology. 10. 1873. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01873.
Author: This wood
Editors: Emeria, You Zhiyou
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