Comments on: Backlash Against Helicopter Parents

By: Padraig

Padraig — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:57:19 +0000

@Skipweasel: that reminds me of a poster that used to hang at my dentist’s office. It read “If you do everything for me, how am I supposed to learn to do anything on my own?”.

By: Skipweasel

Skipweasel — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:52:12 +0000

One of the things I notice is that many children have no idea of the strength of materials because they’ve never been allowed to break anything. If you’ve never had a tree-branch snap, you won’t know how thin a branch will support your weight. If you’ve never smashed a pane of glass you won’t know when you’re older whether it’ll take your own toddler running into it.
You learn through experience – but if all your experience is second hand then you know very little.

By: emmiline

emmiline — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:28:09 +0000

as a kid, we ran around the neighborhood all dang day on weekends and in the summer. if i fell down and scraped my knees, i didn’t cry but got right back up again and kept playing. my brother (who is 17 years younger than me) never goes outside, was playing video games at 2, and has a fit if the t.v. is turned off for more than a few minutes. most of this has to do with my mom having more time to hover over him and baby him in a way my other siblings and i never were. and thank god.

kids need to get boo-boos. kids need to mess up. kids need to be punished appropriately when they do wrong.

By: Foreigner1

Foreigner1 — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:12:26 +0000

Pwscott that is just the thing- You Thínk / You Belíéve that without your hovering, your kids would be injured or wouldn’t have survived. Point is you really do not know that for a fact because you did hover and you could not from the best of your heart’s intentions leave your kids to find out for themselves.

Lots of other children without hovering parents will fall, will injure themselves at several moments. But most of those children will learn from that- independently. And they will grow stronger from those falls and bruises literal and socially and in all those other ways in their lives. It will make them more complete humans instead of keeping them upto a point fragile greenhouse plants…

We live in a Western society where fear is the main component of our news and media attention.
All the things that go well, without problems, will not come into view and out of the news. And so we breed fear and cautiousness- What IF—- And so the nescessity is created to take extra care over our children in any aspect of their lives. Because what IF they will fall: 100.000′s possibilities of getting hurt irreparably- just look at the news! What IF they go less strong or succesful in school socially or in their grades: 200.000 risks and horrible possible bad outcomes- You only have to look at the weekly stream of news to get evidence of that.

And so lots of parents lose any trust in the natural flow that their kids live in. They do not even trust themselves and they are convinced that one has to disinfect and sterilise everything in the environment of their most precious posession- their kids. And they become convinced that the road ahead must be paved FOR the child instead of trusting that the child could ever do that for itself at some point…

By: Christophe

Christophe — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:01:09 +0000

I love the bubble wrap pic : it nearly looks like my wife & kids

By: aging hipster

aging hipster — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:45:19 +0000

Sounds like a whole lot of Americans who say they don’t believe in evolution and “survival of the fittest” are worried that, perhaps, Darwin was right and their genes won’t make the cut.

By: pwscott

pwscott — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:52:04 +0000

Say what you want BUT if I didn’t hover over the kids at least 60% of the time, they would be injured or dead. I had to yell at a 12 year old one day for trying to fly a kite near a powerline. Then they look at you like your stupid.

By: DaveL

DaveL — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:26:10 +0000

They apparently didn’t talk to any Italians where being hit with a wooden spoon and told to go play in traffic are accepted forms of parenting.

By: Miss Cellania

Miss Cellania — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:08:41 +0000

This behavior may be more prevalent these days, but it has always happened to some. I recall going away to college and encountering lots of students in my dorm who had no idea how to run a washing machine.

By: alison

alison — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:47:35 +0000

I work in an admissions office and we always talk about “shooting down” the helicopter parents. They are infuriating, and as far as I can see, yield students who can’t do anything for themselves.

By: Padraig

Padraig — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:47:25 +0000

Our 10-months-old baby’s favorite toys are the lids from her veggie flasks and my guitars (actually, she ignores pretty much all the fancy, noise-making, light-flashing toys family and friends have given her). Her favourite passtime is tearing apart dried leaves (or even fresh ones) – well, except now she has discovered she can stand up if she holds on to the table. And yes, she has fallen, and yes, she has hit her head.

But I would never change that, seeing the glee in her eyes every time she discovers something new, every time she notices the world is changing around her, how much there is for her to learn and discover: on her own.

If, aged 1, I hand’t climbed out of my bed and fallen, would I have climbed 4 mountains above the 4000 meter line at my age? If I hadn’t scraped my knee every day on my bicycle as a child, would I now even dare go on my mountain biking tours? If I hadn’t camped out alone at 7, would I have been able to spend a year as a pseudo-hermit with 24? Probably not. And I probably wouldn’t have graduated with honors from a rather prestigious university.

Albert Einstein, as a child, was told he was an idiot in mathematics. Go figure.

By: dartef

dartef — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:40:26 +0000

Continuing.

With this environment are you surprised that parents have their children under surveillance?

Time Magazine is.

By: dartef

dartef — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:38:16 +0000

“crept up on us slowly????”

Time magazine is the same rag that missed the little detail that the entire “Missing Children” scare of the 1980′s was just a problem with CUSTODY and that actually kidnappings by a stranger were and still are indeed rare. The vast majority of “Abducted” children were simply in the hands of a non-custodial parent.

Due to this scare tactic the media has encouraged us to hand over our children’s fingerprints to a police force that has no checks and balances to get avoid false accusations against minors. Now cops feel free to taser 5 year olds and threaten the parents with taking away their children if they complain

By: felixthecat

felixthecat — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:12:08 +0000

The district here offers two forms of Chinese to kindergartners despite our budget woes.

All of this is the result of people who are unfit to be parents, mindlessly raising another generation of immature self-centered kids who will also be unfit parents.