Problems With Over-Parenting

July 25, 2012

Interview with Dr. Madeline Levine, author of the book Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success

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Mike Carruthers:
Many parents today over-parent.

Dr. Madeline Levine:
There’s a whole bunch of research that says the 4 critical elements of parenting are reliability, availability, consistency, and non-interference.
 

Dr. Madeline Levine, author of the book Teach Your Children Well...

And I think we do a good job on reliable, available and consistent and a really miserable job on non-interference. So, I think we need to step back a little bit and I think the flip of that is we need to spend more time on character issues.

For instance parents need to instill a sense of responsibility in their kids.

Every child in America knows that the way to get out of clearing the table is just to say, “Oh tomorrow is my Chem AP test, I have to study.” And the parents says, “Oh honey don’t worry about the dishes make sure you study.” And there’s so much more to be learned from taking those 2 minutes and discharging the responsibility.

When kids are over-indulged by their parents they pay a price for it when they get out into the real world.

I talked to one of the head engineers of NASA who does a tremendous amount of hiring he noted that American engineering students are just as competitive as engineering students from anywhere but that they expect to be promoted quickly, they need an awful lot of pats on the back, they give up easily and that’s very problematic for them.