Are You Overparenting? Tips on How to Avoid It (VIDEO)
Today’s parents are overstressed and under too much pressure to produce the perfect kids, says Lori Gottlieb, therapist and author of the Atlantic article “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy: Why our obsession with our kids’ happiness may be doing them to unhappy adulthoods.”
“I think that parents are a lot more worried today,” Gottlieb says. “They feel like, what they see on the news, what can go wrong … they feel like they have to get [kids] a head start in a way they didn’t in previous generations.” Watch Gottlieb talk more about why parents are overstressed:
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Whether it be doing baby brain boosters, or getting their children into the “right” preschool and the “right” college, Gottlieb says, parents think “that somehow this is going to set [kids] on a track to happiness.” “I think parents are really overworking themselves,” she adds.
Are you guilty of overparenting? Gottlieb offer tips below on how to get over it:
Lori Gottlieb
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“Look at why you’re making the choices you’re making,” Gottlieb says. “It is to keep up with the Joneses…(or) the Joneses’ kids? Why are you feeling that pressure? What do you think is going to best for your child as opposed to what everyone around you is doing?”
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genConnect was credentialed press at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colo., where we interviewed the premier speakers and attendees at the conference. For more of our video interviews and articles from the Ideas Festival, click here.
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Category: 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival, Parenting, Relationships
