Overcoming Overprotecting Our Kids with Dr. Dianne Olvera

Episode 022 — Overcoming Overprotecting Our Kids with Dr. Diane Olvera

If your parenting comes from deep love but still feels exhausting, overwhelming, or tense, you’re not doing it wrong—you may just be doing too much for your child instead of with them.

In this episode of Overcoming Anything, host Anne Vryonides sits down with Dr. Diane Olvera, a former diplomat and intelligence professional turned board-certified educational therapist, to explore how overprotecting—often rooted in care and fear—can quietly limit confidence, self-trust, and independence.

Dr. Diane Olvera is a board-certified educational therapist and former diplomat who helps parents and educators build connection without control. Drawing on decades of experience in diplomacy, education, and brain research, she teaches practical communication tools that foster self-aware, confident, and resilient children at any age.3

 Key Takeaways

• Overprotecting often comes from love—but can unintentionally take away confidence and self-trust
 • Children build responsibility and self-esteem when parents ask instead of tell and name positive behavior
 • Awareness, eye contact, language, and open conversations are the foundation of real connection

Timestamps

00:00 — Welcome & introduction
 03:15 — From diplomacy and intelligence work to educational therapy
 08:40 — Why overprotecting feels loving—but limits growth
 15:20 — Awareness and eye contact: the unseen drivers of connection
 23:10 — “Ask, don’t tell”: how responsibility is built
 31:45 — How language becomes identity and self-esteem
 41:30 — Rebuilding connection with teens and adult children
 50:10 — Open conversations, trust, and raising future leaders
 57:20 — Dr. Olvera’s core philosophy on confidence and connection

Links & Resources

Dr. Diane Olvera Website: https://drdianera.com
The Power of Connection: Understanding Individual Differences to Uplift and Empower, Dr. Dianne Olvera,  https://a.co/d/hJ38V6r
Upcoming Parenting Course: Coming soon 

Disclaimer

The content of this episode is for informational and inspirational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional advice, therapy, diagnosis, or coaching.

If this episode resonated, please share it with a parent, caregiver, or educator who wants to guide children with confidence—without rescuing them.

