Parental Vigilant Care

A Guide for Clinicians and Caretakers

Haim Omer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317230618
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

This volume presents the concept of vigilant care as a protective and non-intrusive parental attitude to risky behaviors of children and adolescents. The effective component in vigilant care is not control, but parental presence. Vigilant care is a flexible attitude in which parents shift between levels of open attention, focused attention, and protective action, according to the alarm signals they detect. The author presents a detailed theoretical, empirical, and clinical rationale for the model that deals with potentially problematic parental attitudes or parent-child processes such as overparenting, psychological control, disregard of legitimate personal domains or of the child's need for self-determination, parent-child mutual distancing, and escalation.

Contents

1Vigilant Care

with oren dritter and shai satran

2Vigilant Care in Daily Life

with tal fisher and shai satran

3When the Child Resists

with yoel everett

4Lies

with shai satran

5Friends

with gabriela hanga

6Money

with yael nevat and tal fisher

7Cigarettes, Alcohol and Drugs

with tal carty, dan solomon and avigail hirsch-asa

8Computers and the Internet

with yaron sela

9Diabetes

with yael rothman-kabir

10Vigilant Care Among Juvenile Offenders

haim omer and zohar lotringer in collaboration with the israeli juvenile probation service and the or yarok association for prevention of road accidents

11Teen Driving

with c. t. juravel and y. shimshoni

Conclusion

List of Contributors

Notes

Index

1Vigilant Care

with, Oren Dritter and Shai Satran

Parents are often confused when it comes to what is the best attitude regarding ­the prevention of risk behaviors by children, and especially by adolescents. On the one hand, they want to monitor their children closely, so as to know about any danger or temptation to which the child may be exposed. On the other hand, they want to develop an atmosphere of trust that may encourage their children to confide in them spontaneously. Both aims are worthy, but at times they are bound to clash, putting the parents in a difficult dilemma. Thus, in trying to promote openness and trust, the parents may find out that their child has lied to them or is involved in problematic friendships or activities; or in trying to supervise their child’s activities closely, the parents may find out that the relationship deteriorates, that the child fights back or blames them, sometimes rightfully, for impinging on her¹ autonomy and damaging her social life. Interestingly, research on parenting and risk prevention seems to be affected by the same dilemma: some authorities in the field adduce evidence that spontaneous disclosure by the child is the key to risk prevention, and that unilateral parental supervision might not only be unhelpful, but even detrimental to the atmosphere that is conducive to disclosure (Kerr et al., 2010); others adduce no less convincing evidence that, without decided parental supervision, adolescents exposed to risk situations may fare badly (Keijsers et al., 2009; Keijsers & Laird, 2014; Soenens et al., 2006). The purpose of this book is to present a comprehensive model of vigilant care that may help solve this dilemma.

Scientific opinion on this matter has not always been thus divided. Most theorists and researchers once considered parental monitoring the gold standard for increasing the safety of children and adolescents regarding a wide variety of risk factors. Dishion and McMahon (1998) characterized parental monitoring as “a set of correlated parenting behaviors involving attention to and tracking of the child’s whereabouts, activities and adaptations” (p. 61). Over the years, an abundance of research accumulated, resulting in massive empirical support linking monitoring to risk reduction. This bulk of evidence seemed to offer a clear and simple message to parents: “Monitor your child!” Studies linking increased parental monitoring with reduced danger cover virtually all fields of child and adolescent risk behaviors, such as substance abuse (Beck, Boyle & Boekeloo, 2004; Ensminger, Juon & Fothergill, 2002; Wood, Read, Mitchell & Brand, 2004), negative peer group association (Dishion, Nelson & Bullock, 2004; Rodgers-Farmer, 2001), violent and delinquent behavior (Chamberlain & Reid, 1998; Cookston, 1999; Jacobson & Crockett, 2000; Laird, Pettit, Bates & Dodge, 2003; Wright & Cullen, 2001), gambling (Magoon & Ingersoll, 2006), early and unsafe sex, venereal diseases and early pregnancy (Cohen, Farley, Taylor, Martin & Schuster, 2002; DiClemente et al., 2001; Rai et al., 2003; Wilder & Watt, 2002), scholastic problems (Crouter, MacDermid, McHale & Perry-Jenkins, 1990; Plunkett & Bamaca-Gomez, 2003; Toney, Kelley & Lanclos, 2003), teen cigarette smoking (Dalton et al., 2006; Rai et al., 2003), computer misuse (Sorbring & Lundin, 2012; Steeves & Webster, 2007) and unsafe driving (Bingham & Shope, 2004; Hartos, Eitel, Haynie & Simons-Morton, 2000; Hartos, Eitel & Simmons-Morton, 2002). Research has shown that monitoring prevents risk both with boys and girls (Crouter et al., 1990; Jacobson & Crockett, 2000; Kilgore, Snyder & Lentz, 2000), and with families of various cultural, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds (Li et al., 2000; Ramirez et al., 2004).

The assumption underlying most of this research is that the relationship between parental monitoring and risk is linear: the more monitoring, the less risk. Considerable evidence, however, suggests that differences in the intensity, kind and context of monitoring, as well as in family atmosphere, child characteristics and age, can lead to very different results, subverting the assumption of linearity. Criticism of the hypothesized linear relationship between monitoring and risk reduction has grown steadily in the last decades. Most criticisms cluster around the concepts of “overparenting,” “psychological control,” “self-determination theory,” “social domain theory” and “parental knowledge.” Each of these concepts highlights different problems of the monitoring concept. The cumulative effect has led to the claim that the construct has lost its coherence and applicability (Stattin, Kerr & Tilton-Weaver, 2010). A review of those criticisms will show us why we need a new concept and what are the challenges it must face.

