Know About Helicopter Parenting

I attended an enlightening talk about “helicopter parenting” by an eminent child psychologist; these parents over controlled, overprotected and over perfected their children’s life and were more than responsible parents. They focused too much on the children and took too much responsibility for their children's success and failures.

These were some of the points discussed:  

Though helicopter parenting is usually used to refer to parents of high school and college children, it could apply also to other younger children. As a toddler, a helicopter parent might constantly shadow the child, being constantly with him/her and may not leave the toddler alone at all, while in elementary school such a parent may choose a certain teacher or coach and play a very significant role in the selection of his/her friends and activities, and provide excess assistance for homework and school projects.

There could be four main reasons why parents hover:

a) The fear of dire consequences like unhappiness, struggle, not excelling, working hard, and no guaranteed results could make parents hover, with these parents failing to realize that life’s experiences are teachers and not life-threatening.

b) Feelings of worry and anxiety like the economy, the job market, and the world in general could drive parents to take control of their children’s life to avoid hurt and disappointment.

c) Adults that felt neglected, unloved or ignored as children    overcompensate with their own children to remedy the deficiency they felt in their own upbringing.

d) Peer pressure from over-involved parents could trigger a similar response, with parents feeling guilt that they would be bad parents if they do not immerse themselves in their children’s life.

It is best to understand that that helicopter parenting is different from engaged parenting; engaged parenting provides increased feelings of love and acceptance, builds self confidence and provides guidance and opportunities to grow, while helicopter parenting is governed by fear, with these parents failing to understand that failures and challenges teach kids new skills, and how to handle failure and challenges.

The consequences of helicopter parenting on children are: 

You as an over involved parent would be sending a message to your children that you do not trust them leading to decreased confidence and self-esteem.

Next children of helicopter parents would have undeveloped coping skills for disappointment, failure and other life stresses on their own.

Parents that are overprotective even after their children are mentally and physically capable of doing tasks prevent their children from mastering those skills and make them undeveloped in life skills.

Lastly when the parents are overprotective and does everything for them, these children get used to always having their way and develop a sense of entitlement.

To conclude, parents can avoid helicopter parenting by establishing a balance between the children they raise and the adults they are trying to raise; this means letting our children struggle, face disappointments, and helping them to work through their failures. We need to physically and mentally allow them to do tasks they can do; all this would go a long way to building reliant, self-confident children/adults of tomorrow. 

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