Helping or Hindering: The dangers of not letting your child stumble and fail.

The goal of many parents is to help their children succeed and keep them out of harm’s way, whether it be with helping out with a school project, helping them study for a test, master a sport, keep them from falling off their bike, etc. But is all this “helping” benefiting children, or hindering them?

Studies are showing that every time you help your child- and by help, meaning taking over a school project for them, giving them answers to their homework, always being there to rescue them from a problem- it damages the child overtime. By doing this, parent begin to enable their children, and subconsciously make them believe that they cannot do things on their own. In turn, this creates helpless children. There is lots of research backing up how dangerous it is to keep children from stumbling and figuring things out on their own.

According to a study in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, it was found that helicopter parenting can lead children to be anxious and depressed as college students. Another study found that adults who were over-parented can have “and exaggerated sense of entitlement, and more doubt about their ability to overcome challenges”. The study also found that children of helicopter parents are more dependent and neurotic.

The goal, of course, is not to never help our children. The goal is to let them stumble so they can learn from their mistakes and can learn to think for themselves. There most definitely has to be a balance; knowing when to step in, and knowing when to let them handle a situation on their own.

To read more about this topic, click here.

For more information on why parents need to let their children fail, click here.