Are you are overinvolved in your children's lives? Learn how it affects them.
KEY POINTS
- Overnurture is a form of childhood overindulgence. Overnurture is being over involved in your children's lives.
- There is a difference between true nurture and overnurture. Overnurture smothers children. Nurture helps them.
- Overnurtured children don't know what is enough, feel helpless,have poor self-control,want things immediately.
- Parents need to understand child development and have expectations that foster healthy child development.
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What Is Overnurture?
Overnurture is a form of childhood overindulgence. "Overnurturing is doing things for children that they could or should be doing for themselves or keeping them from learning to handle situations they should be mastering. It is smothering children with too much care and attention" Clarke, et al., (2014, p. 13).
Overnurture is being over-involved in your children’s lives. It is doing things that children should be doing for themselves, smothering them with love, becoming involved in everything they do, making sure they are always entertained, and hovering over them constantly trying to insulate them from frustration, stress, and anxiety. Do you overnurture your child? Take the following test to find out.
What Happens When We Overnurture Our Children?
Children need nurture to survive. True nurture is a good thing. We nurture children by giving them food, clothing, shelter, protection, touch, recognition, and love. However, there is a difference between true nurture and overnurture. When we become overinvolved in our children's lives and smother them, negative things can happen. Children who are overnurtured:
- Become confused about what is enough.
- Feel a sense of helplessness.
- Confuse wants and needs.
- Believe and act as though one is the center of the universe.
- Expect immediate gratification.
- Have poor self-control.
- Have an overblown sense of entitlement.
Why Do Parents Overnurture?
When a parent overfunctions for their child it inhibits their child's abilities to function for themselves. As a parent, if I overfunction, it almost guarantees you will underfunction. Each time I overfunction for a child, it deprives them of a chance to learn how to care for themself and others. Then why do parents overnurture their children?
- It is seen as a way of controlling children.
- To keep their child happy.
- To feel like they are good parents.
- To compete with a parent's peer group.
- Because they don't know or understand child development.
- Because they lack the knowledge, time, or energy, to teach children life skills.
So What's A Family To Do?
Learning about childhood overindulgence and how it affects children is just the first and most important step. The next step is to understand child development followed by expectations that foster healthy development. For example:
- Everyone three years old and up does some household task five times a week.
- Everyone does the self-care tasks that are appropriate for their age.
- Everyone eats at least five meals a week with other family members.
- Everyone does at least one nonscreen activity with the whole family every week.
- Everyone does some act of kindness for another every day.
- Everyone does something for the good of the community every week.
Surround yourself with other like-minded non-overindulgent parents who support each other. Your mission is not to become part of the new normal - our overindulgent culture.
Practice Aloha. Do all things with love, grace, and gratitude.
© 2025 David J. Bredehoft
References
Bredehoft, D. J., Mennicke, S. A., Potter, A. M., & Clarke, J. I. (1998). Perceptions attributed by adults to parental overindulgence during childhood. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences Education, 16(2), 3-17.
Bredehoft, D. J. (2013). Empirical connections between parental overindulgence patterns, parenting styles, and parent sense of competence. Executive Summary: Study 9. Retrieved from: http://www.overindulgence.org/about-our-research/empirical-connections-betwe.pdf
Clarke, J. I., Dawson, C., Bredehoft, D. J. (2014). How much is too much? Raising likeable, responsible, respectful children - from toddlers to teens - in an age of overindulgence. NY: Da Capo Lifelong Press