Parenting & Mental Health

Obstacles Build Skills

Dr. Deborah Dumont

Researchers surveyed almost 300 students and found that helicopter parenting violated three of children's universal psychological needs: autonomy, competence, & relatedness, thus resulting in higher levels of depression (Schiffron et al., 2014).

A study of 317 university students specifically linked overinvolvement with mental health issues and found students of helicopter parents were more likely to be medicated for anxiety and/or depression (LeMoyne & Buchanan, 2011).

Julie Lythcott- Haims: Author, Speaker, Activist & Former Tenured Dean of Freshman at Standford University

"The point is to prepare the kid for the road, instead of preparing the road for the kid."

Julie Lythcott-Haims

Connection Between Overparenting & Mental Health

Three Types of Overparenting

How Parents Impact Kids

Three Factors That Point to Overparenting

You are the bows from which

your children as living arrows

are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon

the path of the infinite, and

He bends you with his might

that His arrows

may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's

hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow

that flies, so He loves also the

bow that is stable."

Kahil Gibran, The Prophet

"And a woman who held a babe

against her bosom said, Speak

to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your

children. They are the sons and

daughters of Life's longing for

itself.

They come through you but not

from you.

And though they are with you

yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but

not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but

not their souls.

For their souls dwell in the house

of tomorrow, which you cannot

visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like

you.

For life goes not backward nor

tarries with yesterday.