Helicopter Parents

When Is Watching Out For Your Kids Too Much?

Helicopter parents are those who hover around their kids watching out for ways to make life easier and smoother.

They do all they can to shield their child from conflict, unhappiness and failure.

Sounds loving and nurturing, right?

I think it’s something we all do from time to time.

The trick is to know when to hover and when to be grounded.

Here’s the type of thing I’m talking about:

• The mother of five year expected to be able to attend school with her child for the first two weeks to make sure he settled in properly.
• The parents of a fourteen year wanted a teacher to be disciplined for failing their son who had not completed a single assignment.

Helicopter parents can't seem to let go.

No one can be self reliant if they haven’t had the chance to flex those ‘muscles’. No one is confident they can handle life’s problems if they’ve been shielded from them.

The time for kids and young adults to make mistakes, have failures and get things wrong is now. Let it happen while they are young and you are there to offer advice and guidance and support. Just let them do it.

Ground Those Helicopter Parents

Here are some simple ways to increase your child's self confidence and work those self reliance 'muscles'!

You’ll often hear in Parenting Advice, “don’t give young children choices, it just confuses them”.

Well, I’d say better advice is to let them have two. You might start off with “Will we read about ducks or puppies?” or “Would you like a piece of apple or a banana?”

As they get older you could let them decide what after school activities, like sports or music lessons, they like. Set a limit on how many and let them work it out themselves.

It’s really easy to give your child a solution when they come to you with a problem. Sometimes, it may be more beneficial to let them come up with their own solution.

Ask them:

• “What do you think you should do about it?”
• “What would happen if you did this instead…?”
• “What would you like to happen?”

This helps to train your child to make their own decisions and to be confident that they are capable of solving their own problems.

It’s really hard to slow down and let your child try to do things by themselves. (See my own discovery below)

It’s much faster to tie their laces for them. It’s much faster to vacuum the lounge room yourself; the school clothes will definitely be clean on Monday morning if you take them to the laundry yourself.

In the long run, things will be faster if you let them learn to do common tasks themselves, as well as giving them a kick out of being self reliant (even if they do whinge while doing it!).

Let them tie their own laces, make their own beds, fold their own clothes. Before you know it they’ll be remembering to pack their own lunch for school, cutting up veggies for dinner and mowing the lawn.

• Let your child see and hear how you handle responsibility. The running of the household and family life is a great place to start.
• Let them write out the shopping list while you go through the cupboards calling out what needs to be replaced.
• Fixing or building something simple around the house. Work out what materials and tools are needed and what needs to be done. Older kids can help out with the building work itself.
• There are so many decisions that need to be made, plans to be followed through, it’s all excellent learning material for kids to see adults doing this.

I think it’s a great idea for kids to be involved in the family and household life. Everyone should have a list of chores that they are responsible for. It’s all part of living together and helping each other out. Start off small and add more over time.

Help your child to understand that nobody ever gets anything right the first time they try it.

Making mistakes is all part of life and nothing to be ashamed of. The important thing is to keep trying and to learn from our mistakes.

Helicopter parents tend to take over from their child. To fix things so they can’t fail. So, how will these kids cope when they are in a situation where they suddenly have to do it themselves?

Show kids how to do it; step them through it. Then step back and let them work it out.

Of course, it’s important that your child knows you support them, that you care about what they are doing, it’s just that sometimes the best way to show them that you love them is to let them do it themselves.

Landing My Own Helicopter

Ok, so I’ve been very smug writing this article. I’m a good parent…helicopter parents are bad…but do you know what I realised? I’m can be a helicopter parent too!!

Here’s an example:

Our school has a reading program for the first two years where the kids read to an adult every morning immediately before school starts.

Every morning I’m keen to get in early and read before it gets noisy and busy. So we rush into the foyer, I grab what my daughter needs from her bag and we go and read.

Well, she’s 6 years old. Why can’t she get her own drink bottle and reader from her bag? Sheesh!

So, this week I’ve made a conscious effort to stay out of the way. I told her what was going to happen, and then I left her to it. It’s agonisingly slow, but she’s doing it.

Now I need to look at what else I do for her that she should be able to do herself. I hate waiting for things, but it’s better for her if she can do it alone.

Ground those helicopter parents and let your kids do the flying!

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