Do you look over your child? Are you concerned about their homework? Do you look after what they do? What are they doing or do you spoon feed them? If the answer is YES! then I am sorry to break it to you, but you may be a helicopter parent—a term which is commonly used but also has a basis in research on specific parenting behaviours and their effects on children.
Every parent wishes for their children to be happy and successful and do well for themselves. So when the opportunity is given, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to make their kids life easier? But, what happens is in order to support their children sometimes parents become over protective and hover over the children like a helicopter. Helicopter Parenting is basically hyper involvement in child’s life.
Helicopter parents are parents who pay extremely close attention to their kids’ activities and schoolwork in an effort to not only protect them from pain and disappointment, but to help them succeed. Helicopter parents are known to hover over their children and become overly involved in their lives. The extreme love and care that parents have for their children push parents to become more engrossed in their child lives.
Meanwhile, popular media uses the phrase “helicopter parent” to describe parents who are overprotective of their children.
How can you identify Helicopter Parenting?
It is really important to identify what exactly helicopter parenting look like and how can one identify that are they helicopter parent or not?
Most people identify helicopter parents by their overprotective tendencies. But this definition can sometimes be too limiting. These parents are the ones who are always on top of things, but to an extreme.
Trying to prevent every minor fall or avoiding age-appropriate risks. Never allowing the child to play alone. Constantly asking the preschool teacher for progress reports. Not encouraging developmentally appropriate independence. Speaking with school administrators to make sure the child has a certain teacher because they are perceived as the best. Choosing a child’s friends for them. Enrolling them in activities without their input. Completing homework and school projects for your child. Refusing to let the child solve problems on their own.
Overall, helicopter parents are proud to be so involved in their kids’ lives and often don’t see anything wrong with their parenting. They see their actions as a way to ensure their child’s safety while helping them be successful in the world.
These are few traits that Helicopter Parenting has within themselves and a lot of parents are unaware about them.
Positive impact
It is nothing wrong to care about your child and to look after their activity. Being a parent is a difficult task, you need to take care of your child. While the term helicopter parent is often used in a derogatory manner, helicopter parenting isn’t bad all the time.
Helicopter Parenting is not always bad it is somewhere good for the child. There are positive impact of Helicopter Parenting. You can usually count on the children of helicopter parents to arrive on time, to have their homework done, and to be prepared for their activities.
It has been clearly visible that helicopter parent is tend to be aware of who their child is with and how their child is doing in school. They too know this very quick if their child id struggling in school or has low grades which they can help the child to look after studies more or try to solve the problem out easily. This is the same when it comes to illness, bullying issues, or even mental health concerns. Helicopter parents work tirelessly to make sure that these issues are addressed.
Negative Impacts
Getting too much involved in child’s life can be harmful, though. Child may start feeling suffocated and pathetic. They also struggle around autonomy and independence. This may further lead child to develop low self-confidence or low self-esteem and will never be able to become independent.
As a child becomes older they may doubt their own abilities since they’ve never had to figure out anything on their own. They might feel that their parents don’t trust them to make their own decisions, and even start to question whether they’re equipped to manage their own life. Feelings of low self-confidence and low self-esteem can become so bad that they lead to other problems, like anxiety and depression. And these feelings don’t simply go away just because a child becomes older.
Prevents the development of problem-solving skills: Kids of all ages need problem-solving skills. Whether you have a 5-year-old who needs to learn how to sound out words or a 25-year-old who can’t find a job, kids need to know how to solve their own problems. Hovering parents, however, often intervene at the first sign of trouble, such that kids don’t learn valuable problem-solving skills.
Hinders kids from learning to advocate for themselves: Helicopter parents usually advocate for their children, rather than teaching their children to advocate for themselves.4 It’s important for kids to be able to ask questions, gain clarification, and speak up when they need something. In the workforce, these kids won’t have Mom or Dad available to help them deal with a mean boss or challenging policy at the office.
Shields kids from natural consequences: Kids need to face some natural consequences in life. After all, in situations where parents don’t intervene, kids are going to face consequences when they fail. Yet, most helicopter parents micromanage their children’s activities in an attempt to prevent them from receiving any negative consequences.
How to prevent Helicopter Parenting?
We all know parenting isn’t such easy task. Nurturing children is a huge task, teaching them the good values slowly and gradually bring out the challenges. If you tend to be a bit of a helicopter parent, it’s important to back off a bit to ensure you’re giving your child room to grow, learn new skills, and rebound from failure on their own. Giving up that control, however, may be anxiety provoking.
- Rather than focus on the present, think about the possible long-term effects of helicopter parenting. Ask yourself, do I want my child to always rely on me to fix things, or do I want them to develop life skills?
- If your children are old enough to do something for themselves, let them and fight the urge to intervene. This can include things as small as tying their shoes, cleaning their room, or picking out their clothes.
- Whether your child is going to walk to the store on their own or they want to work on their science fair project alone, give them a little bit of freedom one step at a time. Coach them from time to time and review with them how they did when they’re finished. But try to avoid standing over them while they’re working—or worse yet, doing the work for them.
- Don’t raise your child to expect to be treated differently than other children.
- Encourage your children to solve their own problems by asking them to come up with creative solutions.
- Teach your children to speak up for themselves in a respectful manner.
Parents should, of course, do the best they can for their kids. Impulses to involve ourselves in our children’s’ lives often come from a sense of duty, and of unconditional love. We can harness those desires to give the most we can to our kids by resisting helicopter parenting, which can lead to poor outcomes in adulthood.
Instead, try letting your children discover themselves—their weaknesses, strengths, their goals and dreams. You can help them succeed, but you should also let them fail. Teach them how to try again. Learning what failure means, how it feels, and how to bounce back is an important part of becoming independent in our world.
