Have a wonderful day, and may your kids spoil you with cards, pictures, hand-picked bouquets of dandelions, lopsided cakes and lots of smiles and hugs!

Unfortunately, nasty parents are lurking all over the place. The really upsetting part about overhearing this sort of treatment in public is that you can pretty much guess if parents are fine with yelling at and humiliating their children in the presence of others, there are a lot worse things going on in private.

I’m not stupid enough to think that this applies to every crabby parent I’ve ever seen, by any means. Heaven knows there have undoubtedly been people who have overheard a snippet of my impatient conversation with my children as we were all on our last nerve in the checkout lane and could have easily jumped to some hasty conclusions. I think overall, though, if you hear much of the conversation, you can get a good idea if the parent is just at his/her wits’ end or if he or she is being habitually disrespectful and nasty.

People who treat their children like annoying little vermin just boggle me, especially when the kids are really little. Here are these innocent, trusting children, looking to their parents to give them guidance, unconditional love and acceptance, and instead they get the kind of treatment I overhear in the store and worse. The injustice and selfishness on the part of these parents just breaks my heart. I mean, we all snap once in awhile, but is it really necessary to scream at your whiny 2-year-old to “shut the hell up” in the middle of Target?

It’s hard being a parent. I get that. Sometimes it’s so hard, I want to run away into the nearest corn field screaming and never, ever come back.  (Yes, every once in awhile life in a corn field looks much preferable to life with my kids.) But there is no excuse for treating your kids as if they’re insignificant or, worse, burdensome. They didn’t ask to be brought into the world and they certainly don’t deserve to be treated with anything less than love, care and respect.

When it comes to parenting, as with any relationship, the very simple, but very true, Golden Rule applies: “Treat others the way you would like to be treated.”

Somehow I don’t think being publicly humiliated and disrespected is something any of us would like from anyone, let alone our loved ones.

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Obviously helicopter parenting by its very definition implies over-involvement in a child’s life. In general, it seems to be looked upon as a negative method of parenting because it smothers a child’s decision-making and real-life skills, personal preferences and independence.

My further research finds that the term “helicopter parenting” is typically used in the context of school, particularly high school and college, but it is also often used  interchangeably with “over-parenting.” I think the terms are very similar, though perhaps over-parenting is a broader concept (and something we’ll discuss in the future).

As with most things in life, balance is the key. If you’re swooping in to rescue your child from every negative situation, you might want to think about the impact of your interference on your child’s future. What happens when you’re unable to help or not around? Will she be able to think for herself? When you find your entire identity wrapped up in your children and your role as a parent, it’s time to get your own life.

Conversely, if you have no idea what extra-curricular activities your child participates in or what kind of activities he enjoys, you probably need to be more involved. What kind of connection will he have with you once he leaves the home as an adult? How will he remember your relationship with him throughout his childhood?

Extremes of any kind are rarely good within the context of parenting. Not allowing children to succeed and fail where they should only impairs their ability to maneuver through the obstacle course of their lives independently when they become adults. In effect, it’s turning a disabled adult out into the world; one who is unprepared for the decisions she will have to make, forcing her to rely on her parent(s) for help and/or making the decisions for her. It’s like insisting on driving your child everywhere he goes. How will he learn to drive if you don’t let him try it himself?

When you think about it, raising a child who needs you that badly, particularly as an adult, could be classified as narcissistic on the parent’s part. Does a parent really need to be involved in every aspect of the child’s life or is there a deeper problem?

I’ll talk about that more in depth another time. For now, here are a couple links to some interesting articles on helicopter parenting:

How To Ground a “Helicopter Parent”

So the Torah is a Parenting Guide?

…a quiet reappraisal of helicopter parents is underway. Some researchers have begun to argue that late adolescence and young adulthood are such minefields today – emotional, social, sexual, logistical, psychological – that there are valid reasons for parents to remain deeply involved in their children’s lives even after the kids are, technically speaking, adults.

Further along in the article, a social historian argues that helicopter parenting is not the same as over-parenting, though people use the two terms interchangeably. She feels helicoptering is actually a positive method of raising kids.

So far, I’m not buying it. Being that involved in a child’s life cannot possibly be good for either party.

Until I read the next part, detailing the activities of a self-professed helicopter mom of twin daughters who are attending college.

She goes shopping with them. She gives them advice about their relationships. She weighs in when they are worried about an upcoming test or wondering which class to take. She helps decorate their dorm rooms. One night a week, when (her daughter) gets off work from her part-time job, (she) drives from her Newton home to downtown Boston, picks her up, and transports her back to Pine Manor College.

That doesn’t sound so extreme to me. In fact, that sounds like the kind of relationship I hope to have with my daughters someday. I would go so far as to say that this mom doesn’t really fit the definition of a helicopter mom. These girls are adults, they’re in college, and their mom is their buddy. She sounds very involved with her daughters’ lives, but not interfering.

If I stick to the Wikipedia definition mentioned in my last post, I have a big problem with helicopter parenting. Not allowing kids to fail and deal with it, or make their own choices and become independent-thinking adults, is not raising very healthy and responsible members of society. Life is tough and often unfair. Part of our job as parents is to teach our kids cause and effect, choices and consequences of those choices, so they will be prepared for reality, rather than stunned into immobility by how different the outside world is, where Mommy and Daddy aren’t there to rescue them.

Next time: How much is too much involvement?

What did you think of the Boston Globe article? Share your thoughts on its argument that helicopter parenting is beneficial for some families. Do you feel that “helicopter parenting” and “over-parenting” are synonymous?

As the name implies, helicopter parenting refers to parents who hover over their children constantly, making their offspring the planet around which they orbit. Helicopter parents are entrenched in their children’s lives, so much so that even once they reach young adulthood, ages 18-20, some parents go along with their kids to job interviews and even interact with their college professors.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition:

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.

Extreme? Not to some.

To be continued…