A recent study by Yale University suggests that parents tend to intervene less with their children’s tasks when those tasks are viewed as learning opportunities. This finding could provide a useful approach for parents to avoid overparenting, a practice that is increasingly common and can hinder a child’s developing independence and motivation.
Overparenting is a term describing a parenting style where adults routinely take over tasks or resolve problems for their children, even when it’s appropriate for the child to handle these tasks on their own. This practice has been shown to decrease children’s motivation to complete tasks independently.
However, the Yale study, published in the Child Development journal on November 21, found that redefining a task such as dressing oneself as a learning opportunity for a preschool-aged child could reduce parental intervention by approximately 50%.
Reut Shachnai, lead author of the study and a graduate student in Yale’s Department of Psychology, explains that when adults intervene and complete a task for a young child, this may rob the child of a chance to learn how to do it on their own, which is crucial for developing self-efficacy, autonomy, and other essential life skills. Shachnai suggests that everyday tasks can be framed as learning opportunities, thereby reducing overparenting and promoting children’s independence, persistence, and resilience.
The study, divided into three parts, comprised an initial survey of 77 parents of 4-to-5-year-olds to gauge their perceptions of children’s learning and their overparenting behaviors. Parents reported less intervention on tasks they viewed as greater learning opportunities, typically academic tasks like solving puzzles or tracing letters, rather than non-academic chores like getting dressed.
In the second part, researchers conducted an experiment at a children’s museum in Philadelphia. They presented dressing up in hockey gear as a learning experience and found that this framing reduced parental intervention by half.
In the final phase, researchers tested whether parents’ perceptions of the significance of the learning opportunity influenced their intervention levels. While the parents were less likely to intervene when a task was seen as a learning opportunity, whether it was perceived as a significant or minor learning opportunity made no difference.
Julia Leonard, assistant professor of psychology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the study’s senior author, cautions that while it’s common for time-pressed parents to complete everyday tasks for their children, this behavior can demotivate kids from doing things for themselves. Leonard advises parents, teachers, and mentors to consider the learning potential in everyday tasks and encourage children to complete them independently.
Mika Asaba, a postdoctoral fellow in Yale’s Department of Psychology, and Lingyan Hu, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, also contributed to the study.
