Overhelping: A Pathology of the Over-Involved Parent/Tutor

(Co-written with Jason Roberts)

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“Overhelping” is a pathology of the over-involved parent/tutor.

“Hold on! Are you sure? Let’s double-check that step before you go on.”

If you’re saying stuff like that in real time as your student works out a problem, then you’re probably overhelping. Jason and I see this kind of thing all the time.

Guided instruction does not mean you jump in and intervene every time a student is about to make a mistake. You show them a specific skill to practice, and you give them feedback on each attempt, but you don’t remote-control them through all their attempts.

When you’re always jumping in to prevent your student from getting problems wrong, you’re not actually shielding them from mistakes. They are making mistakes and you’re just shielding them from the effects. That’s bad for several reasons:

1. They never learn from their mistakes. Momentary negative emotions are critical signals that stimulate the brain to adapt and improve performance.

2. They never even learn how to learn from mistakes. They never learn how to match up their work against the solution and figure out what went wrong.

3. They never develop emotional tolerance to mistakes. They never develop the ability to stomach and recover from a mistake.

4. If the student is working on an adaptive system, you mislead it to believe that the student is ready to move on. If the system doesn’t receive accurate information about the student’s level of performance, then it won’t know when to hit the brakes and provide more practice.

5. If the student is moved into more advanced material because you’ve artificially boosted their performance, then they’ll be out of their depth and won’t be able to continue progressing without your help. It defeats the whole point of adaptive learning.

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