The book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” by Amy Chua, a law professor from Yale, has generated many heated online discussions among the parenting circles. This was coupled later with another round of news of parents bombarding the camp with calls: one wanted help arranging private guitar lessons for her daughter, another did not like the sound of her child’s voice during a recent conversation, and a third needed to know — preferably today — which of her daughter’s four varieties of vitamins had run out. In the local arena, we have the NS man who had his maid carried his full-pack, and more recently a father carrying the pack for his son in NS. A series of photographs of the NSF recently made its rounds on the Internet and generated much debate about whether Gen Y soldiers in Singapore were too “soft” and “spoilt”.

What went wrong? It is always admirable that parents generally want to protect their children from harm, hurt, pain, unhappiness, bad experiences, rejection, failures and disappointments. One psychologist said: “What contradiction? It used to be the job of parents to expose their children to the outside world; today, it is their job to protect their children from the outside world.” Research tells us overprotective parents often prevent their children from trying new activities such as discovering the joy of climbing and safe risk taking at adventurous playgrounds. What many overprotective parents fail to see is that their own fears from childhood are now being lived out through their children, thus creating a new generation of the same fear filled life that was theirs.

In recent years, some new name has been coined to describe parents who are seen to be continually overprotective of their children, particularly in regards to their education:

1) Helicopter Parents

They are so named because they hover closely around their children, rarely letting them out of their reach. For growing knowing children, the  embarrassment caused by this helicopter behaviour from their parents can be excruciating. Helicopter parents have good intentions, but they need to back off sometimes & allow their children to learn how to fight their own battles. Every time anything happens to today’s school aged students, mom & dad are calling & raising hell. When will these young people become adults?

The Wall Street Journal recently reported cases of helicopter parents accompanying their college-graduate children to job interviews. Some companies offering internships for college seniors now conduct parent orientation programs to stem the numerous phone calls from helicopter parents. While helicopter parents may have the best intentions, in reality, they are raising children with few problem-solving skills. Children with hovering parents never get the chance to face disappointment and build up resiliency.

2) Hyper Parents

Hyper parents evolved from the belief that within every parent is the power and obligation to craft the perfect childhood for our kids – one that will guarantee a  successful adulthood in the impossibly competitive new e-world. Our children are  over-scheduled. Parents feel immense pressure to compete with their friends and colleagues, and to stimulate their young child’s development in whatever way they can. Some parents are enrolling children in multiple activities in order to  “build a resume” that will set them up for a good school, and the successful life they believe will follow. As a result, children end up with no time for essential free play, or even to just “sit around”. It is a philosophy built upon the belief that  the right possessions and enrichment activities, combined with regular practice will enable every one of us to raise a perfect kid who will get into Harvard, Yale,  Duke, Stanford, or Princeton (aren’t those the places where successful kids go?) and therefore and thereafter, will lead a life of fame and fortune. Children not  given these enrichment opportunities will end up hopelessly behind, losers not winners. And it’s not just the parents of young children who are micromanaging their kids. Parents are becoming increasingly involved in their adult children’s lives, from constantly texting their university-aged kids to setting up their workstations at their first jobs, to negotiating salary increases for their children.  Hyper-parenting is harming our families. It keeps our kids from becoming self-reliant because it deprives them of the experiences that teach them, eventually, how to be able to make their own way in the world. Hyper-parenting and over- scheduling may also contribute to the large numbers of children being diagnosed as ADD, ADHD, and depressed, and to the many adolescents who give up and get dragged down by drugs, alcohol, and premature sex.

Nowadays, parents who allow their children the freedom to roam, walk, cycle and explore are criticized by other parents. Rather than being seen as creating independence in their children, they are seen as parents who allow their children to step into danger. Over parenting comes from the belief that for a child to be happy and secure, he must be protected from unpleasant or sad experiences. It also means constantly protecting the child from the huge and scary world around him.

This is why so many parents drive their children to school even when they are within walking distance and the sun is shining brightly. It also means making many of his decisions for him, taking the rap for any of his mistakes and solving his problems. Mainly, over parenting appears to occur in affluent rather than poorer families.

If you can see that your child expects you to do everything for him, including his planning, thinking and feeling, then it is high time for you to break your over-parenting pattern.

• Encouraging them to explore, conquer and master new activities provides the means for tremendous growth and learning both for them and for us as parents.
• In order to become responsible, confident, assertive, independent adults, children need opportunities to explore their environment both physically and emotionally without continuous interference from their parents.

Let go and allow your children to fall, make mistakes, experience rejection, feel jealousy and suffer defeat.

Let go and watch them grow in confidence, skill, responsibility and emotional intelligence as they learn from all life has to offer them.

Let go your attachment to be an overprotective parent and find constructive ways to  release yourself from your fears before you give them to your children. Get  professional help if your fearfulness is acute.