E 234 The Hidden Danger of Overprotecting Your Anxious Child

As parents, our instinct is to shield our kids from discomfort—but what if removing challenges is actually increasing their anxiety? In this episode, I dive into a powerful story from The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt that perfectly illustrates why kids need struggle to grow stronger.

I share the surprising science behind resilience, the dangers of overprotection, and practical ways to help your child develop the confidence and skills they need to face life’s challenges. Plus, I’ll give you actionable steps to start fostering independence in your child today—no matter their age!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ How overprotecting kids leads to increased anxiety
✅ The science behind stress wood and what trees teach us about resilience
✅ Practical ways to introduce healthy challenges to your child’s life
✅ How to help your child develop problem-solving skills and independence
✅ Small, everyday actions that build emotional strength and confidence

Resources & Links:
📖 The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt –
🎥 Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more insights
🎧 Listen to past podcast episodes 

If you found this episode helpful, please leave a review and share it with a fellow parent! Let’s empower our kids to face life with confidence. 💪 

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Email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com
Text me: 785-380-2064
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Transcript

 Hi What if I told you that protecting your child from every challenge might actually be making their anxiety worse? Now, I know that sometimes this seems counterintuitive because if our child is coming to us and they're very anxious, we want to save them. We want to stop whatever is happening. We want them to feel better.

Because them feeling better helps us to feel better, but every time that we are taking away those challenges from them, we are actually making their anxiety worse. And so I heard this story recently when I was listening to the book, Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. So good, you definitely need to listen or read that book, but he told a story in there that I thought I have to tell parents about this right away because it is just really resonated with me and I'm even telling every one of my [00:01:00] young clients about it because it's, it's a picture that they can put in their mind and it totally makes sense.

So this story happens in the Arizona desert, and some of you that are older, that are more my age, will remember this science experiment. Do you remember Biosphere and Biosphere 2? So these were, these were I don't even, like, the word's not coming to me. They were ecological experiments where there was like a dome and they had all of the different signs of climates or climates, but like they had a desert area and a rainforest area and stuff.

And people were living in the biosphere. And this was an experiment that I think was supposed to last a couple of years and maybe it did, but they. But all, all of the elements that you would [00:02:00] have in kind of like in a terrarium, you know, how you have. Like the dirt and the plants and because it's a dome, like it waters itself and all of that.

So they had put this together. I had some people living in there and they were just seeing how it would go. You know, can you sustain life in this self contained area? And So they had like miniature versions of different ecosystems within this biosphere and what was so fascinating that they found out in this time of things being in the biosphere is that trees. They grew really fast because the environment was beautiful in so many ways, like consistent water, perfect nutrients, you know, everything was scientifically managed so that everything happened exactly in the right [00:03:00] measures and had the right kind of elements in the soil and ideal temperature, no environmental problems.

There's like no storms inside the. Biosphere. And so you would imagine that everything would just grow perfectly because everything had been managed and taken care of and completely created perfectly for this area. And so the scientists expected that the trees would thrive in this perfect environment.

And initially they did. They grew really fast and they Were beautiful and everything was going fine, but then they started to fall down and first they didn't understand why were these beautiful trees that grew so perfectly and had all the perfect elements. What happened and [00:04:00] what they realized was that they were missing wind because when a tree is growing.

And it's, it's new and the wind is blowing it around because, you know, wherever you live, I mean, there's days where it's feels like there's no wind though. There, I think there's always went, but like a tiny bit of wind. But, you know, some days you have like those days, especially in the spring when it just gets really windy and yeah.

These little trees, when they're growing, when they get blown here and there, they develop what is called stress wood. And it's for those times when things get messy and challenging, it really strengthens the core and really gets the tree to be solid. I also picture it like and I don't know that the book said this, but this is what I was picturing in my head.

This is what I've been telling kids is that when the wind would blow them one way, they, the tree [00:05:00] realizes, Oh, I need to grow some roots over here to pull me back over where I'm supposed to be. And then the wind blows the other way and, Oh, I need to grow some roots over here so that I can, you know, really get solid in this ground.

And Those challenges, those stressors, those things that are pushing that tree here and there actually make it stronger. And this just proves the point that our, we as humans need stressors to push upon us so that we can realize our own strength and build some muscles and some strength in our mental health.

This is also good with physical health as well. Right. We need to have challenges and stressors in order to be mentally healthy. And what is happening in the book, the anxious generation, when you read it, he talks about [00:06:00] how as parents, we've become so protective of our kids that we don't want them to experience anything adverse or anything challenging.

