A reader writes: I'm a university student and I moved away from home this year to another city. The year's been really good and I'm planning on going home for the summer. I'm just not sure if I can handle my parents. My sister was killed nearly two years ago, and since then my parents have become more and more overprotective. It started off okay - they bought me a cell phone so I'd always be available. But now it's getting to the point where they don't want me to go jogging. I'm a varsity athlete, and if I want to make the team again I need to train over the summer! I've tried explaining that I feel they're being overprotective but it always ends in tears. I'm trying to be sympathetic, because I understand why they're worried about me - but at this rate I'm going to stop going home because I'm being smothered. Help!
Answer: There's a shorthand that Dr. Stephen Fleming, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, uses to describe what happens to parents after they lose a child: They turn into Martians.
It's a tongue-in-cheek way to approach a serious subject, but Dr. Fleming, who specializes in the effects of loss on families, also means it quite seriously. "Earthlings think the world is a safe place, particularly if they're living in this country. They feel that they're basically good people and good things happen to good people, not bad things. Martians don't believe that the world is a good and safe place and they believe that shit happens and they have little or no control over that."
The results of turning into a Martian, as you have become well aware since your sister's death, is a tendency to hold on tight to remaining children. Too tight. "Most people get a little distressed if the phone rings at one in the morning," says Dr. Fleming. "Bereaved parents you have to peel off the wall."
According to Dr. Fleming, most grieving parents wouldn't deny that their parenting style has become restrictive since the death of a child, but being Martians, they can't just brush off their new worldview either. "It's not something that's leading some kind of subterranean existence," Dr. Fleming says. "It's up front and there, and most parents are acutely aware that they cannot handicap their surviving child. That's the struggle they're in."
And I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that a bereaved parent, in struggling with the issue of overprotectiveness, is grappling with something that's universal to all parents: the challenge of keeping their kid from harm without stunting his self-reliance. In fact, some experts say we, as a society, have taken our protective instincts too far. In Too Safe For Their Own Good, published last year, Dalhousie professor Michael Ungar warns against the current trend to bubble-wrap our children and monitor their every move. "A child who has never had to find her footing on anything but flat, safe ground will grow up clumsy," he writes. "A child who has never had to make his way in a crowd on his own will grow up shy and unassertive." Dr. Ungar presents case studies that show that the more you hover like a helicopter over your child, the more danger they will later seek out in order to fulfill their risk-taking needs, and the less they will be able to recognize when they've gone too far.
Your parents probably know this. But their worst nightmare has happened, and the only thing that could be as bad is for it to happen again. "You can't talk statistics to bereaved parents about how rare the death of a child is," says Dr. Fleming. "For them, it's 100 per cent." So, for the moment, although it is coming out in an extreme way, the reality for your parents is that they do need to protect you. And their newfound fears are still fairly fresh: Dr. Fleming says two years is still "early days." It will get easier, but also, your family will slowly have to adjust to the fact that its psychological landscape will never go back to the way it was.
Start by giving the situation more time. In the immediate future, you could just skip going home this summer - away from your parents, you can do anything you want. But there is a downside to that, too, which is you'll not be making any progress toward hammering out the new rules with your parents back on Mars. And that's what will need to happen to rebuild a workable family dynamic.
It'll also take some compromising, from both sides. "If we're talking about a family where it looks like there's a relatively open expression of their sense of loss, then these parents are probably fairly amenable to negotiating," says Dr. Fleming. He suggests your parents could get you a membership at a gym, or perhaps you could agree to go running during the day where there are a lot of people around. Talk through options with your parents and don't be afraid to bring up the issue of their overprotectiveness. By listening to their worries and acknowledging their fears, you'll be showing them that you are taking your own safety seriously.
Maintaining your independence while also understanding and working within their new mindset won't be easy. But I'm willing to bet that a confident, committed varsity athlete such as yourself possesses the strength and endurance it'll take to do it.
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