Overparenting and Underparenting
The Effects of Overparenting, Underparenting and Control: A Conscious Parenting and Positive Parenting Approach
Parenting is a delicate balance between guiding our child and letting go. We learn to teeter between the two, giving our child some rope, and pulling back as needed. As parents we naturally want the best for our child. Too much control, often referred to as "overparenting,” can have unintended negative consequences and can affect our child’s behavior, making them even more challenging. Conscious parenting and positive parenting offer valuable frameworks to help parents find this balance, promoting a healthier, more autonomous child that learns self control without being controlled.
Understanding Overparenting and Control
Overparenting, also known as helicopter parenting, involves a high degree of involvement and control in a child’s life. Parents often engage in this out of love and concern, believing that close supervision and micromanagement will prevent their child from making mistakes or encountering difficulties. Overparenting tries to prevent a child from facing hardship and not succeeding. In over controlling parenting, we want our child to accept our answer without pushback. We want our child to behave in ways we deem proper. We want our child to do as we say when we say it. We want them to eat what we provide and to be grateful for what we do for them, give them, and all that they have. And when they don’t, we get angry, begrudge them and see them as spoiled, entitled and poorly behaved.
Excessive control can hinder a child’s development.
Children need the freedom to learn from their experiences, including failures. It’s essential. This is how they learn to build resilience and learn problem-solving skills. When parents hover and intervene constantly, they deny their child the opportunity to learn how to navigate challenges independently, which can result in anxiety, low self-esteem, and difficulty making decisions.
Conscious Parenting as a Solution
Conscious parenting encourages parents to be more mindful of their own behaviors while also being aware of their children's emotional needs. It focuses on fostering a deep connection with their child, understanding their unique temperaments, and responding to their emotional cues with empathy rather than control. Instead of reacting out of fear or societal expectations, conscious parents aim to guide their child based on their individual strengths and needs, with us as their calm parent leader, not controller.
This teaches parents to recognize their tendency toward overparenting: authoritarian, top down, bossy parenting; and offers a gentler, more reflective path. Conscious parenting helps parents focus on their own emotional triggers and understand that their desire to control often stems from their own needs to control. When parents become aware of this, they can step back, allow their child to face age-appropriate challenges, fostering greater independence and resilience.
A conscious parent may feel the urge to control their child’s homework schedule. Instead of stepping in and enforcing strict rules, consciously, they can reflect on why they feel compelled to intervene, and what lesson their child might learn from managing their own workload. By allowing their child to experience natural consequences such as staying up too late, not wearing a jacket or not completing an assignment on time, our child learns responsibility, time management, and problem-solving skills. Your toddler or preschool draws on the walls with markers? Bye-bye markers until tomorrow, and then we try again, remembering we only drawing on paper.
Underparenting; thoughtfully ignoring our child so that we are not entertaining and doting over them incessantly; avoiding giving them constant attention.
Recently the NY Times had an opinion piece on this parenting approach, Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often, and how it can help relieve the parent burnout and overload from constant doing for our child. Underparenting is not about lack of connection! It’s about letting them participate in being bored while we do our errands, let them be bored as we speak to our friends or family. Let them do the mundane with us and learn how to cope and deal with the ordinary, while growing their self help skills and their ability to better self regulate.
The Positive Parenting Approach
Positive parenting shares similar values with conscious parenting. It is rooted in respect, connection, and encouragement rather than punishment or control. Instead of dictating every aspect of a child’s life, positive parenting emphasizes collaboration and guidance. This approach helps children develop autonomy and self-regulation; key traits that are undermined by overparenting.
Children raised in a positive parenting environment tend to feel more secure and confident. They understand that their parents trust them to make decisions, even if they occasionally make mistakes. Positive parents set clear, consistent boundaries while offering emotional support, which creates an environment where children feel safe to explore their world and develop their identities.
For instance, when faced with a misbehaving child, a positive parent might calmly explain the consequences of the behavior, offering choices and involving the child in problem-solving rather than imposing a strict punishment. This empowers the child to take ownership of their actions, promoting responsibility and cooperation.
Overparenting is overcontrolling
Both conscious parenting and positive parenting provide invaluable tools for avoiding the pitfalls of overparenting and excessive control. By fostering connection, empathy, and respect, these approaches help parents raise children who are confident, resilient, and capable of handling life’s challenges. Overparenting may stem from a place of love, but it is through mindful awareness and supportive guidance that children truly thrive.