So we're taking all the challenges away from them. And then we're just, they're not getting to practice any real world skills cause they're on a screen all the time. And that is what's actually creating this anxious generation. And so he talks a lot about, in the book, all the different ways to bring back play and to have risk, somewhat risky play, and play that's not monitored by parents or teachers, but that it's free play, things that they create, imaginative, and like when you're, when you're doing things that are a little bit risky, and you're playing, and You jump from a height that's maybe a little [00:07:00] bit too high and you fall pretty hard.

You realize, Oh, you know, the next time I jump, I'm going to be at a different level, like a little bit closer before I jump the next time. If we never know what really that boundary is and we don't kind of push it a little bit and we don't stress it a little bit, then we don't ever learn how. How far we can go or how far we shouldn't go.

And that same thing happens mentally. And so I have been talking to parents forever, especially as a school counselor, parents would want to take a lot of the, I don't know, the challenges away from what was going on with their kids. And I would tell them that, well, you know, they need to have this challenge and this thing that is hard for them to do, because that helps them to.

They can start to rely on themselves and realize that they can do things. If we take everything [00:08:00] away that is challenging to them, they start to wonder if they are even capable of doing certain things, and then they're anxious about everything. Because they don't think that they can do anything. They have no experience in it, and they assume they can't do it because their own parents and other adults in their lives are not letting them make that choice.

So then they think that they don't have a way to problem solve through that or figure out what to do next.

So I love the lesson in the story that without, like those collapsing trees are telling us that without experiencing appropriate challenges, our kids cannot develop emotionally or psychologically that stress would, that challenge. That solid core that they need in order for them to go into their adult life and [00:09:00] we need to Allow them to have these challenges and I was telling my daughter about it today when I was telling her I was going to record this Episode and I said just there were some things I did well as a parent Obviously, I made many mistakes, but some of the things I did well were making my kids do challenging things, like talking to their teacher when they didn't want to about something that they did wrong.

Like I made them own up to it and they would have to talk to their teacher on their own. Now, it doesn't mean that I didn't help role play it or talk to them about. You know, how are, how would you like to approach this? But they still had to do the hard work of talking to the teacher. And my daughter said, Oh, I'll never forget the time that she needed to tell one of her teachers that she had overextended herself and said yes to too many things.

And then she was totally overwhelmed. And she said, can you just tell my teacher that I can't do it? And I said, no, you are going to tell your teacher that you can't do it. And it's [00:10:00] okay to say I've overextended myself and I'm going to have to say no to this. particular thing I had originally said yes to or whatever, like you and I helped her to come up with some of the words or how it might most appropriately be done.

She still had to do the work and the hard part of telling the teacher and disappointing the teacher after she had said that she was going to do something. And anytime your kids can navigate something on their own, and this can start really early in the book, Anxious Generation, he talks about at age six, you should Give your child some simple tasks like walking down the street and getting a, getting something at the corner store or having them go in somewhere where they have to talk to adults and they have to figure out what, like, the problem solved that.

And you can be in the area. It doesn't mean do things that are dangerous for your kids or he said even. [00:11:00] Something where they might have to cross this one street and I feel a little heart palpitation when I think about my grandkids at six crossing a street, but they need to know how to do that. Now, my grandson is three and when we cross the street, I talk, I do a lot of role playing and talking about how you cross the street.

And I think that that's the whole thing. As parents, we role model these things. We talk about them forever when they're too young to do the things on their own. And keep reminding them over and over again, how to do a task and then. When they're six or seven, we can start saying, okay, now it's your turn to cross the street on your own.

What are the things that we've been doing over and over again? So every time we get to the street, you know, I'm always like, okay, let's look this way. And sometimes I say left and right, but sometimes I'll just say look this way, look that way, look this way again. Is anyone coming? And if someone is coming, you know, I'll say, oh, I see a car coming.

What should we do? Oh, we should [00:12:00] wait until the car is gone. And so that's just a really simple example, but anything where you are role playing and talking about these things from the very beginning, and then you're giving them opportunities to do it as they get older. And if you have high school students, have them start making their appointments, like their dental appointments and their doctor appointments on their own.

You can explain to them how to do it. You can, most of them don't know how to use the phone like to actually talk to people, but tell them how to do that and how you would set that up and then you can sit there and listen to the conversation and be, be in the, in the room. So you can give them pointers or afterwards say, oh, you did a great job, or here's how you could have done that differently, but you have them do.

The talking, and if they are going into a new opportunity, like they're going to volunteer [00:13:00] somewhere new for the first time, have them go in and find who they need to talk to and set those things up, not you. Those are just wonderful ways to put that challenge into their life, allow them to have challenge. If they are telling you a class is too challenging and they want to get out of it, or they want to come home early because something 

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