Intrusive Parenting, Why Should It Be Avoided?

“Difficult kids” are often tempted to engage in intrusive parenting ; But this, in the medium and long term, ends up deteriorating family ties and leading to unhealthy behavior patterns. In this matter, there is a critical age: 2 years.

At 2 years of age, the child experiences a sudden desire for independence that, obviously, he does not channel in a coherent way. In this phase, the little ones begin to exhibit challenging and often aggressive attitudes , which to a large extent are expressed in the classic “tantrum”. Those behaviors are what unleash the temptation to start intrusive parenting.

The challenge is to help the child channel these disruptive behaviors without educating the child  becoming an anxious and overly directive task. Is not easy. Parents have concerns of their own and a child who becomes “unbearable” at times is not helpful. However, implementing intrusive parenting, as tempting as it may seem as a solution, can make things worse.

Intrusive parenting

What characterizes intrusive parenting is an excessive desire for control  in response to challenging behaviors in children. This is responded to with a pattern that claims to be extremely directive; that is to say, excessively full of instructions, mandates and directives in front of the little one.

Deep down, it is thought that the appropriate thing is to prevent or limit the child’s autonomous behavior as much as possible, since it is assumed that he does not know how to exercise that freedom nor will he learn if the adult does not give him precise guidelines. Likewise, it is common to try to prevent the externalization of expressions and feelings to keep everything under control.

Disruptive parenting appears when parents feel frustrated by their child’s behavior, transforming their helplessness into anger towards the little one. Sometimes individual differences and comparisons intensify these feelings. In this sense, what has been proven is that excessive control and limitation, in most cases, only increases the problem.

Children’s challenges

From the age of 2, the child begins to notably increase his autonomy. The world is not known or known, but he wants to broaden his horizons of exploration and action. They do not want to exasperate anyone, they are simply learning, discovering reality.

The behaviors that most frequently generate anger and frustration in their parents are the following:

• Reiteration. Sometimes they ask for something repeatedly, with the intention that the father or the mother grant it to them out of exhaustion. It is the classic: “Say yes, say yes, say yes …”

• Threats. If they themselves feel frustrated in their desires, they will resort to threats such as “I will not love you anymore” or phrases like that.
• Victimization. Sometimes they yell that no one loves them, or that no one is interested in them, to sow blame on parents and get what they want.
• Tantrum. It is typical of the youngest children and has to do with developing a chaotic behavior that prevents things from following their normal course.
• Physical aggression. Some children throw objects or break things in order to get their way.

Parenting and behavior

It has been proven that different variables influence the behavior of the child, with genetics and education standing out for their weight. In other words, parenting style also shapes a child’s temperament. As a general rule, if the parents lose control of the situation, they contribute to the children being more challenging as well.

What you have to instill in a child is the idea that these chaotic behaviors are exhausting and useless for him. Tolerate their childish and disproportionate expression in the eyes of an adult, firmly and calmly. A parenting of this style has two objectives. The first of them is to open a margin of autonomy for the little one in which he can express himself freely.

The second objective is for them to learn, from their own experience, the ineffectiveness of these disruptive behaviors. What reinforces or weakens these behaviors are the consequences they generate. Even if you don’t get what you want, if you see your parents angry or out of control, you know that doing this gives you a certain power.

That is precisely what should be avoided. The child must be offered a dialogue, a channel of expression in which he can be listened to and attended to. Explain why you can’t get what you want and prove that certain impulsive behaviors won’t get you anything either. This path, of patience and love, is the one that gradually dismantles those reactions.