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Parents, Stop Hovering! You May Be Harming Your Child's Mental Health, Study Says
Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Social & Emotional Growth: Tweens, Research Reveals: Tweens, Social & Emotional Growth: Teens, Research Reveals: Teens
Helicopter parents, you may want to ease up on all that hovering when it comes to your kids: A new study shows your overprotectiveness may make your children more likely to develop psychiatric disorders.
Kosuke Narita and researchers at Gunma University in Japan scanned the brains of 50 20-somethings, and had them fill out surveys about their relationships with their moms and dads through age 16, New Scientist reprots. The Parental Bonding Instrument survey (PDF) included rating statements such as "Did not want me to grow up," "tried to control everything I did" and "tended to baby me," according to the magazine.
"Narita's team found that those with overprotective parents had less grey matter in a particular area of the prefrontal cortex than those who had had healthy relationships," New Scientist reports. "Neglect from fathers, though not mothers, also correlated with less grey matter."
The magazine says "this part of the prefrontal cortex develops during childhood, and abnormalities there are common in people with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses."
The researchers propose too much attention or neglect can lead to an excessive release of cortisol, a stress hormone, and reduced production of dopamine, New Scientist reports.
But Stephen Wood, a researcher in adolescent development at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre in Australia, tells the magazine parenting styles don't necessarily cause brain abnormalities.
"He points out that the subjects studied may have been born with the abnormalities and as a result didn't bond well with their parents, rather than vice versa," New Scientist reports, adding that Wood "takes issue with the study team's decision to exclude individuals with low socioeconomic status and uneducated parents -- two factors known to contribute to poor performance in cognitive tests."
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
3-16-2010 @ 10:34AM
burrous648 said...It sure would be nice if people would make up there minds. If you dont hover over your child,make your child behave,know where your child is and what they are doing,then you are a bad parent.Its the kids that are getting in trouble that think parents hover.I have three older kids that are out on there own and three kids still home.I raise these three the same as I did the others.My seventeen understands an follows the rules He some times ask why he can not hang out like his friends,most of the times his friends show him by getting into trouble.We have to teach them early,we have them eighteen years,the world has many more to either enforce the good or turn them bad.
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3-16-2010 @ 4:01PM
Mcdume said...Burrous648, you are describing a child's need for limits and boundaries, which is vitally important, and is not always easy for parents to provide - because we have to be the bad guy!
Although the link between helicopter parenting and psychiatric disorders is inconclusive in the above study, hovering is not helpful to children.
'Hovering' begins in our child's infancy when we can't bear to see him struggle to roll from back to stomach, so we push him over; or we take the plastic links our toddler is working with and make them into a chain before he has the chance to figure it out for himself.
Babies can tolerate some frustration and struggle. They don't see those things as negative unless we teach them otherwise.
Infant expert Magda Gerber always said, "If we can learn to struggle, we can learn to live." Success in life is built when one can overcome obstacles and work through struggle. So is self-confidence. Our well-meaning desire to always 'help' creates a relationship in which the child feels incapable and dependent. There's an article to help parents deal productively with 'hovering' instincts on Janet Lansbury's website Http://bit.ly/bw72bh "A Hovering Parent's Successful Landing."
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