When Does Parental Involvement Become Meddling?

Parents today pride themselves on how tuned in they are to their children. They coach their soccer teams, drive them to karate and gymnastics classes, chaperone field trips, and work the pancake breakfast. They enjoy spending time with their children and their friends. But many parents have trouble finding the right balance between being involved in their children’s lives and meddling. They friend their children’s friends on Facebook. They “help” their children with school projects. They pick up job applications and some have even attended job interviews with their children.

Such over-involvement is problematic, psychologists say. Stepping over the line from monitoring your child’s activities to active participation blurs the necessary demarcation between parent and child. Friending your child on Facebook allows you to appropriately monitor his online activities, but friending your child’s friends interferes with his ability to develop independence. Parents who assume too much responsibility for their children’s lives rob them of the experiences necessary to learn life skills and opportunities to practice responsibility.

“The responsibility of being a parent has diminished,” elementary school teacher Linda Graves told reporter Martin Rozenman of The Columbus (OH) Dispatch in an April 16, 2009 article. “I think, because of their limited time, parents want to be the good guy — the friend rather than the disciplinarian.”

The problem is exacerbated when parents try to relive the glories of their own youth — whether real or unattained — through their children. Even when children have an interest in these activities, parental pressure to succeed can create anxiety that overpowers any pleasure the child might experience.

“It’s one thing to enjoy the success of your kids, but, when parents’ self-esteem is based on their kids’ success, it’s horribly self-destructive. Kids crumble under that pressure or succeed and are really unhappy,” California psychologist Jim Taylor, author of two books on parenting, told The Dispatch’s Rozenman.

There are healthy ways for parents to be involved in their children’s lives. Eating dinner as a family, turning off the TV and playing a board game once a week, and vacationing together will bring you closer to your children without crowding their space.