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Helicopter Parenting Older Kids
March 5, 2009 at 1:44 PM by Cafe Kierna - Comments (8)
How low should a mom hover?
The debate rages on about helicopter parenting. Call it what you like, I believe until a child at least gets through their teens they need the constant reassurance that really involved parenting offers. That is not to say we should be tying our 14-year-olds shoes, but that same kid also shouldn't be so on his own that he doesn't what his mom would think about something, or feel like she's right there to talk to about it, help him with it--whatever it is.
But what about helicopter parents of really big kids? The 18, 19, 20 year old. One of my favorite parenting bloggers, Lisa Belkin of the Motherlode explores the subject:
Aucoin (a Boston Globe reporter) also provides data to show that a parent’s fingerprints on a child’s life does not de facto cripple that child, citing the 2007 research of Jillian Kinzie, the associate director of Indiana University’s Center for Postsecondary Research, which looked the effects of so-called helicopter parents on students at 750 colleges. Those students “were more engaged in learning and reported greater satisfaction with their colleges,” Aucoin writes. Adds Kinzie: “They tended to have more interactions with the faculty, they tended to be involved in active learning, collaborative learning, more often than their peers.” (But, he adds, their grades were slightly lower.)
Listen, I'll take slightly lower grades (only slightly) any day, if I means my children will be well-adjusted, self-loving, common-sense having soon to be adults.
What about you? What do you think about the idea of being a helicopter parent to older kids? Does it help them or hurt them?
FILED UNDER: behavior, child care, independence
Comments:
Helicopter parenting at ANY AGE is a bad thing.
PatCaMom saved me a lot of typing.
If you build trust and security in your children, they can come to you with things when life gets too hard for them.
You can help them find the answers and teach them how to correctly deal with things. But not to rescue them from every little thing.
Interesting- I've never heard that term before. I think there's a difference between being connected and available to their children and micromanaging them to the point that they don't have to learn about the consequences of their actions. I do hope to be connected and in touch with my kids as they grow, but I dont' feel it's my job to clear their path of all obstacles or save them from theirselves or somehow 'sanitize' the world for them.
I have one good friend who is a 'helicopter parent' of sorts and I don't like it. She tries to protect her daughter from anything 'unpleasant' and has carried it to such an extreme that she lies about the marital status of grandma and grandpa (divorced) because she doesnt' want her five year old to know the meaning of divorce. The five year old thinks grandma and grandpa are married but live in different places, and she has gone through lengths to hide the existance of grandpa's longterm common law wife (they miss family events where she is present so the child doesn't question who she is and why she is holding hands with grandpa.) To me that is absolutely absurd... I can't believe going through such lengths to maintain childhood naivety and I'm constantly afraid that one of my kids is going to tell her child some harsh truth about life outside her sheltered confines!
my daughters best friend is a helicopter mom.i mean to the point where my daughter will call and the mom wont tell the daughter she called.there will be an arguement at school and she tells her daughter what to do and say.she is teaching her daughter to be very aggressive.but gets in the middle of everything she does.she went up to the soccer coaches and demanded that her daughter make the travel team...its very hard for my daughter to be friends with this girlknowing her mother is going to intervine in everything thats not to say i dont believe you shouldnt be there for your child.but i dont believe you can coach them on everything they do...
I don't think that "helicopter parenting" is the right way to go about things but I do think that people are letting go of their responsibilities as parents way too early. We have 9 and 10 year olds "babysitting" 1 year olds (riding them around in the stroller with a soaking wet diaper all day while mom sleeps) and preschool aged kids running the aisles at wal-mart without a parent in sight. When these kids who have basically raised themselves get into drugs or get pregnant or join a gang, Mom and Dad will try their hand at "helicopter parenting" and cry about how they just don't know why it happened.
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A "helicopter parent" is one who swoops in and rescues kids from any trouble or unhappiness they may find themselves in. I refuse to be a helicopter for any child over 2.
Children need to learn, starting the small things in life around age 3 that there are consequences for their actions. You can be a strong, supportive, involved parent and not be a "helicopter parent."
I think being a helicopter parent to any child hurts them. There is a difference between being involved and being a "helicopter parent" in my opinion.
Helicopter parent is a colloquial, early 21st-century term for a parent who pays extremely close attention to his or her child's or children's experiences and problems, particularly at educational institutions. These parents rush to prevent any harm or failure from befalling them and will not let them learn from their own mistakes, sometimes even contrary to the children's wishes. They are so named because, like helicopters, they hover closely overhead, rarely out of reach, whether their children need them or not. In Scandinavia, this phenomenon is known as curling parenthood and describes parents who attempt to sweep all obstacles out of the paths of their children.
PatCarMom Mar. 5, 2009 at 2:27 PM