leading strings

American  

[lee-ding] / ˈli dɪŋ /

plural noun

1. strings for leading and supporting a child learning to walk.

2. excessively restraining guidance.

   His parents tried to keep him in leading strings, but he finally married and moved away.

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Etymology

Origin of leading strings

First recorded in 1670–80

Example Sentences

“It was still not uncommon for pregnant women to prepare themselves for death to the extent of drawing up conduct letters for children, yet unborn or still in leading strings,” Vickery says.

From Los Angeles Times

Carnesford, now a good-sized village, had once been a tiny hamlet, an appanage of Carne's Hold, but it had long since grown out of leading strings, and though it still regarded The Carnes with something of its old feudal feeling, it now furnished no suit or service unless paid for so doing.

From Project Gutenberg

It was a revelation of an unpleasant kind to find himself in leading strings; the state of dependence of which the abb� hinted long ago, to be ordered like a lacquey, to be threatened and browbeaten in the presence of others--he, Marquis de Gange, above all, under the eyes of the affinity, and to be powerless to return blow for blow.

From Project Gutenberg

But a moment must arrive when the work of education had succeeded, when the leading strings essential to childhood began to be a bondage and a hindrance.

From Project Gutenberg

I have been assured by Mr. Ernest Heald, formerly British Vice-Consul at Sual, that he has often seen Igorrotes returning to the hills from Dagupan, leading strings of dogs, which they had purchased for food at prices varying from twenty-five to fifty cents, and that the dogs seemed to have an instinctive idea what they were being taken away for.

From Project Gutenberg