Do you find yourself obsessing over your child’s red lump on the elbows, constantly researching for new recipes over a loss of appetite over dinner or calling your child every other hour to check if they have reached home? Don’t worry, you are not alone. this a common symptom of the syndrome called modern parenting.
It is completely normal to feel concern about your child’s safety. From the moment we first see our newborn, parents develop an overwhelming need to protect them from the dangers of the world. This natural defense mechanism is unfortunately often amplified by the large volume of often sensationalized information on social media that scares us into thinking that the world is a more dangerous place than it often is.
While it is always better to be safe than sorry and risks like internet bullying, pornography do exist, if you have tendencies to become worried about your child making their own way home as if they were crossing a war field that might be pushing the boundaries too much.
In fact, the biggest danger that children face is that parents feel that all aspects of risk has to be removed. Setting overly strict curfews, dictating the activities that your child can partake or determine who they can make friends with are common examples. Placing your child in a bubble prevents child from learning about their environment or build meaningful social relationships.
Children take risks to become independent. We need to control protective tendencies towards our children for them to grow up healthily both physically and mentally. Control may lead to diverging outcomes that are equally bad. They might manifest as rebelliousness as the children continues to mature and they begin to want to decide for themselves. Or it may cause them to become indecisive and insecure.
Excessive anxiety towards our children also causes anxiety to ourselves as parents. In a separate post we will talk about how we can control our parental anxiety at healthy levels. Subscribe to keep updated!
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All the best to you on your parenting journey