❤️ Anne

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Transcript

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To anything, the podcast where we dive deep into stories of resilience, transformation, and growth. I'm your host, Ann Vryonides, and today we have an incredible guest who's going to help us learn how to. Overcome overprotecting our kids, which many of us are very guilty of. So joining me today is Dr. Diane Olivera, a former diplomat and spy, and now a board certified educational therapist who empowers children to become more self-reliant by recognizing their strengths and encouraging independence. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. we need a little bit of background information here. How does one go from being a diplomat, a spy to grad school, to helping those with learning disabilities to communicate? When I was living in Argentina I was married to an Argentine. The marriage didn't work and, I was working at the American school and met a diplomat and ended up becoming his wife. So I went from being a teacher to becoming a diplomat, and one of the first people I met at one of the more formal functions was the president of the country. And I just thought he was adorable. I came home and I said, oh my gosh, he's the sweetest man. I had such a good time talking with him, and my husband says, and when I got my, when I got my clearance, my security clearance, I found out that this was the time when the, where the s it was the, the country had been taken over by a military regime and anyone who was against the, the takeover and the regime were considered subversives. And a lot of these people were were killed or their, they were killed and their children were also taken away. I was devastated. How could someone was overwhelm me? I thought I, I was a stewardess before that and I had worked for five years as a stewardess, and so I thought I really knew people. I was shocked to know that someone could really win me over so quickly. And the more we worked with. Very powerful people as well as, some people behind the scenes. I started to realize that it was their language that really made people feel that they could come and be with them and become as powerful as them, or they could do the work that these people wanted. Just by the way that they talk with them. I was so intrigued with this that when I got back to the states, I wanted to go onto graduate school and I studied my first doctorate is in bilingual special education because I wanted to know how does the brain work and then how do different brains act and react to situations. After I finished that doctorate, I got intrigued with, another, a area, it was called language Reading and Culture and bosky theories of how people interact. And it made my information even more powerful. When I started to realize that interpersonal communication really promotes personal. Improvement. So I started using it with my students, my parents my students that had learning disabilities and neurodivergent. And I started realizing that we were really turning their lives around. I turned my own marriage around. Because after being married for a while, it kind of gets a little bit slow. Right. And I started realizing that when I got my finished my second doctorate, my son and my husband would kid me, oh, Dr. Olvera, you forgot that. And those jokes started to become a habit. And then it was demeaning and I realized that this was deteriorating our family. So that's when I really started taking all this information and putting it into some sub sequential way that we could start changing our lifestyle. The other thing that I did was I remembered that living in Argentina especially people were open with me. When I first got there, they were telling me, you don't wanna be an ugly American. And I was shocked. Nobody told me things like that. Nobody told me to my face what they felt. So I started adding in open conversations. So then I realized that as our family started to open our words, open our thoughts by just tell me more. What did you think of? How do you feel if my son or I was son was doing something wrong? I'd say, what could you do differently? When we lived in Florida, we went away. We had just moved there. We went away for one night and the SWAT team ended up at our house. Because he was just new in that we had just moved to a new area that was just, growing up and I guess a big football player that was on, from the high school, was in the same area and he had just moved in too. And the kids thought that our house was the house of the big football player that everybody thought was so cool, and he was having a keg party. My son was not having a keg party. But it ended up that when these kids went through the gate, they gave our address. And so the person at the gate actually called the police. The police sent the SWAT team. Well, that's a little much the SWAT versus the regular police. Anyway, they had, they did break the gate down and, when we got back from our trip, which was only one day, my husband and son had to, go over and talk things out and find out what happened. And all my son, all my husband did was he looked right at him on the way home and he said, what did you learn? And my son said he, it made him feel so empowered. And open that finally when he got down to, trying to think of what he could learn, he ended up saying, I don't know. Dad, please help me. And that gave my husband the opportunity to give advice, but advice, but it was interactive. I think I would've done this. What do you think? How would that fit into your genre? How would that fit into the way your kids, that the ones you're beginning to know would have worked through it? And that from then on. Our family has always been very open to this day. He's now in his forties. He uses it all over the world and he says, I have sometimes some very important people that will try to overpower me. And he said, I use my eyes. So it's really kind of a whole thing. It's first you open your awareness. When you open your awareness. You become