Bad parenting takes many forms – overindulgence is just one

Whether they are too harsh or too indulgent, many parents make the mistake of seeing their children as extensions of themselves

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Who wouldn’t wish for a child like Adam Peaty? Britain’s greatest swimmer makes winning three Olympic medals look like a walk in the park, displays a smiley, self-deprecating confidence and turns even defeat into a learning experience.Today’s parents, worried about their children’s screen addiction, ultra-processed diet, and couch potato habits, hold up this role model to their brood and reckon that only tiger parenting can produce such success. 
Not according to Adam Peaty, however. The Olympian believes no child should be forced to follow a punishing schedule. Childhood, he insists, should be free of the winner-takes-all attitude that risks turning every encounter into a test of who’s best.
The parent who accompanies their child to 4 am swimming practice and sets “personal best” goals for them in every conceivable situation is projecting their own aspirations onto their progeny. This uses parenting as a means of avenging a lacklustre life, a way to get even with all those who didn’t fully appreciate their own greatness way back when. The most likely outcome is not an Adam Peaty-style star but a resentful and alienated dropout, more likely to spray a Van Gogh with orange paint than live up to their parents’ dreams.
And what of any siblings? Or, for that matter, the mental well-being of parents who are spending their early hours sitting on some backless wooden bench in an echoey, claustrophobic natatorium?
At the other extreme hovers the parent who cushions their “baby” (no matter what their age) from every blow. This mollycoddling includes berating any teacher who dares hand out a poor mark; stepping in to defend their child in any playground squabble; and even, as a recent Centre for Social Justice poll showed, colluding with their child in seeing school as optional rather than compulsory. 
If Peaty favours the smothering mother and fearful father who guard their child as if made of china, then I am not on his team. Both forms of child-rearing betray a self-serving mentality that ultimately fails the progeny.
These helicopter parents strip their child of agency, rendering them unable to defend themselves in the real world. Their pampered pups will experience every minor setback as an unsolvable crisis. Is it too much to draw a connection between a generation of such molluscs and our record economic inactivity? Just this week it was reported that youth unemployment has soared to levels not seen in a decade. Perhaps they are finding the demands of a nine to five impossible to meet?
Boundaries used to be excessively rigid. The saying that children should be seen and not heard betrayed a clear line of demarcation between parents and their offspring. What a relief that this Victorian approach has been dispensed with, allowing families to share more time – not only special occasions but everyday routines – with one another. 
But in the process, we may have allowed the roles to blur too much. Angela Dickinson, chairwoman of the Parenting Circle charity, warns that “more and more parents are seeking help with setting good boundaries. They feel confused by the conflicting advice – should they treat their child as a friend, a mini-me, an 18-year project?” 
Parents who seek a prescription ignore that parenting is not a one-size-fits-all undertaking. “Child-centred” has become such a cliché that even professional pedagogues grit their teeth while spouting it, but children are individuals (not mere extensions of mum and dad) and child-rearing must recognise that. 
Parents should heed the advice from the mother of another sporting star: “A sense of perspective is crucial,” advises Lucy Patten, whose son Henry is the reigning Wimbledon men’s doubles champion. 
Stop stressing, mum and dad: your child is not all about you.
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