The Detrimental Effects of Compassionate Parenting
While well-intentioned, a modern trend of over-protective, indulgent, controlling, and coddling “compassionate parenting” may inadvertently hinder children’s development. Instead of encouraging independence, self-motivation, confidence, and empathy, this approach can lead to negative outcomes.
Excessive Dependence
Parents are often encouraged to constantly support their children, shielding them from stress and inconvenience. However, this can result in over-reliance. Many parents continue to perform tasks their children should manage themselves, like dressing or tying shoelaces. By doing so, they unintentionally signal to the child to avoid challenges and lack perseverance.
Cultivating Learned Helplessness
The shift to home learning during Covid, followed by a return to school, revealed that some students struggled to re-engage in the classroom. When parents feel obligated to always be available, children may learn not to actively listen in class, expecting assistance at home from parents, au pairs, or tutors. This can inadvertently encourage learned helplessness, where children lack self-belief and become overly dependent on adults to help them, resulting in a growing need for extra lessons, a lack of grit, avoidance of challenges, and a desire for constant assistance.
Erosion of Grit and Determination
While children are naturally born with potential and passion, they require parental guidance to cultivate these traits. Parenting styles can either nurture or hinder a child’s confidence and motivation. Overly demanding, controlling, or protective parenting can stifle potential and discourage perseverance. Remedial students often display this reliance on teachers or parents, lacking self-confidence, avoiding difficulties, and demonstrating a lack of grit.
Increased Impulsivity and Demanding Behaviour
Children are inherently self-centred and impulsive. It is the parent’s role to teach them how to navigate life’s challenges. A fundamental solution to reducing impulsivity is early manners instruction. Today, some children take without asking, feeling entitled. They need to learn that only their possessions are truly theirs and that they must ask for what they want. The contrast between a child asking politely and simply taking highlights this issue. A decline in manners has contributed to demanding and impulsive children. Children need authoritative (not authoritarian) adult figures (parents or guardians) to equip them with the necessary life skills.
The SmartChoiceParenting Programme (SCPP) offers a unique, evidence-based solution. Typically requiring just one or two sessions, it aims to provide parents with the tools, understanding, insight, and knowledge to effectively maintain their authority, thereby encouraging independence and motivation in their children.
