Helicopter Parenting And The Effect It Has On Children
Helicopter parents are the bane of every coach's existence.They hover over and interfere in nearly every aspect of their children's lives.Teachers hate them, other parents avoid them, babysitters pay them lip-service but otherwise ignore them.Even pediatricians and Sunday school teachers have a hard time tolerating them.
* So, what is a Helicopter Parent? *
The word, helicopter, is self-explanatory and exemplifies the stock-in-trade of this type of parent: Hovering.Their children cannot move in any direction without the parent correcting, interfering, manipulating, or browbeating both their own children and everyone else who interacts with their children on a regular basis.
* A typical Helicopter Parent *
When my daughter figure-skated, the mother of two of her skating team mates, Pam and Jessica, was a Helicopter Parent.Cindy, the mom, was a "power-person." To give her daughters first-strike advantage, she made herself in charge of everything.
Her daughters had to win at all costs.They skated with broken bones and sebaceous cysts on their ankles from the rubbing of the skating boots.She would sit through her daughters' practices and pull their ponytails when they weren't trying hard enough.Cindy ingratiated herself to the skating coach under the guise of "helping," by babysitting the coach's daughter, cleaning the coach's house, exercising with the coach, etc., etc.She became the coach's slave, which served her well.To Cindy, the end justified the means because her daughters got longer lessons, better long programs, prettier costumes, and on and on, ad nauseum.Everyone resented her, and she was known in our circle of parents as one mom to steer clear of.
One of her daughters was quite intelligent, but the other one wasn't.The first semester that our daughters started learning algebra in school, Pamela, Cindy's not-so-bright daughter, announced in the classroom, "What? How stupid! Numbers and letters don't go together!"
That afternoon, when Pamela came home from school and made the same announcement, Cindy couldn't believe what she was hearing.The next morning, she trucked herself over to the school and demanded that the math teacher show her "what kind of nonsense" they were teaching her daughters.The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
The sad thing about Helicopter Parenting is that it usually isn't about the child.It has more to do with the parent's desire to succeed vicariously through her child.But he child ends up paying for it in the end.
* How does the child pay? *
The child of a Helicopter Parent learns that she is not responsible for her own actions.Mom is.In the case of Pamela, she was never taught self-control.(Of course she wasn't! Her mother had no self-control, either!) If Pamela would lose, she would remove her skates and throw them, and yell, "It's not fair!" At the same time, Cindy would be in the judge's pit demanding a recount of the ordinals.If that didn't produce the desired result (for Pamela to get first place), Cindy would file a formal report with the skating association on the condition of the rink, criticizing the judge's interpretation of her daughter's skating, or fabricating some kind of distraction on the sidelines while her daughter was skating her long program.It was ridiculous.
* And what did Pamela learn from her mother's Helicopter Parenting style? *
1.Poor sportsmanship 2.To defy authority 3.To walk over other people to get what she wanted 4.Self-centeredness 5.To win at any cost 6.Narrow-mindedness
This is the danger of Helicopter Parenting.It teaches children to bully other people and stunts their intellectual and emotional growth.It can even become generational.Pamela will probably emulate her mother when she has children and become the bane of their coaches' and teachers' existence, also.
A good parent allows her children to make mistakes, to learn how win and lose gracefully, and to develop constructive problem-solving skills.A Helicopter Parent may have good intentions, but her interference could make her child's life much more difficult in the long run.