Intrusive or Helicopter Parenting and Perfectionism Can Be Harmful To Children

A five-year long study concluded that intrusive or helicopter parenting is harmful to kids. Researchers from the National University of Singapore said that kids with perfectionist or intrusive parents may likely suffer from anxiety and depression. There's a tendency to increase their being self-critical in the long run.

An example is when perfectionist parents push their children to get good or better grades and they tend to over react whenever their children fail. Kids would start feeling afraid of making even the slightest mistake or start blaming themselves for "not being perfect," giving them idea that they're "never good enough," Tech Times reports.

Lead author and Assistant Professor Ryan Hong revealed that 60 percent of the children trained under intrusive parenting were highly self-critical that even the smallest mistakes make them anxious, while 78 percent were perfectionists and 59 percent have developed both behaviors. The study involved 263 children from 7 to 11 years old enrolled at 10 primary schools in Singapore, between 2010 and 2014. More than half of the participants may suffer from anxiety, depression or even suicidal tendencies in serious cases later in life, as per ZME Science.

How to Refrain from Helicopter Parenting

Hong recommends that parents must be careful not to pressure their kids too hard to get high grades by letting kids have a wider environment to explore and not overreact when kids commit mistakes since it's part of the learning process. Instead of displaying perfectionism, parents should have a conscious effort to be mindful of their children's feelings.

Parents may lose a child in a long-term from being intrusive so they should refrain from expecting too much from their kids or blaming them that they did not live up to their parent's expecting .The main goal of parenting is to encourage a child to learn, not to stop him or her from making a mistake, according to Modvive.