Parents are significantly less inclined to step in when their young children are getting dressed or handling simple tasks if these activities are presented as chances for learning, as revealed in a recent study.
According to a new study by researchers at Yale, parents tend to intervene less when their young children are getting dressed or doing other basic chores if they perceive these tasks as opportunities for learning.
Recent media coverage and scholarly research indicate that overparenting is becoming more common. This is a parenting approach where adults consistently take control of tasks that children should be allowed to handle themselves, which can negatively impact children’s ability to complete tasks independently.
Published on November 21 in the journal Child Development, the study discovered that when getting dressed was presented as a learning opportunity for preschoolers, parental intervention decreased by about 50%.
“When an adult intervenes to do a task for a young child, it can rob the child of a valuable learning experience, potentially hindering their development of self-efficacy, autonomy, and other essential life skills,” noted Reut Shachnai, a graduate student in Yale’s Department of Psychology and the lead author of the study. “Our results imply that if everyday tasks are framed as opportunities for learning, it can greatly reduce overparenting and enhance children’s independence, persistence, and resilience.”
The research included three phases. In the first phase, the researchers surveyed 77 parents of 4-to-5-year-olds (with 62% mothers and 38% fathers) to understand their views on children’s learning and their overparenting tendencies, as well as differences in these perceptions between academic tasks and everyday responsibilities. Parents indicated that they were less likely to take over tasks they considered as significant learning opportunities—typically more academic tasks like puzzle solving or tracing letters compared to basic chores like getting dressed.
For the second component, the researchers conducted an experiment at a children’s museum in Philadelphia to see if viewing dressing up as an educational chance would lead to less parental intervention. To keep the activity engaging and challenging, the children were asked to put on hockey gear, including two shin guards and a chest guard. Before the experiment, it was confirmed that the children could successfully complete the task themselves; thus, any parental intervention could be deemed as overparenting.
The researchers randomly assigned 30 parent-child pairs to either a “big learning opportunity” group—where parents were informed that dressing was a chance for children to gain essential lifelong skills—or a control group, where parents were told that dress-up activities helped kids engage with the museum.
The findings showed that framing dressing as a learning opportunity led to a reduction in parental assistance, from an average of 8.6 actions in the control group to just 4.4 in the learning opportunity group. Furthermore, parents were more likely to offer encouragement and positive feedback when the task was framed as a learning experience.
A follow-up experiment examined whether parents’ views on the extent of the learning opportunity influenced their level of intervention during tasks. Eighty parent-child pairs were randomly split into two groups: one group was told that getting dressed was a chance to learn important lifelong skills while the other was told that it allowed children to understand hockey gear.
The results indicated that there was no significant difference in parental intervention between the two groups, suggesting that parents are less likely to intervene whenever they perceive tasks as learning opportunities, regardless of their perceived importance.
“It’s common for parents to take over everyday tasks when they are short on time, but evidence suggests this may undermine children’s motivation to do things independently,” said Julia Leonard, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale and the study’s senior author. “We recommend to parents, teachers, and mentors: the next time you feel the urge to complete a task for a child, pause and consider the valuable lessons they could gain from attempting it on their own.”
Mika Asaba, a postdoctoral fellow in Yale’s Department of Psychology, and Lingyan Hu, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, contributed as coauthors of the study.