sensitive to how someone's looking at you or not, how someone's folding their arms how someone is just looking down being uncomfortable with you or starting to become very intrigued with you. I check out at the grocery store and say one thing like, boy, your how was your day? Looks like it's a lot of people and they're starting to tell me their whole life story. Why? Because I did something else. I look at them, your eyes are the power of your body when you use your eyes, you'd completely turn people around. They would say the eyes are the gateway to the soul. So when you're looking at someone's soul, then they're gonna to feel safe to open up and talk to you. That's right. And they feel, felt. When children are born, up until about the age of two or three they're using their eyes as a diagnosis. They are di always, they're diagnosing who you are, how it'll react. Even a newborn baby with their mother. Or their father will start to react before they have their words, because they're reading your body language. And so if you take that into consideration and you're in a room full of people, I just gave a conference the other day and I just walked up and down the aisles looking at people and the response was, this was the most powerful conference we had ever, or speech that we had ever heard. Wow, that's so impressive to say just by looking at people, because that is true. So many people you say I don't feel seen. I don't feel heard, and we all just wanna feel acknowledged and filled. Yes. But you just said two words, seen and heard. So if you just did that first, you look at them and when they say something, you listen. And when you listen, you can then give them response that they're asking for. How often are we in our head? Way too much. Yeah, way too much. Either our head or on our phone. So eyeball up first. Yeah, absolutely. So what is the most difficult thing you personally have had to overcome? I guess it was I grew up in a, in Pennsylvania and my parents were very strict. So strict that if I asked a question, I would get soap, a bar of soap slid behind my front teeth or the whip, or the paddle or anything. So, when I went out to the real world, I had no social graces. I had no idea. How to interact with people, and that was really difficult. When I was a stewardess I knocked a man's tooth out with my foot, with my hip. I was going down the aisle and I was swiveling. And when I should have swed and I hid him, he had a real fork and I hid the fork into his tooth, and then I took his tooth out. Now it was going, we were going to the Indianapolis 500, so we were on our descent. And what did I do? I didn't know what to do, so I ran up to the cockpit, swung open the door and said, captain, you can't land the plane yet. I just knocked a man's tooth out with my hip. And he said, go back and finish the we'll talk. And then in the end the man got off and there was an ambulance and he, took, he called down, he, I said, why is the ambulance here? He said, we're gonna take you someplace. When I got into the ambulance, he said, I thought it was so funny what you did that I called down and I told the people in the tower and they got us a ride in the Goodyear PLI Blimp. And, that's where we're going until the people come back onto the airplane. Wow. So when we got back on, that was the bad part because he told everybody in the airplane that I knocked men's teeth out and that I should be, they should be very careful to stand even be near me. I ended up the rest of the flight in the galley luckily, and I never came out again. That definitely shift your reputation. But that is, that was my downer. That was my downer because I thought I could have killed people, I could have done something that have, could have caused that plane to go down. It opened my eyes to reality that my impulsive speech was wrong. And that I should never, ever do that again. Got it. And that started that whole thing of how do people talk? How do we interact and what are the re what's the reaction? What's the response of our actions? So how do we as parents, overprotect our children? We do it out of love. A lot of times you read a lot of books on, parents are overprotecting, it's because you love your children so much, and. Our generation was one where we had to respect people and that what, and if we didn't, our parents would, find out and we would get into trouble. So we wanted our kids to not have to go through all the difficulty that we went through. So we're trying to take all these years of our lives and place them into our child from the time they're born. But what's happening is it's, I always, I consider it like a dance step. If you and I were taking a dance class and the profe and the teacher just showed us the dance step, would we be able to replicate that step? No. If the teacher said, now, say to yourself left. 1, 2, 3 left, 1, 2, 3. What are we doing? We're saying it to ourselves. So our brain is now making a connection. Our body is now hearing what we need to do and our muscle system is then taking over. When we take over our child's language by telling them what to do all the time, we're robbing them of their power. I'm actually learning as I'm doing, talking about my book that now we cannot, the people in business are having trouble hiring my college students. And the students that are coming out of high school because they have no self-awareness. I didn't believe that until I went in and I started teaching, I was teaching a law class and I asked my law students, now these were students that were 30, 35 years old, maybe 20 in their twenties, the forties. And I said, I don't wanna know your name. I don't wanna know where you're from. I just wanna let ask you, who are you? Not one person could raise their hand. And probably, I'm sure a lot of people couldn't really, didn't have the self-awareness to answer that question because they identified with those labels of I'm a student, but they don't know their true self. That's right. And so if we start at the age of two, once the brain is come together and left and