Let the Leash Out: Am I an Overprotective Parent? - Episode: 124

Kids are more capable than we give them credit for.

Most parenting decisions in the moment aren't really about the moment; they're about our own fear of failure, embarrassment, or losing control. In this episode, we break down a parenting moment. We unpack three markers of overprotective parenting: being overly informed, overly involved, and overly comfortable, and dig into the emotions and old baggage that drive parents to step in before they need to.

Listen on your preferred platform:

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Highlights:

• The three markers of overprotective parenting, and how to spot them in yourself
• Why gathering too much information about your kid's life can backfire
• The difference between supporting a kid through conflict and rescuing them from it
• Why physical and emotional struggle are things kids need, not things to prevent
• The thought patterns underneath overprotective actions and where they actually come from

Practical takeaways:

• Before stepping in, ask whether you're protecting your kid or protecting yourself from discomfort
• Let conflicts between siblings or friends play out before intervening
• Notice when "helping" is actually taking away a chance for your kid to build confidence

Parenting isn't about eliminating risk; it's about knowing which risks build resilience and which ones just make you feel better in the moment.

If this episode helped you think differently, share it with another guy who’d benefit from the conversation.

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This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, Tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community, and most importantly, your family.

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Alright, what's up? Episode 124. A few weeks ago, I was outdatted. I was next door at my neighbor's house. It was the 3rd of July. There's this huge party in our neighborhood every year because you can see the fireworks from all of our backyards. So pool parties, house parties, people over, families, kids all over the place. And this year, our neighbors decided to host the first neighborhood parade for the 3rd of July. Their grandpa brought over 10 battery-powered vehicles. So those fake John Deere gators and big wheels, power wheels, there were bicycles, there were strollers, and there were a few kids' dirt bikes. Right before the parade started, the grandpa came over to me and was like, hey, just want to let you know Luna's on one of the dirt bikes. And I don't know if she's ever rode one before. I was like, okay, Luna's our eight-year-old. She has never rode one of those dirt bikes before. In my head, I start walking back there like shit. I gotta get her off of this. When I get there, my daughter has an awesome way of digging her heels in, and we start discussing getting off the bike, and I tell her you've never rode one before. Riding in the neighborhood parade isn't the time to learn. She tells me that there was a boy on the bike before her. And in order for her to get the bike, she had to trade all of her uh popper firework things. And behind her are two dads sitting in lawn chairs, and they're kind of mouthing to me, just let her do it, waving their hands, just let her do it. And I laughed and I was like, Really, guys? She's never rode one before. And one of the dads was like, Luna, do you know where the throttle is? And she was like, Yeah. And she showed him, and do you know where the brake is? And she said, Yeah, and she showed him and he said, Okay, turn around, ride it down to that fire hydrant and back. And so she did it a little wobbly, but she had it. He asked her how she felt, and she said, Good. And I was like, All right, you're in, get back in line. And as she got back in line, she hit the brake a little too hard, and she shortstopped. And I was like, ah, in my head, am I making the wrong decision here? But the other dad was just like, the brake's not on and off. You can feather it a little bit. You don't need to just slam the brake. That was what she needed, and the parade was off. I kind of let them go, and then I rode my bike around the back way and caught them as they're coming around the corner. I see Luna on the dirt bike with a huge smile on her face. We made eye contact and I gave her a thumbs up and she kept going. Parade ended. I went over to those dads, and I was like, dude, you believed more in my daughter than I did in that moment. And he said, kids are more capable than we give them credit

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for. I'm telling you this because it got me thinking about my parenting. I wish that I hadn't questioned her. I wish I would have just let her go because that smile on her face was a smile of accomplishment. It was a smile of doing something new, doing something hard. And I almost took that away from her. And it got me thinking, am I an overprotective parent? Am I a helicopter parent? And I don't even know it. What the heck is a helicopter parent? So, this podcast, you can think of a checks and balance of being over-protective of our kids because we want to build resilient kids, kids that are willing to take a chance, take a hit, and then get back in the game. One of our jobs as parents is to protect our kids, but when we over-protect them, we don't give them the chance to fail. We don't give them the chance to become resilient. We take away the opportunity to build confidence and a belief in themselves. So we're gonna look at what overprotection looks like, how to identify it, and then

