Overprotected and Can't Think for his Own

“The Child Trap,” is a very fascinating article about extremely overprotective parents. In reading this article, I noticed many truths that I probably would not have realized if I haven’t read the article. For example, many parents are willing to do whatever it takes to protect their child, like buying another home close to their child’s college, which I believe is completely ridiculous. The reason why many kids go to college across the country from their home town is to escape parents and start a new life on their own. The article also describes that the reason why parents enroll their children in extracurricular activities is to keep them off the streets. I especially love the quote “You can’t smoke pot or lose your virginity at lacrosse practice.” I guess I never have really noticed that reason because I always thought of extracurricular activities as something fun to do and a great way of learning new things and growing socially.



I know a kid in college who still, to this day, does not make any decisions without consulting his mother, and he is perfectly content with it. His mother is extremely overprotective that everywhere he goes and everything he does, she has to know, and he doesn’t mind at all! He sends her all of his papers so that she can read them and edit them, and he lets her decide what hairstyle to sport and what type of clothes he should buy. Recently, he lost all of his friends due to his mother’s decisions. She believed that his friends were a bad influence on him (which is far from the truth, seeing that I know them all and they are really nice people), so he ended up dropping all of his friends to concentrate on school and make his mother happy. My cousin, who was one of his best friends, was really hurt by this all. It is sad to just think that the boy doesn’t have a mind of his own due to his overprotective, crazy mother.