It recently occurred to me that despite how horrified I am by the phenomenon of helicopter parenting, in this day and age parents have no choice but to hover around their children. I cringe when I hear about parents complaining to college professors about a grade their child received and about parents negotiating the salaries of their college-graduate children. Parents have clearly, to me, become completely over-involved in their kids’ lives for these types of things to be happening. But I also think about how kids are not free to play outside on their own anymore. It’s not “safe.” Even if a parent believes in the free-range philosophy, there are no other free-range kids around to play with. And frankly, even if free-range is an appealing concept, one look at a web page of sexual predators in your neighborhood will change your mind.
So, that leaves parents with few options. Enroll your children in everything to fill their days, sit them in front of a video game or tv, or cart them to the park so they can run as though they are free range, even though you are there chatting with other parents and trying to half-ignore the kids. But they’re not really ignored, so when they wander too far or make someone cry or start picking the flowers in someone else’s garden, you yell at them to stop.
Now I volunteer in Jasper’s 1st-grade class in school. I stuff folders and get to watch the dynamics, which I enjoy. For the past eight weeks or so, after saying I’d “help” with a math enrichment club, I have also found myself struggling to make a group of 14 or so 1st-graders play math games and take quizzes. This I do not enjoy. I am there with three other mothers and none of the kids, as far as I can tell, want to be there.
Hugo, who is four, is home with me except for the three mornings a week when he attends preK. We grocery shop and do projects together. We have his friends to our house or meet with other kids and moms at the open gym or a park. I am with my kids all the time and I do feel like a helicopter.
The plus side is huge. I like being home with my kids and am happy that I can be. I went from being someone who never spent any time with kids at all to being someone who has seen almost every different way a child can experience ages 0-7 and all the behaviors, personality differences and developmental stages that come along with it. I do believe this has helped me be a much better parent, because I am constantly learning from people who I think are amazing parents and I also get to figure out, through observation, what I don’t think works in parenting. Through observing my kids in different environments I have also been able to address needs and issues that I might have missed otherwise.
The down side of this “helicopter” life though, is that maybe I see too much. I get to share in all of my kids’ successes and happy moments, but I also observe all of their frustrations and struggles. Whenever I see a problem (whether real or perceived) I jump into action. As a result we’ve had impromptu tutorials on self-defense, snappy comebacks and conversation openers, discussions about feelings and motivations, book-searches on new subjects of interest, and the list goes on. It’s great, but it’s also exhausting. And I could be doing more. For instance, I haven’t volunteered once in Hugo’s preK this year (I pay good money for the seven hours a week he’s there) and do need a break, after all. And I wonder, is it all too much?
Back when kids went outside to play, knocked on doors to find playmates and returned home at the sound of a dinner bell, they had to rely on themselves much more. They fought more of their own battles, but they also suffered more silently too. I don’t know if it was better, but I do know that everyone I knew accepted the grades they earned in college and suffered the consequences of negotiating their first salary badly.
I wonder when, with all these hovering parents, at what point kids do become self-reliant? Jasper mentioned three fifth-grade boys with admiration today, “mom, they walked home from school without parents!” We are talking about three 10-year old boys walking three blocks without adult supervision. I was out playing on my own all the time when I was five!
One thing is sure, I want my kids to go off to college and then to whatever awaits them after that with an ability to look after themselves. I guess today’s parents’ job is to teach kids these skills while standing right next to them.