SPEAKER_00 4:49 

we're gonna look at why. Why do we overprotect? Breaking this down, we're gonna look at overprotection with three different markers. The first marker is overly informed. Are we trying to gather more information than is appropriate for the age of our kid? And we can think about location tracking, or we could think about how much information we try to gather about their day or about their friends or about their activities. And that latter part, asking questions, gathering information, definitely applies to me with our daughters trying to ask them a lot of questions about their life, and it feels like we want to be involved and we feel like we're supporting them that way, but a lot of the kids don't want to talk about their day. And if they don't want to talk about it, how much do we push? Just a question to kind of check and ask yourself. The location tracking is more geared towards kids that are older than mine. I'm not sure I can really relate to this experience, but the goal of this podcast and all of my podcasts isn't to tell you what to do, it's to build self-awareness so you can decide how you want to live, how you want to parent, how you want to be in a relationship, acting in a way that aligns with who you want to be with the life that you want to create. So I've heard of parents that track their kids' location on their phone or have car-only trackers. I'm pretty sure that my mom still tracks my sister's location. This tech is out there, but is it a reason to actually track our kids? There's real risk out in the world, but does the news, does media make that risk feel bigger than it actually is? If we are overly informed about their locations and we're tracking them all the time, the fallout might be they feel that we as parents don't trust them. And if we don't trust them, how are they gonna build that trust in themselves? Or the fallout could be that the parents' fear becomes the lens that their kids look through when they go into the world. We want our kids to be street smart, but we know from listening to this podcast that the brain's already looking out for danger. Are we gonna take our fear of the world, of different situations, and instill that in our kids if we're overly informed on their tracking? Again, this is age appropriate. I don't really know what it's like to have a teenager when the consequences get a little more real, but this is about checking yourself, understanding how you want to parent.

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Second marker, overly informed. And this is intervening too early when your kid is in conflict. One example that I'm thinking of, I have some friends that are sending their daughter to college this year, and this summer leading into college, the kids having a really good time late nights, sleeping in, working, hanging out with friends, not really thinking about the first semester, not planning her arrival to school, what the semester is going to look like. My friends really want her to have a to-do list, to get have everything laid out, to have a plan of what needs to happen when she gets to school. And if they ask her to do those things, if they make her do those things, is that being overly involved? Is that being a helicopter parent? And we talked through it a little bit. They talked about how if they did have that conversation, there'd be tension, she would push back, and we talked about how she's 18 years old and she's gonna be gone. And they came to this idea. I don't know, I don't know exactly what they ended up doing, but they came with this idea that they're gonna set some standard for the end of semester one, a grade standard. Like if you get grades lower than this, we're not gonna pay for room and board anymore. You can come home, we'll figure out the next steps. Giving her that runway to build her own skills, to figure out life a little bit on her own. And they also wanted to let her know that they believed in her, that they believed she could do it. If she needed any help, they were there to talk through to-do list, to strategize, but they weren't going to force it on her. So that was one example that I thought of. Another one that Brendan and I read early about in our parenting was that when kids get into an argument, let them figure it out. Don't insert yourself to try to facilitate apologies and sharing, let them hash it out. And there are moments when I'm in the kitchen and kids are in the playroom next door, they're arguing over something, and I want to hop in and intervene, but I don't. And there's a balance there. If someone's being super mean or someone starts crying, I'll pop in, I'll connect with them. But even then, kids can figure that stuff out for themselves. And if we just scoop in, we start teaching them that they can't figure out their own conflicts. Overly involved means different things at different ages. Another place it shows up a lot is how we let our kids communicate with teachers or with coaches. I was listening to a podcast a couple years ago, and this always stuck with me. It was an ex-hockey player, and he was talking about how he raises his kids in sports. And whenever his kid wants more playing time or wants to be captain or get to the next level, he has his kid ask the coach. Like, what do I need to do to get more playing time? The parent isn't the mediator through this, and it's the same thing in school. If you want your grades up, go ask your teacher what needs to happen to get your grades up. That's marker number two. What does it look like to be involved in your kid's life in a healthy way so that the kid still believes they're capable of doing things themselves? You can support them without just fixing their conflicts. Marker

