The Japanese bonsai - a "perfect little tree" that thrives only with lots and lots of care - is a good metaphor for children raised to be reliant on high levels of support, says clinical psychologist Judith Locke. Despite their parents' best intentions, 'Bonsai children' learn to expect that it's other people who'll make them happy and successful, she tells Susie Ferguson.

The Japanese bonsai - a "perfect little tree" that thrives only with lots and lots of care - is a good metaphor for children raised to be reliant on high levels of support, says clinical psychologist Judith Locke.

Despite their parents best intentions, 'Bonsai children' learn to expect that it's other people who'll make them happy and successful, she tells Susie Ferguson.

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Judith Locke is the author of The Bonsai Child and The Bonsai Student.

The style of parenting that leads to Bonsai children developed back in the '70s and '80s when research first linked a child's success in life with feeling good, Locke says.

"We started to think that feeling good was the key so we started to really build children's immediate self-esteem with things like excessive praise ... and thinking that that was going to make them feel good in the future."

The urgently-run race to get a child ahead puts a lot of pressure on both them and their parents, she says.

'There's not a lot of kind of 'choose your own adventure' in parenting. Now, it's much more pushed this idea there is this perfect right way. And often that's very effort-intensive. Parents are doing most of the work than encouraging children to slowly take on more responsibility to make themselves happy and make themselves successful.

"All of this stuff is done with incredibly good intentions, it's just in the long term, it produces some really problematic beliefs in children, and also a real lack of essential skills in the child to face the normal challenges of life."

Locke coined the term 'Sherpa parent' after seeing a woman push two children standing on scooters up a hill while wearing both of their school bags on her back.

"I thought 'She's their Sherpa ... she's doing all the grunt work. They're pretending that they're getting up this hill on this scooter themselves but they're not doing anything."

Parents continue trying to do a lot of the work for their child when they're at university and even in the workplace, Locke says.

"Once you start sherpa-ing, it's very hard to stop."…

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