right, brains are starting to talk to each other and we even talk to a two or 3-year-old, where do your toys need to go? What box will we put the blocks in? So now we're teaching sorting. Where are the red blocks now? We're teaching color definition. So we're literally teaching them the foundations of education before they even get into preschool. And then you can even say, how does that feel? Yes. You're crying, you're upset. You want that second cookie. Yes. Is your tummy really hungry? Are you doing this because you wanna see how much I'll give you? Yeah. Those are great questions. Fast forward a little bit. So if someone has, maybe. Elementary school, middle school, or even high school. How do we, if we didn't make that connection when they were younger, how do we make that connection now? Oh, that's such a good question. We actually can start at any time in our life and it's really first the thing that we have to do first is open our awareness, and by doing that is just. Watching. I always watch like a morning program and how do they talk to each other and what words make people look down? What words make them like more endeared to each other? That's the first part. And then the second part is open your awareness to yourself. You come home from work, you've had a bad day. The kids have their shoes and their toys all over the floor. What do you say? Pick up your shoes. Pick up your things, and put'em away. Or you're not going to play with your iPad after dinner. How do the kids answer? All right, get off it, mom. So our words, the tone of our words, have now just set the standards for that evening. But if you listen to yourself, you pay aware to yourself and who are you and how are you sounding? How are you sounding in the office? When you start working with the people in your office, are you looking at them? Are you telling them things and walking away with your hand? Just waving, pay attention. If you really start looking at these people as real people. I actually identify, I take the first part of the book and I use my diagnostic background. And I say, okay, let's see. Look at different types of people, personality types. Are you a, are you a specialist? A specialist is a person who likes details. And if you are a generalist, they drive you crazy. Because you're in a meeting and this guy is raising his hand and raising his hand and raising his hand. But then if you wanted to do a really good project, what do you do? You get Mary, who's the generalist to give the big picture and all the, great ideas. And then you get George who loves to do specialist work, and he fills in all the details. Now, two people who could have hated each other are now loving each other. You do that in a family with your own kids, you start to see personality differences. And as you see them, you point them out. You know, you have always loved to cook. I love your creativity. And they start to hear these words. And what do they say to their friends? I'm a very creative person. So those words now become your child. You love details. I have a feeling you're going to create something interesting. Yes, mom. I just did this wonderful project in school. Now we're talking, but we're talking about their power and these kids grow up to become powerful. I know this because of 40 years of working with people. Right. I agree. Like our words as parents become our kids' identity. Yes. With their subconscious mind and the programs that are running. So let's say we had parents that were like busy working, because a lot of, in a lot of families, you need both the husband and the wife working in order to have the lifestyle and everything else. So the kids maybe went to their iPad, they were on their phone. So how do you reinstate some emotional. Unavailability that may have been created or when the parents didn't really have enough time. So let's say the kids are middle school, high school, or maybe even early adults. Yeah. You reconnect all those wires for to open their heart and. Be more connected. That was a long question. Sorry. No, I love it. Yes. No, actually it's a wonderful question because, the, it's so simple but yet very hard. We sit down with them. Let's say you have a middle school child, which is usually a more difficult time in our life, and you sit down and you say, guys we're gonna, I wanna know, let's just talk about the things that really bug each other. And the, every time you wanna go someplace, I tend to say to you is your room clean? And then you get even more mad at me. So you, you start talking about what are the things that bug us all? Mom, I hate it when you come home and you start yelling, dad, I, I don't like this. Just, it's hard to do, but you listen to the kids, and the kids then, and then the parents say, okay, but can you imagine from my side if I want your room clean, before you go out with your friends, then we don't have to fight later on. Okay? So once you get that done, you're actually working less. Because when, let's say this is a real story. A kid came home, he was middle school and, no, I'm sorry. He was high school and his mom and his, her friend was, were having coffee in the kitchen. And he said, Hey, it's Friday. The guys wanna go out for a movie tonight. Mom said. What do you need? What do you need to do beforehand? I know, mom. I know. And, what time do you think you are you guys gonna go around? Seven. It'll be done by, six 30. That was it. Six 30. Mom said, you know what I'm gonna do? And he goes, yep. And they had already or beforehand, made this decision that before he went out, he had to have certain things done in his room and she was allowed to go in and check. Before he went out and then they weren't going to change the rules because parents tend to do that when they find out that Mary Jo is going there also. And they don't like Mary Jo, but they've been said, they've been, everybody, the rules are down. So she goes in the room, looks at it, looks great. Okay, thanks. And, as he's ready to leave, she said, Hey, thanks a lot for being so responsible. And he