Our situation: we have one boy, 4 years old.
1. Am I vaguely in the ball park with this topic or am I totally missing the point?
Spot on!
2. Are we adequately preparing our kids for life beyond childhood?
For those parents that are putting helmets and kneepads on their children to cross the street, filling every moment with activities, and/or making sure their children play in sports where "everyone is a winner" I think not. I've seen several news shows (60 Minutes, 20/20, etc.) that have ran segments on how corporations are now evolving to care for these kids that constantly require positive feedback. IMO, this is not a good direction to be heading.
3. When does protecting, guiding and encouraging a child go from being a positive to a negative?
Protecting: let the child explore their worlds unguarded in controlled situations. This type of parenting has allowed our child to figure out his boundaries. I know if I was all "padded up" when riding a bike when I was a kid I would have been 10x more gutsy in my stunts...and would have likely ended up breaking bones. As it turns out, I never work any protective gear, yet never had a single broken bones...even after launching off many ramps built with saw horses and plywood from houses being built in the neighborhood.
Guiding/Encouraging: We like to take the approach of exposing our child to many experiences. Only if he shows an interest in something do we find ways to enable him to explore in greater detail. We also buy very few toys that are tied to any movie (or similar). This allows him to use his own imagination, not someone else's. His favorite toys have always been the type like wooden blocks.
4. What are the signs, symptoms and consequences of an over-protective parent?
I preface my response to this question with: I don't believe there is a distinct line...especially given every single child is different. However, for us and our child our gauge is acceptable consequences. Let's take biking as an easy example. If we are just biking along our relatively flat sidewalk then a helmet (or any other padding) isn't necessary. We accept that our child could crash and get scraped and cut. It is extremely unlikely that he would break any bones or worse. We also rarely just let our child win in competitive activities. We feel that it is important that he learns how to lose. For one, we want him to strive to better himself. In addition, we want him to learn how to handle those inevitable situations where he will fail. We really stress that it is difficult to be successful (a winner) without failing/mistakes and hard work.
5. Do we tell our over-protective, neurotic, control-freak friends what they’re doing or do we stay out of it?
For the most part we stay out of it. Again, every single child is different. I think we are very fortunate that our child has been able to handle some tough challenges. We absolutely would not do that if we had a child we did not think could handle it. As a perfect example, recently while at a classmate's birthday party we told a parent that we told our son about death, war, and guns when my grandfather passed away recently. We took our son to the funeral and he saw the body and quietly sat through the hour and a half event. Of course, the parent was horrified that we exposed our son to that. We only did it because we knew he could handle it. He does very well at handling death (our dog passed away as well) and understands what it means. Of course, he asked us the dreaded question, "I don't want to die." to which we answered, "you don't have to worry about that for a very long time. Mommy and Daddy are much older than you and we don't have to worry about dying either." And that was that. Again, if we had a child that we did not think could handle that, of course, we would not have exposed him.
Bottom line: You have to do what's right for your child (not yourself). Don't be afraid to challenge their comfort zones. And no matter how much you think you know other people's kids, you don't live with them 24x7, so you should never judge.
6. Your general thoughts on the matter?
Being overprotective or coddling is a very passionate topic of mine. Unfortunately, given the complexity of this topic my responses to these questions are far from complete. However, I do think we may be seeing things swinging back to center a bit (which isn't that the case for a lot of things--swing to both extremes before coming to center, then rinse-and-repeat). While we may be slightly more extreme than today's norm, I think we are surrounded by many parents that are more like us than what's considered over-protective.
