The Devastating Consequences of Over-Parenting

[@tommyjames3993]

You have said what I've been thinking for years, adults are vicariously living their children's lives. Everything their children say and do is a reflection on them. Small children are not given the opportunity to discover anything, everything must be educational there is no room for play or imagination. Middle school aged children are held hostage by clubs and after school activities. Dance classes, riding school, sports, piano lessons, beauty pageants, there is no down time. In these families no one eats dinner together, no breakfast time. After all these extracurricular activities are out of the way students need to do their homework. The kids are exhausted so the parents do their homework assignments and the kids retreat to their rooms and surf Tic-toc until midnight. The parents don't have any down time either so by the time the kids are grown the parents have nothing in common and they get a divorce. The kids are for the most part uneducated and get terrible grades in college and spend all their time partying, they flunk out of college and end up living at home and work waiting tables at the Olive Garden.

[@drtoddtalks]

Haha. There is some truth to the bleak picture you just painted. One of your statements reminds me of an interesting statistic I recently came across -- The #1 predictor of less likely substance abuse in adolescents is the number of family meals they have in a week. Having time to just be together really is important. Creating small rituals of connection can have a profound effect on our kids.