The Line Between Safety and Over-Protection

Our primary responsibility as parents is to provide safety for our children.  That foundation of safety impacts our child’s nervous system, their attachment style, their ability to self-regulate, and their sense of well-being.  

When does providing safety cross the line into over-protection and what is the impact of over-protecting your child? 

Michael Allison, Polyvagal performance consultant and educational partner with the Polyvagal Institute, addressed this beautifully in his article, The Paradox of Protective Parenting.  He wrote, “As parents, we have a powerful, instinctive drive to protect our children from harm. Our intentions are rooted in love and care, but how those motivations to protect translate through our physiological state can profoundly shape our children's sense of safety and trust in the world.” 

Having grown up with a highly protective mother, I can attest that there is an impact.  Her protectiveness made sense to me, having lost her father and her sister, both incredible sources of safety and connection for her.  As she was raising our family, my older brother fell in the grocery store and broke his arm.  That made the papers.  He then fell at the roller rink and broke his leg.  As he gained newsworthy fame via falling, our mother became more vigilant.  As a result, what she transferred to me was that riding a horse meant instant death and roller skating meant broken bones.  Everything was dangerously risky.   

Although the messages I inherited didn’t stop me from skating, skiing, and horseback riding, there was always a looming discomfort and an inner voice warning that something horrific was going to happen.  Even though I understood the source of my mother’s vigilance, it still had an impact that I felt in my body.   

There are two cornerstones of Polyvagal Theory that profoundly apply to our relationships with our children – neuroception and co-regulation.  Neuroception is the ability of our nervous system to pick up information about our safety from outside of us, within us, and between us.  That last bit – our nervous system sensing “the vibes” from those around us – means that our children are picking up on our state as we seek to protect them.  If we are over-protecting, our children will sense danger through our eyes, facial expression, body language, and tone of voice. 

Co-regulation is the ability of our nervous system to settle into a state of connection and safety when in the presence of someone in a calm, grounded, centered state.  Our children experiencing co-regulation with us is how they learn to self-regulate.  

As Allison wrote, “When we hyperfocus on protecting our children's safety, we can paradoxically disrupt their feelings of safety and trust. As we lock into overly protective parental modes, we inadvertently risk locking our children's nervous systems into threat-driven physiological states that support self-protection at the expense of connection.”

If you find yourself in a hypervigilant state, what is the recourse to remaining so and unintentionally instilling subtle or not so subtle beliefs about the dangers of the world in our children?  The answer is two-fold: become even more aware of your physiological states and focus on connection rather than over-protection. 

Being aware of your physiological state involves tuning into your body.  It isn’t about denying – or fighting or attempting to eliminate – what is happening within you.  It is about compassionately understanding and befriending your system.  As Michael Allison explained, it is meeting your body where it is, discovering what creates safety for you, and allowing yourself to fully experience that safety.  “When we feel safe with one another, our voices are rich in tone, our eyes soften, we make eye contact, and our jaws relax. In this state, our hearts rhythmically synchronize, and our bodies co-regulate.”  

When your child asks to go roller skating or spend the night with a friend or learn how to ski, take a pause and notice your state.  If you feel activated, there is space to explore what is happening within you.  If it is a pervasive threat, such as what my mother experienced, there is space to explore.  If you say something that is over-the-top for the situation at hand or you immediately prohibit them from going with no consideration of options, there is space to explore. If you allow them to go but give a multitude of stipulations about being careful, watching out for others, and not skating too fast, there is space to explore. 

There is a difference between being on constant alert and experiencing a threat about a specific event which feels too risky or not safe.  For instance, not feeling comfortable with your child spending the night at a friend’s because you don’t know the friend or their parents and you have never been to their house, is a single event where your system wisely alerts you about safety. 

As Michael Allison concluded in his vulnerable and informative article, “…we have the responsibility of toning down our instinctive urge to protect [our child’s] safety by nurturing feelings of safety and trust within ourselves. In doing this, we can extend those feelings to our children, partners, friends, communities, and all living beings.”

To read his full article, please visit https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pressure-paradox/202501/the-paradox-of-protective-parenting.