Are You a Helicopter Parent?

October 28, 2011, By 4 comments

Are You a Helicopter Parent?

I admit it—I have tendencies toward being a helicopter dad. Not so much in being over-protective but maybe in being over-involved. It's really hard to know. Where is the line between being an actively engaged dad and being a hovering helicopter?

When my kids were in grade school and played sports, I coached. When they got older and turned to stage performance, I did plays and musicals with them. Now that they're in bands, I never miss one of their shows. I'm around more than other parents of teenage musicians. When one of my sons asked why, I said, "Because I'm interested." He replied, gently, "It would be okay if you were a little less interested."

I had to laugh. Probably true. Another time a friend—who is not a parent—said that sometimes I seem "pathologically supportive." He had a point. And I'm not alone among parents today. We are, speaking generally, a lot more involved with our kids' lives than our parents were in our lives. I played in rock bands for 10 years, and I think my parents saw me perform maybe twice. Maybe I'm overcompensating, a common motivation for hovering dads, though looking back I can't recall ever feeling neglected by my folks. It never occurred to me that they would come to a show. They put up with loud music in their basement for years. Their patience with the noise more than fulfilled their parental duty. 

Parents were just different then. Today, parents not only come to all the ball games, they stay and watch all the practices. I know parents who tailgate before and after their kids' pee-wee football games. When Susie brings home a "D" on a test they're racing up to school to pow-wow with the teacher. When Johnny skins his knee, they've got the antibiotic cream at the ready. Parents stew in constant worry that their kids will get hurt, will fail, will be unpopular, will somehow miss out.

And that worry, according to a new study from Live Science, can become self-fulfilling. Kids who are helicoptered have a greater tendency to inherit their parents' anxiety-fueled approach to life. They become more dependent on help from their parents and others, are less open to new ideas and are more vulnerable and self-conscious.

NEXT: The Harm in Hovering

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Comments (4):

Jack H. Very tempting, Ed. And, Bruce, you might be right about that. Not only "needs" but our own anxieties. There's a great TV commercial running now and again that shows a father letting his daughter take the car, and he sees her as a child, giving her the big safety lecture, when in fact she's obviously old enough to drive. That one hits home for me. - 10/31/2011
Ed H. It's tempting to be a helicopter dad. It's good to be reminded that it's not always a good thing. - 10/31/2011
Bruce S. Every good parent has tendencies toward helicoptering...but the value of letting our teens FAIL is so important. I wrote an "A Dad's Point-of-View" column on this and spoke about it on my radio show. I believe parents that helicopter too much have taken needs of theirs and projected them onto their kids: - 10/29/2011
Jennifer A. On the Lion's Whiskers blog (www.lionswhiskers.com) we're concerned with helping our kids develop a strong internal locus of control. It's possible to be present for your kids without also bailing them out or doing all their work for them. It's the difference between sitting on the bench at the playground from where you can observe them playing on the jungle gym, versus jumping up to mediate every physical or social struggle you see or suggest a new game when play grinds to a halt. For older kids it means letting them know that you'll bring the overlooked trumpet to school once, but after that your has to take the consequences of having no instrument for band practice. Kids need space to do their growing in, and the space gets wider and wider as they grow. I love it when my daughter bursts through the door, telling me all about her activities - it means she knows I'm interested, even though I wasn't present. It means she had the confidence to do things on her own. Without an internal locus of control, that doesn't really happen. - 10/29/2011

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