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one, overly informed, marker two, overly involved, marker three, overly comfortable. We remove struggle from our kids before it even happens. Overly comfortable isn't just a problem for kids, it's a problem for adults too. We get used to being safe, feeling comfortable, the nice things in life, and we don't remember what it's like to struggle, get out of your comfort zone. If parents are leading by example, kids learn more by what they see their parents doing versus what we tell them. Are our kids seeing that we're overly comfortable, that we don't struggle, that we don't take chances? And there's physical comfort and safety. I think about being at the playground with your kids. How much of a leash do you let them climb? Do you let them possibly get hurt? Again, with the overly informed and risks out in the world, the news and media and consumerism definitely pumps up safety, like it's very, very important. But kids are supposed to fall down, they're supposed to knock their heads, they're supposed to break bones, that's okay. How do we react when that happens? When my daughter gets hurt inside of me, there is a quick somatic reaction of wanting to go and help her right away. I've learned to take a breath, simmer, wait, see if she's actually hurt or if she can figure it out herself. Be there for support if she looks at me, but let her know that she can handle that physical pain. It's not something to be that worried about. There's also emotional struggle. So I was thinking about our three-year-old getting dressed. It takes her a long time to get dressed. She struggles with it. She's annoyed at herself when she can't do it. She got her pants on yesterday, but she can't get her pants on today. And watching her struggle is uncomfortable for me. I think two things go on there. One is sometimes I want her to get dressed quick because we have to go somewhere. And then the other is listening to her say that she can't do it, that she's bad at it, that negative self-talk that gets me uncomfortable. But life isn't a comfortable place. And if we let our kids struggle, they'll learn that they're capable of it. They'll learn that feeling of self-doubt isn't a reason to stop. It isn't a reason to ask someone else to swoop in and do it for them, that they are capable. It's that growth mindset. I can do hard things. So those are the three markers to gauge yourself if you're being a protective parent, which is a good, healthy role that's protective in a way where your kid can build confidence. Or are you being that overprotective parent that maybe isn't letting your kid build the resiliency, build the confidence in themselves?

SPEAKER_00 15:02 

Now, why are we over-protective? Overprotective is an action. It's how we parent in the world, it's what we say to our kids, it's what we don't say, it's the boundaries we set, it's the yeses, it's the no's. Parenting is action. For an example, let's go with me not wanting my daughter to ride the dirt bike. That was my action. I was gonna go tell her that she can't ride the dirt bike. All of our actions come from our emotions and our thinking. So if I'm gonna go and want my daughter off this bike, what are my thoughts in my brain that are creating this action? In that moment, from when the grandpa told me that Luna was getting on that bike and me seeing her on that bike, in my head, I was thinking, she's gonna crash, she's gonna hurt another kid, it's gonna be a big scene. I want to avoid all those things. I want to avoid her getting hurt, I want to avoid a scene and feeling embarrassed because my kid messed up the parade. That's all my internal bullshit to navigate before I make a decision. Maybe I make a decision to get her off that dirt bike, and that's the right decision to do. But I want to understand why I'm making that decision. So we want to examine our thoughts. Some of these thoughts are the world is unsafe, or I don't want them to get hurt. Or for me, it was I don't want to cause a scene. I don't want them to be embarrassed, I don't want them to fail. I don't want my kid to fail the test or lose the game or not make the team. Most of these thoughts come from our experience as a kid, or our experience of the information we're taking in, or what we're hearing from other parents. We want to separate who we are and all of our thoughts and all of our baggage from how we're parenting our kids. If you're listening to this podcast, you're crushing it as a parent because you care and you're involved. However, maybe we're over involved, maybe we're overprotective. We want to build resilient kids. And the way that we can do that is letting the leash out a little bit, letting them fail. So go through these markers, ask yourself these questions, have these conversations with your spouse. That line that the dad in the front yard of my neighbor's house said to me is sticking with me.

SPEAKER_00 17:49 

Kids are more capable than we give them credit for. All right, that's what I got for you guys today. Have an awesome week, and I'll catch you next time.