Illustration by Victoria Borges
They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. I am an overprotective dad. There, I said it.
The irony is that I grew up getting into so many things in my youth. I was curious, independent and mischievous. I tested limits all the time.
When I was 5, I remember playing with friends outside after a huge snowstorm until on a dare I slid down an ice-covered stairwell with no way to get back up. I must have cried for 10 minutes before a neighbor rescued me.
At 7, I built a treehouse, hammering nails and sawing boards. Sure, I had a little adult help and supervision, but for the most part, I was wielding the tools like a seasoned pro! (Admittedly, there was the little mishap when I was spray-painting the treehouse interior and wanted to see what would happen when I held up a lighter in front of the spraying paint. The answer is a treehouse on fire, with my buddy and me in it, but that’s another story.)
By 8, I spent my days exploring in the woods, fishing by myself and experiencing nature — whether that was stumbling across snakes, rescuing turtles crossing the road, bringing frogs and salamanders home, or watching the occasional fox in our backyard — my love of wildlife was created during those long summer days and the snowy days of winter break. (Speaking of which, one cold winter day, while attempting to rescue frogs that had been trapped in the ice covering our pond, I fell in. Nearly drowned, but my dog Corey rescued me. That, too, is another story for another day.)
When I was 10 and 11 and living in Tulsa, I’d disappear with friends, riding our bikes for hours. We’d build forts in the woods behind our subdivision, scrounging construction scraps. We built one fort underground and covered it with dirt. It’s a miracle it didn’t collapse on us.
And from the age of 12, I was riding the subway and bus all over New York City by myself or with my sister. There were no cellphones. We went places, did things and lived life. During my high school years, my mischievous streak started to show, which meant I wound up experiencing quite a bit by the time I was 18.
As a father, I probably started exhibiting my overprotectiveness in my early 30s, when my two older sons were themselves around 7 and 4. Their mom and I were no longer together, and they lived with me part time. Looking back, I think some of my protective nature was an attempt to make up for my mistakes by preventing them from experiencing the same ones. Some of it was an earnest attempt to be the best single dad I could be, to prove to everyone — especially myself — that my past mistakes and poor judgments hadn’t limited my ability to be a good dad.
As my overprotectiveness grew, I started to say “no” to things the boys wanted to do that felt like they had even a hint of danger or exposure to risky behavior, or that simply would be hard for me to handle. At first, most of this could be viewed as slightly overcautious but within reason, and even as my sons became adolescents, I told myself it made sense because some of what I was saying no to were things I had already experienced, and I knew they had consequences.
By the time my sons were in their teens, they were doing what young people do: testing limits, breaking rules and, sometimes, engaging in truly risky things — largely because I had tried too hard to prevent them from doing any of these things. I failed to realize that on some level, these experiences are inevitable and part of learning through failure and understanding limits.
This overprotectiveness went into overdrive after I remarried and my wife and I had two more children. By this point, I was well into my 40s. One would think that since I was an older dad of young children — and not a first-timer, either — I would have mellowed out by this point. Not so much. As our younger children grew from infants to toddlers, started preschool and finally kindergarten, I became gripped by irrational fears of unlikely dangers. Everywhere they saw adventure, I saw unnecessary risk and envisioned horrible outcomes. I did not feel the world was safe enough for my kids, and I guess it showed. When another parent casually referred to me as a helicopter parent — me! — I started to reflect on what this all meant, for my older sons who are now young adults and for our younger children. I realized that I was preventing them from experiencing precisely the kind of exploration I had as a youngster, both the harmless kind and, yes, sometimes the not-so-harmless kind, both of which lead to learning and growth.
This also made me wonder what had fueled this. On top of trying to prevent them from having to experience some of my own consequences of exploration, I also realized that part of what drove my irrational fears was watching too much news and too many crime dramas. Both of these had the effect of sensationalizing fear-inducing “bad things happening to good people” stories, while also distorting the reality of how infrequently such things occur.
Now I am working to identify these irrational fears, face them (and in some cases, their underlying causes) and let them go. I am doing this because I want my older sons to feel less tempted to take irresponsible risks than I did at their age, and more empowered and encouraged to take smart risks early in their adulthood so they can have fun, learn and grow. I want our younger children to experience more exploration like I did at their age, so they can tell funny, hilarious and slightly dangerous stories to their own children, years from now.
James Warren is vice president with brand strategy and consulting firm JMI, and he’s the founder of the company’s storytelling offshoot, Share More Stories.
