UPDATE:
The Washington Post reports a partial victory for parenting sanity vs advocates for paranoid parents, aka "helicopter parents.
By now everyone has heard of the Maryland couple who are being harassed by the Child Protective Services bureaucracy for — wait for it — allowing their children to walk home, alone, from a neighborhood park. In a strike for rationality, the couple, which believes in Free-Range Kids, have sparked a national conversation about the idiocies some parents display by overprotecting the kiddies.
Parents who insist on setting up “play dates” are nauseating. About as bad are the parents who hook their little kiddies up to what amounts to be a glorified doggie leash. And the parents who try to “protect” the kiddies from their own imagined fears? Totally whacked out.
Are parents being over-protective of their children? Or are they stifling fun and freedom all for the sake of saving their children from an imagined bogeyman?
Over the past twenty-five years, American parents have moved towards the bizarre idea of “Intensive Parenting,” also called “helicopter parents.” The misguided effort which places emphasis on protecting the kiddies from harm has triggered a backlash. A trend towards “Free Range” parenting is showing moms and dads, who have such a small slice of life that they have to devour tranquilizers to keep from going crazy, that there is a healthier way to parent. Helicopter parents thrive on overprotection which stops the development of their children's independence and responsibility.
A growing list of research shows that parental overreaction to remote, and even imaginary, risks of physical harm is a more serious impact on their children's well-being and development. Media though has sensitized parents who don’t have a life outside of the virtual world of mainstream media, smartphones and iPads. The result is a life skews with perceptions of the risks kids face and what is an appropriate reaction.
As prosecutors and juries share the media-inspired misperceptions, overprotective parenting becomes the standard of childcare. To move away from this limited, and limiting, behavior, criminal child neglect needs to be defined in narrower terms and defendants need to show expert testimony. With the sword of prosecution hanging over their heads, many otherwise level headed parents will be forced to conform to the overprotective parenting norm. Society, families and the kids themselves, will be the ones to suffer.
What Is a Free-Range Kid
A Free-Range Kid is a child who gets treated, by parents, as a smart, capable individual, not an invalid who needs constant hovering by parents ready to give constant attention and help. In American suburbs, quite a few school Parent-Teacher Associations have found a way to raise money by auctioning off the choice drop-off spot in front of the school — the spot with the shortest distance between car door and school door.
If this was anywhere else, the mall or movie theater, it would be called the handicapped parking spot. Someone in the misguided rush to do the very best for the kids, parents have begun treating them like they’re handicapped — as if they couldn’t bare to walk a couple of blocks, make their own lunch, climb a tree without getting hurt or struggling.
Media Impact
Free-Range Kids are old fashioned. They are the kids who want to actually grow up and do things on their own. Everyone was a Free-Range kid when I was growing up before cable TV started repeatedly showing abductions 24/7 and looking for the saddest stories that would make parents think that no kid is safe doing anything on their own.
It’s the fault of the media, as well as the parents who appear to have lost all critical thinking skills. Not too long ago I saw a four-page article in a Parenting magazine that said, “How to Have a Totally Safe Day in the Sun with Your Kid.” So, we need to have four pages of instructions telling us how to have fun outside with our children AND stay safe? Unthinking parents are bombarded with warnings that make them feel the kids need constant supervision and help — or they’re going to die.
ThudGuard and Helicopter Parenting
OK, I know we are all concerned for our children, but we don’t have to be so terrified. We need to figure out how we became so fearful for our children in just one generation. We need to separate the real dangers from the ones constantly imagined by the media — and by folks with things to sell.
Every heard of a “ThudGuard?” It’s a child safety product that marketers tell us we need to protect our kids from the remote danger of “traumatic head injury from toddling” — basically a helmet for kids to put on all day while they’re still learning to walk.
A helicopter parent is a parent who believes their precious child is vulnerable to injury, teasing, disease, frustration and disappointment that they have to hover — like a helicopter — over the child, always ready to dive in if something “bad” happens.
Parenting Differences
Our parents were busy watching Dallas and the biggest crime was shoulder pads. Today’s, non-thinking and isolated, parents are swimming in bad news that comes instantly from the globe. Parents hear about abductions in Portugal, Aruba and India and immediately parents start to think of what could happen to their kids.
When someone’s brained is soaked with stories like those, it can be hard to think about the millions of kids who are NOT murdered each day. And parents, cut off from the real world by their Smartphones and other digital toys, start to wonder, “Is it safe for my child to walk to school?” The most memorable stories come to mind first and whatever comes to mind is what we think is most common. That’s human nature, but it’s also unhealthy.
On top of the images helicopter parents carry in their head, Americans have become crazy over lawsuits. Schools, parks and playgrounds have started banning things with even the smallest chance of causing an accident which could trigger a lawsuit. Playgrounds are stripped of merry-go-rounds, teeter-totters and slides than go higher than two feet from the ground. Helicopter parents get used to these “safety” precautions that they start thinking of plain old, everyday childhood as being something unsafe.
Sesame Street
Pick up a copy of the DVD “Sesame Street — Old School” and you’ll be able to see kids having fun the way it’s meant to be. The disc is a collection of Sesame Street highlights from the early years — 1969 - 1974. It shows kids playing Follow the Leader across a vacant lot, climbing inside a huge pipe, balancing on a discarded piece of wood all the while laughing and enjoying their freedom. Of course they’re happy. This was public television showing what a happy childhood was for kids behind parents got in the way.
In just one generation, what was thought to be a happy and healthy childhood has become dangerous. Wildly dangerous. Litigiously dangerous.
Sick parents are swimming in fear soup. Fear of lawsuits, fear of injury, fear of abductions, fear of blame.
Healthy parents are trying to find a way out of the pond.
Wed Sep 30, 2015 at 2:55 PM PT: Helicopter parents and the weenies that defend them just took a hit today when a study was released. The results show that being a helicopter parent is NOT a healthy way to raise children. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
For each of your defenders of stupidity that feel there's nothing wrong with helicopter parenting, I have two words for you. In the words of Sheldon Cooper, "Neener, neener."
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