Are Helicopter Parents Abusing Their Bubble-Wrapped Kids?
Are bubble-wrapped kids being inadvertently traumatized by their overprotective parents?
Why Bubble-Wrapped Kids Grow Up Feeling As Overwhelmed As Abused Kids
It seems like a lot of young people today feel helpless and overwhelmed. They’re anxious and stressed and have little confidence in their ability to solve their own problems. In fact, they feel like victims in their lives.
Two types of childhood experiences leave young people feeling this way.
The experience of childhood abuse and trauma that leaves the young person with a sense of “learned helplessness;” and the experiences bubble-wrapped kids being so overly protected that the young person fails to develop a strong sense of autonomy, accountability, and confidence.
The experience of trauma leaves lasting scars. The young person’s feelings of helplessness and being overwhelmed can linger for decades.
Abuse and trauma are debilitating, and when a child is hurt by an adult, and no other adult comes to protect or rescue him, he’s left with what’s called “learned helplessness,” or the belief that he’ll never be able to escape similar hurts when he’s grown up. As an adult, he’ll feel incapable of fending for himself.
What few of us consider, however, is how debilitating it is to be raised by parents who bubble wrap their child.
Victim-mentality is a sense of helplessness in the face of difficulties.
It’s terrible to grow up being hurt or abused, but it’s just as bad for a child when her parents take over doing the things that the child should be learning how to do for herself, or when the parents protect the child from every possible hurt, loss or disappointment.
While it’s clear that trauma can be extremely damaging, an excess of coddling and overprotecting can have the same result, as bubble-wrapped kids fail to build the necessary skills and resilience (not to mention character) that will enable her to cope with the inevitable challenges of life.
Victim-mentality is a sense of helplessness in the face of difficulties. It’s a sense of fearfulness, a lack of confidence and the experience of self-doubt. Someone with victim-mentality believes that they can’t cope with life’s stresses and that other people are far better equipped to deal with their problems than they are.
Traumatized young people often grow up feeling this way, but so do many bubble-wrapped kids who have grown up with helicopter parents. It’s clearly not just the presence of abuse but an excess of parental smothering that prevents a young person from growing up to feel confident and empowered.
The cure for those who’ve been neglected, abused or traumatized is to spend time on healing the emotional wounds incurred from such a childhood and to develop a deep and lasting sense of self-confidence – confidence in their ability to handle whatever life throws them.
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