By Michael Ungar - What I'm finding through my clinical work and research is that families that bubble-wrap their children may prevent their healthy maturation. Helping parents look back and explore their own narratives challenges the need for excessive control of their child. The parent's role shifts from emphasizing protection to becoming a facilitator of experiences that build capacity, common sense, and positive relationships.

There’s now consensus among social scientists that children in developed countries have never been safer. But the new normal is a growing pattern of overprotection that I’ve seen emerging as one of the thorniest clinical issues for therapists because it can look so reasonable. Rather than insisting that parents change their behavior and supervise their children less, I focus on how they can give their kids opportunities to experience the manageable amounts of risk and responsibility needed for success.

While not all overprotective parents are as extreme in their behaviors as Shyam (indeed, few experience themselves as being obsessive at all), many middle-class families are struggling to decide how much protection is the right amount, even when their children are showing signs of anxiety and rebellion as a result. Whether these families are my clients or my neighbors, overprotective parenting appears to have become the rule, rather than the exception, in today’s world.

We've become so focused on keeping children safe that we exaggerate the dangers they face despite the fact that they’ve never been safer. Still, no amount of statistical reports can get parents to stop hovering over their child. What’s a therapist to do?

An understanding of the unconventional ways people demonstrate resilience is important in helping us avoid pathologizing clients and stop believing there’s only one clinically “correct” way to help them.

Risk-averse parents who overprotect their children do them no favors.