Overparenting

The term “overparenting” connotes excessive or developmentally inappropriate parental involvement in a child’s life (Segrin, Woszidlo, Givertz & Montgomery, 2013). Historically, the concept of overparenting reflects a transformation of the one-time popular concept of “overprotective mothering.” The two concepts differ, but also overlap. This is made clear when we consider the bridging concept of “overprotective parenting,” which scholars coined when cultural changes brought about larger involvement of fathers in child rearing. The sequence— overprotective mothering, overprotective parenting and overparenting— reveals a gradual shift in cultural norms: The first term denoted an abnormal mother– child relationship that scholars assumed stemmed from the mother’s pathological needs and warped the child’s development (Levi, 1943; Parker & Lipscombe, 1981; Thomasgard & Metz, 1993). The second term pointed to a widening of the phenomenon, as more and more fathers joined the ranks of the overprotective (Hastings et al., 2008; Overbeek, ten Have, Vollebergh & de Graaf, 2007). The third term denotes a more recent and assumedly less pathological parenting style influenced by psychological or pop-psychological recommendations for close and continuous involvement between parent and child as a way of guaranteeing positive development. In spite of those differences, the impact of these various kinds of parental over-engagement is similar. This is probably due to the fact that the parents denoted by these terms hover continuously over the child, remaining involved in virtually all of his doings. This “hovering” has given rise to the latest popular term describing the phenomenon: “helicopter parenting” (Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2012; Willoughby, Hersh, Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2013).

Scholars described overprotective parents as having: (a) high levels of anxiety regarding the child; (b) difficulty separating from the child; (c) little capacity to encourage autonomous functioning; and (d) high need to monitor and control the child (Thomasgard & Metz, 1993). Research and clinical observations of the children of overprotective parents tended to show lack of autonomy, reduced sense of competence, greater risk for anxiety disorders, and external rather than internal locus of control (Gere, Villabø , Torgersen & Kendall, 2012; Janssens, Oldehinkel & Rosmalen, 2009; Levi, 1943; Spokas & Heimberg, 2009; Thomasgard & Metz, 1993, 1997; Ungar, 2009; Wood, 2006). Most of the literature on overprotective parenting has a psychopathological tone, regarding both the causes and effects of the phenomenon. Thus, among the putative causes of the phenomenon are parental anxiety disorders, a narcissistic personality, a pathological relationship of the parents to their own parents, or a major threat to the child during pregnancy, infancy or early childhood (De Ocampo, Macias, Saylor & Katikaneni, 2003; Levi, 1943; Mullins et al., 2007; Munich & Munich, 2009; Parker & Lipscombe, 1981; Thomasgard, 1998; Thomasgard & Metz, 1997).

In contrast, scholars tend to describe overparenting, or helicopter parenting, as positively rather than pathologically motivated (Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2012; Segrin, Woszidlo, Givertz, Bauer & Taylor-Murphy, 2012; Shoup, Gonyea & Kuh, 2009; Wartman & Savage, 2008). The professional and especially the popular literature have praised, if not idealized, continuous parental involvement. Bernstein and Triger (2011) described three main characteristics of these parents: (a) They gather information from books and specialists about child growth and children’s needs so as to be sensitive to each and every developmental change; (b) they continuously assess the child’s strengths and weaknesses, organize his or her free time, and intervene in the child’s favor in scholastic and social frames; and (c) they continuously monitor the child’s doings and whereabouts. Overparenting is also a product of our age, in that electronics play a central role in allowing for more possibilities of parental involvement. The smartphone, for instance, besides allowing for continuous contact, also enables monitoring of the child’s social life and whereabouts (Bernstein & Triger, 2011; Lemoyne & Buchanan, 2011; Shoup et al., 2009). Overparenting tends to continue beyond adolescence as parents remain highly involved in the child’s academic (Bernstein & Triger, 2011; Hunt, 2008; Lemoyne & Buchanan, 2011; Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2012) or even military life (Israel-Ashvili, 1992, 2006).

In spite of the differences in the description of overparenting and overprotective parenting, we believe that many if not most parents who had once fallen into the overprotective category would now fit within the larger category of overparenting, thus shedding some of their pathological aura. The research on the effects of overparenting reinforces this view. Among the problematic consequences researchers have linked to overparenting are (a) lack of autonomy, reduced self-confidence and reduced problem-solving skills (Fischer, Forthun, Pidcock & Dowd, 2007; Segrin et al., 2012); (b) increased anxiety, decreased well-being and excessive use of painkillers (Bayer, Sanson & Hemphill, 2006; Bernstein & Triger, 2011; Lemoyne & Buchanan, 2011; Montgomery, 2010); and (c) increased parent– child conflict and reduced satisfaction with family relations (Segrin et al., 2012). Though possibly lesser in measure, those negative consequences are similar to those that were attributed to overprotective parenting. We interpret this as suggesting that all of those parents engage, among other things, in excessive or inappropriate monitoring, so the child does not have enough space to...