said, Hey mom, thanks a lot for not getting on my back. They left and this mother said the friend said, that's it. She goes, yeah, we don't fight anymore. Why? Because I trust him. Now, let's say the next day he wanted to go for a summer job, and what can he say? I am responsible and I know how to take orders, and I know how to be a good friend. Why? Because he's proven it and the parent has actually given him the feedback. You don't have to rag on them. Let's say that they do something wrong. What do we do? What did I tell you? And even if they do it right. What are we doing? Mm-hmm. See, I told you, when you pick up your shoes and you get everything done, do you notice how I did everything for you? And I was so happy? No, don't say it. They did it. They're, you appreciate it. One little line. I'm so happy for what you've done. Thanks a lot. You really made my day a lot easier. Wow. That's great. That's that story illustrated it perfectly. What advice do you have for parents to like, let's say, to create a framework for a parent to, reconnect with their child? What would be the three or five things that you would suggest? Well, one obviously is awareness. Okay. And as soon as they get in the car after school, if you are taking them home, you don't start ragging on them with, how was your day and how much homework do you have? Or whatever. Even, when parents say what was good, I don't know. They're tired, they don't wanna talk. Put on some good music and say, Hey, what, what music do you think we should put on? All of a sudden, you become human. Okay. That's one. Set down the rules. Kids, believe it or not, they like parameters because when you have parameters that don't change, if you're gonna deviate the parameters, then you sit down and tell them, Hey I, I think we need to change this parameter because. Something new has come into our life or something new that we're finding out. And then pay attention to your own self-awareness. How is your attitude? What are your speech patterns? If your p speech patterns are aggressive and your speech patterns patterns are domineering, then hear yourself talk and listen to how they're replying because your speech patterns then become part of the family. I started doing something with my college students and as I write, I would say I really enjoy your background more specifically. And then I would say something else. But about a week or two later, I see as they're writing to each other, guess what they're writing. I really enjoyed more specifically, and I started laughing because speech patterns are contagious. I'd like that. And if you start in your office using these speech patterns, they don't always have to be positive. May I suggest when you have time, a girl got in the was coming home with her mom and she opened up to her and she said her mom said, Hey, why does, Jimmy have a cast on. Oh, because the other night he had a party and some of the kids got drunk and immediately she took away her words. I told you. Why did you go and, why didn't you tell me? And the girl got so upset that she got outta the car when they got home, ran to her room, shut her door, and that was it. Then mom started remembering the book. Yeah. And she sat outside her door and she said it started with empathy. I interrupted what you had to say, which was very important to you. And I'm sorry. So once you start with empathy, you are pro, you are explaining to her that I. I made a mistake or I made you feel uncomfortable. When we start with empathy, we give a person the opportunity to realize that my human side came out. I'm a parent, but I'm not supernatural. And when kids start to see that parents also, when they become real, they start to see that we can overcome failure and we can change our lives. By just looking at the human side of life and becoming realistic. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So then once that happened, the girl opened up the door and they sat on the floor together and mom said, if I interrupt you, just make a sign or tell me and I will be quiet. And so they got through the whole conversation and the mother started to cry. She said, I had no idea that you went to the party to how act, because you knew that his mom and dad weren't going to be there. And he's been your best be friend since he was in fifth grade. Wow. And had, and you were there to protect him. Yeah, I had to And. Extended empathy. She wouldn't have heard that part of the story. That's right. And from then on, the mother and the daughter had open conversations. If you ever heard, my son and I talk, matter of fact, people were like, say this to me. I've never had a conversation like this with my children. I have a friend who was sitting here the other day and he said, I am amazed at how open you guys talk to each other. And it, you know what it does, it alleviates the pressure of what we didn't say. I like that. I like that. So what happens if a parent realizes that their child violated one of the rules? Obviously from what you've been saying, lead with empathy. So how would you suggest that a parent handles something like that? Oh, that's actually a good one. If they violate a rule first of all, you look at them, and I don't mean look at'em with the, you know, the, the bugeye or the meanness. You just look at'em like a human being. So was that one of the rules? Yeah, mom. It was. Okay. So in the future, what could we do to eliminate this happening again? I say we, because I'm just as much in this ca in this case as my daughter is. And she would say I'm not thinking ahead of time. Wow. That was very mature. And I agree with you. I really agree with you. So I know that's hard, especially when you're nervous and you're frustrated. What have you learned? Any strategies that could help you give your chance your brain a chance? No. Can I suggest? Sure. Why don't you take a couple deep breaths? What, what's that gonna do? It's going to help the, your brain to start thinking again, because when you're thinking your blood is up in your brain and it's circulating. But when we