When Parenting Goes Overboard

Every time her daughter and son-in-law fought, Mom would be up most of the night.

Worrying. Obsessing. Coming up with more advice for her daughter.

The fights were harder on Mom than on the young couple, who often kissed and made up while she was still awake, worrying.

This mother’s problem, says therapist Laurie Ashner, is “overparenting.” She couldn’t relinquish control of her daughter’s life. And it diminished her own.

There have always been parents who are overinvolved with their children, says Ashner, co-author with psychologist Mitch Meyerson of “When Parents Love Too Much” (Morrow).

Extreme cases usually stem from childhood experiences, Ashner says--a lack of love or acceptance, very demanding and critical parents, or emotional or physical abuse. “This creates a victim--somebody who feels they always have to be in control, that they have to be perfect, giving to others, in order to get what they need in return,” she says.

But a parent who feels guilty can become overinvolved as well, she says. Divorced parents try to compensate for the absence of the other. Parents whose work schedules leave little time at home may go overboard in trying to make things all right for the children. Deficient marriages may lead others to seek, inappropriately, solace in their relationships with their children.

The difference between being a concerned and an overconcerned parent can sometimes seem a fine distinction.

But there’s a pattern. “You recognize that you are thinking and stewing and worrying about your children, especially when your children have a problem.” And for such parents, “This can mean the child gets a B instead of an A.”

“So you find that you are stewing over this, and you wonder . . . why your children are always saying to you, ‘Back off. I’m fine. Leave me alone.’ ”

These children often grow up to be very self-critical, and sometimes so immobilized by fear of failure that they become underachievers.

“A lot of times it’s because of the parents’ having really high expectations, or harming the child’s competence by doing too much for them.”

The grown children often have problems with intimacy.

“I’m thinking of a 38-year-old man whose mother still buys his socks and underwear,” Ashner says. “She walks around his house picking up things, asking how much he paid for them. . . . He’s been fending her off for years. She’s worried. She wants to know what’s happening in his life. Well, now he thinks every woman’s like this. And he thinks that if he gets close to a woman, she’s going to devour him.”

The pattern is difficult to break, and therapy is often needed, Ashner says. It worked for the mother who became overwrought whenever her daughter and son-in-law had a spat. She figured out it was better to listen but not give advice, as time often solved the problem. “If she felt absolutely out of control, she talked to a friend or her husband about it, but she tried to not throw herself into the middle of the marriage anymore.”

The authors offer this advice to overinvolved parents:

--Stop trying to be the perfect parent. Don’t torture yourself about past errors; quit brooding about what you think are problems for your children and focus on enjoying them as they are. Don’t make demands because of your own need for their lives to be perfect.

--Learn self-acceptance. Examine your relationship with your own parents to understand where you acquired negative feelings about yourself. Learn to acknowledge the good things you do.

--Seek support in therapy or self-help groups.

--Develop your own interests so you can abandon the role of “problem solver.”

--Break the pattern of “crisis thinking.” Don’t automatically act on emotional impulse. Wait, consider, use logical thinking.

--Learn to let go of control.

--Work on making your marriage healthy and satisfying.

--Stop giving in to children who have learned to be irresponsible, and don’t let them exploit your patience.