Breaking The Hyper-Parenting Habit

(CBS)  It's always with the best intentions, but parents have a way of going overboard when it comes to taking care of their children. It's a syndrome Family Circle calls "hyper parenting."

And when The Early Show went out looking for guilty parties, they didn't have to go far. Right here in New York City, three mothers confessed.

Fran Knowles: "I am guilty of doing a little too much for my daughter. I take her pretty much wherever she wants to go. If she needs to be driven to a party or friend's house, I change my plans and take her where she wants to go."

Alison Akant: "I think it's very hard. I feel that my parents didn't do enough for me, so I'm overcompensating."

Maggie Schwartz: "It's inevitable you compare what you do for your own kids to what other people are doing and you wonder who is right and who's got the right balance."

Family Circle's editor in chief, Linda Fears, visited The Early Show to talk about the problem and how parents can overcome the urge.

"If you try to fix or eliminate any problem your child may face, you are doing too much," she told co-anchor Hannah Storm. "It's really easy to get into that pattern. Nobody wants their kid to be hurt or sad. But the truth is, if your child is always saved from these situations, he's going to start to feel like there's something wrong with him like he's either not smart enough or strong enough to handle a situation on his own."

Fears says it's not only a problem for children, but for their parents, too.

"It's really not good for anybody," she said. "It's very easy to fall into that pattern. The reason why a lot of parents end up doing this is because they, from birth, a lot of parents feel like they have to orchestrate their child's life."

A good example of hyper-parenting is the tendency to sign children up for multiple activities, expecting them to excel at them all.

"That's not the point in having your child do a lot of activities, so he'll be great at everything," Fears said. "There are few kids that are great at everything. It's important to expose them to a lot of different activities so they can find out what they are passionate about and love. Those are the activities that they are going to try their hardest at and excel at."

• 1
• 2
• Next Page »