A mom I know was filled with anxiety when her new college freshman son did not call home for the first three weeks away from home. Even pleading emails from his father urging him to assuage his mother's worry did not compel him to pick up his phone. "He is probably spending all his savings and only eating pizza," moaned his mother to me. I should have seen it coming 18 years prior when I first met him. He was just 8 months old, content in his baby swing when his mother stated "he's bored" and commanded his father to go entertain him while she worked on dinner. I wondered how a little baby would even know how to be bored on top of all that sleeping and pooping.
That was my first living example of a helicopter parent at work.
So what is a helicopter parent? It is one who believes they must hover over their child for anything to happen - or not happen. They believe their input and oversight must be present in every waking decision and experience and have a terrible time letting go. In case you were wondering, this is not the ideal way to parent and neither is dictatorship. The difference is with the dictator, there is none of the anxiety involved in helicoptering. A dictator does not have as much of their identity wrapped up in their children, they just want it their way. A helicopter parent thinks of little else than how to direct their children and make sure everything is okay. The problem with helicoptering is that you cannot really control anything. The more you think you need to "be there" or "make sure", the more anxiety you are putting on your plate. (In another blog, we will talk about the ideal parenting model - loving authority.)
You might be a helicopter parent if...
- You interrupt adult conversations to answer your child's frequent phone calls to locate typical things around the house or ask questions about trivial matters
- You are on your landline long distance with a friend and tell them to hold while you answer a cell phone call from your child wanting to know if you will take them to the mall before dinner
- You insist on selecting every outfit your children wear well past that first day of school in Kindergarten or you argue about what they have chosen to wear
- You think your child won't eat unless you tell them to or place it on a plate for them
- You allow your child to whine about a meal and make a special plate to accommodate their "likes"
- You call the school to be sure some of your child's friends are in their class
- You help your children with their friendships
- You correct, comment or react to your child's every comment
- You can't stop thinking about whether they zipped their coat up or not and go through their backpacks daily to arrange contents
- You care more about their schoolwork than they do
- You do not allow them to help around the house because they won't do it the right way
- You assume the worst when they are left to their own wiles rather than coming from a place of trust first
- Your reason for being is to do everything for your kids and to keep them happy
- You will do everything possible so they do not experience failure
- You pepper them with question after question to be sure you know everything
- You can't rest if all their toys aren't put away just-so
Do you want anyone this involved in your life? I sure don't. And all that extra focus isn't going to make anyone feel more loved. Trying to make sure everything is perfect is useless because life isn't about what we can control, it is about controlling our impulses over what comes our way. Doing everything for our children cripples them from becoming fully functioning adults. You don't really want to have your adult children avoid you like the kid who actually didn't "spend all his money on pizza", do you?
Remember, the purpose of parenting is to prepare our children for adulthood. And adults aren't supposed to need to be told when to blink.
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