This post will continue the discussion on the effects of helicopter parenting. This style of parenting has now been around long enough for us to have a decent grasp on the long term effects, and it is not pretty. Specifically, I will look at what the helicopter style of parenting does to children's ability to problem solve. I will contrast this with a child's ability to manipulate, which is not the same.
Helicopter Parenting is . . .
Before I dive in to the effects of helicopter parenting, let me give you a good overall definition of what I mean. Helicopter parents believe that childhood should be magical and stress free. They believe that parents were put on this earth to make sure their child(ren) have everything their hearts desire especially if the parents were deprived of it during their childhood. They also believe that children should not be rushed to maturity. Childhood should be savored for as long as possible even if that goes into the child's twenties.
As a rebuttal for this style of parenting, I have only one word - millenials. Every negative connotation that word brings up is a direct result of the helicopter parenting style so prevalent in the 1990s and 2000s. Unfortunately, we have not learned our lessons and continue to use and push this style of parenting even though many psychologists are beginning to sound the alarm finally. However, undoing the damage of three decades' worth of helicopter parenting will not be easy to put it mildly. To add to the chaos is the new style now taking our county by storm - attachment parenting. I will not touch that one yet because we need to work on correcting the helicopter parenting first.
To Stress or not to Stress
This post will look at helicopter parents' overemphasis on the lack of stress in children's lives and what that overemphasis has produced. Basically for many, many years if a parent thought a certain task would produce stress, then the parent just did that task for the child rather than have the child throw a fit. The prevalent train of thought was that if a child threw a fit, then the child was stressed and that activity should be avoided at all cost. Children should not cry for more than 5 minutes if that long or they run the risk of being damaged by stress. However, now the psychologists have finally come to the conclusion that some stress is good for a child and without it children cannot properly develop problem solving skills. When everything is handed to them or done for them, these children that are now adults crumple at the first little setback and cannot handle any amount of stress without coming unglued. How many times have you heard that description of millenials? It is actually worse as you move down the scale in age. I have seen fits by ten to twelve year olds that would rival any two year old, and we think this is normal?
Worse yet, in place of problem solving skills this generation is developing manipulation skills. They have become experts at getting people to do for them what they do not want to do for themselves. Please, tell me that you see how backwards that is. Children should do for themselves everything they are capable of doing in order to be functioning members of society. If we raise generation upon generation of people that expect everyone else to take care of them, we have a serious problem. Eventually you will run out of people to do the taking care of part. Then what are you going to do?
How do we turn this situation around?
Stop doing for the children and adults what they are fully capable of doing for themselves. Let them throw hissy fits that lasts for days, months (in the case of the adults) if that is what they do. Until we make them start using the part of the brain that figures out how to get things done themselves it will not develop. That is called problem solving skills. This should start as early as 18 months old and continue indefinitely until they are too old to do for themselves. Then they can have someone do it for them. If you do not make them do for themselves, you are enabling. Please, stop enabling.
Before I leave this subject, I want to touch briefly on another byproduct of children developing manipulation skills rather than true problem solving skills. Another huge trend nowadays is bullying. Guess what is one of the underlying reasons children bully other children - manipulation. It is not the only underlying reason, but it is one of the major underlying reasons. The bullying epidemic did not come of nowhere. We created this monster.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!!
Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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