get nervous, we downshift. It's like when somebody gives you a says, oh, I don't like your jacket. What do you do? You can't give it A comeback. Because you've downshift. But on the way home you can think of 15 things you could have said to that person about my jacket being ugly. So that's called downshifting. So I really explain the brain, I explain how we think, and I explain that at your age, your body is going through a lot of changes. So even if you don't know brain science, that's okay, but you can talk about what it was like when you were a child. Okay. That's good. That's great advice. But it's really the more they use their words. This is what I learned from my brain research when we did MRIs and f MRIs on kids, and all we did was a, a finger tap. We didn't say anything. We just wanted them to replicate a finger tap that we had shown them. We put'em into the MRI and we took pictures. Then we pulled them out and then we gave the fingers numbers and then we asked them to tap the fingers in a certain pattern. Say the word, say the numbers, say it in your mouth, say it through your mouth, and then as you get in there, just say it to yourself. So they did it when the kids didn't talk to themselves, like the first time they had lighting all over the brain.'cause they were trying to figure out, what to do. What we did it the second time, within five minutes, we fixed their brain. We had lighting in all the right areas. amazing. That is so, powerful. So it's the words that we don't use that are the words that get us into trouble. Wow. Amazing. So how has your life changed for the better since you've learned about brain science and the power to communicate through your words? I don't wanna, I've had so many success stories with the oddest cases, and I mean, I've worked with incarcerated kids. I have, matter of fact, my, in 2020, my husband died and two months later I live in an over 55 community and we had a, it was 2020 when we had COVID. So my we had our grief meeting and I met this man whose wife died two months afterwards and we started to chat and now we've been living together for five years. I've been using these strategies on him, and he said, I have never been so peaceful, happy, and calm in my life. And because of the speech patterns between us. When I get nervous or frustrated, his calm speech patterns keep me just as comfortable as I was before I was upset. So how has it changed? It's completely turned my life around. That's a powerful testimonial right there. Yes. So looking back, what is one thing that you've learned about yourself having gone through the experience in Argentina, where you. You met the president who seemed nice, but then you learned about his true self later on, and as you worked with all of your students and your clients. What have you learned most about yourself? I believe that our words are body. Our eyes really are our powerhouse. You literally can turn. Anyone around a boy had a piece of when I was working with the kids that were incarcerated, I was looking for a teacher out in the play area and none of the guards were there. And I, I couldn't find the teacher, so I went to go back in and a boy comes up to me with this big piece of glass up to my neck. Now that's when I used my diplomatic part and I didn't, I tried to keep my composure with no one realizing I was nervous. I looked right at him, not with anger, and I said, oh, wow, where did you get that? And he said, over there, window's broken. I said, great. I'm so glad you told me. What do you need to do with that right now? And he said. Throw it away. And I said, may I may accompany you. He said, sure. So we went over, he put it away. He threw it away and right in front of me and I said, I really appreciate you being so honest. Thanks a lot. And the same thing happened with his whole classroom. The teacher was running out of the class every day at midday.'cause the kids were so horrible to her. When I went in and started explaining how your brain works and using all these strategies, their class became the model classroom on the brochure. Wow. So if I can, if you can do this with incarcerated children who then went on a lot of these kids. Then we went on, we built this, a place called Grizzly Academy. If you would hear these kids when they first came in of their lives. Then when they left, everybody in the audience was crying because of how they turned their lives around. So if we can do this with children that have had so much trauma, imagine your children that may not have had this trauma that can turn their lives around. Oh, and here's what's interesting. When a child, okay. Okay. One last thing. Yeah. When they get when a child is able to, understand self-esteem, when they get self-esteem, they become self-confident. When they become self-confident, they become open. When they become open, they become leaders. Boom. Wow. That's great wisdom. So thank you. Thank you for sharing all this. So is all, are all of these tips in your book? Yes. Yes. Okay. And the book is The Power of Connection. So we will link everything down in show notes, but where can people find you and how can they reach out to you? Yes. Right now my website is Dr. Diane OO. It's Dr. Diane Ra. Or, um, word power strong. Well, let me just say dr diane ra.com and, um, Diane has two n's. Okay? Okay. Excellent. And do you have YouTube Instagram, Facebook, that they can also find you? I've been a professor for so long. I just stopped, being professoring. But, I am going to be creating a course. A lot of the parents have asked me to create a course because, it's easy, but they wanna know how to then get it together and then be able to talk to me as we go through the course. Excellent. That's so exciting. Well, thank you so much for being on the show and, this has just been a fascinating conversation. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might be facing the same parenting struggle of over overprotecting their children. So don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you next time on overcoming Anything.