Helicopter Parents And All That!

There has been a lot in the media over the past few weeks about parents children and young people and the latest phenomenon termed ‘Helicopter’ parenting. This is a name given to parents who zoom in to a school demanding justice for their child’s perceived maltreatment.

Young people are often described as if they are an alien species who must be contained and punished. And at the same time Parents and Teachers are demanding respect and become aggrieved and surprised when it isn’t forthcoming.

As parents we often say we want the best for our children without, perhaps, carefully looking at what that may be. What does ‘best’ actually mean in this context? Often it can mean pushing the child into pursuits /activities we never had as children. It is one thing to offer children opportunities but we also need to listen to what our children are saying when their interests may lie in a different direction. How many parents hear “ …..you’re not listening. You never listen” even when they have made sacrifices to provide the ‘best’ for their child?

I recently read an article about parent coaches running groups in the work place and was initially gasping in wonderment. Unfortunately this quickly turned to dismay as I carried on reading that the parents were attending the sessions to ‘learn’ how to get their children to be more like them!

This attempt to control their children’s lives can also get parents to over-react when there is trouble at school and so they can become ‘Helicopter Parents’ themselves. This desire for the best at any cost will not help the children’s emotional development if they are never held responsible for their actions.

Children learn what you are living. What qualities do we want to see in our children when they are adults? Do you live by those qualities? “Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn’t have anything to do with it.” Dr Haim Ginot

At Talking for Peace we are continually looking how to resolve conflict fairly and so with this in mind we are running teleclasses for parents and carers called How To Talk So Kids Will Listen.

This course will enable parents to gain clarity and confidence by enhancing their parenting skills. Instead of seeing our children as aliens we learn to move from ‘them’ and ‘us’, and to live together as ‘we’.

This entry was posted on 20/04/2008 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.