Over protective parents hampering children’s play report finds
A major new international report looking into children’s development and the way they play has just been released by IKEA.
The Play Report analysed the response of internet connected parents in 25 countries including the UK.
During the comprehensive study, 7,933 internet based interviews were conducted.
A a total of 3,116 interviews took place with children.
One major aspect the report discovered was that parents’ fears concerning safety is having an impact on their children’s play, education and development.
Almost half of parents across the world believe they have become too over-protective.
But 47 per cent believed they had to be over-protective to keep their children safe.
The up side of this over-protectiveness was discovered in 2006 by the Future Foundation, who found that parents spend quadruple the amount of time looking after their children than they did in 1975.
Despite this encouraging trend, UK parents admitted during the IKEA research that they lament themselves on the lack of time they believe they play with their child.
In fact, 45 per cent of parents agreed they did not have enough time and felt guilty about this.
Stranger danger, road traffic, bullying at school and concerns about doing the right things as a parent, worry more than one third of mums and dads.
But levels of concern in the UK – 50 per cent – are low compared to other countries.
Portugal – the country from where Madeline McCann was abducted – was top of the safety worry charts.
Here, a whopping 78 per cent were concerned about their children’s safety.
France are the second worriers at 74 per cent and Russia in third with 68 per cent.
But the effects of over-protecting our children are causing 40 per cent of children to worry that their parents worry about them too much.
