When we (teachers) hear we are getting a helicopter parent, we get prepared. We know that a helicopter parent will create me work than we already have, make us feel unsupported in our profession, and isolate their child.

What I have come to discover is, many helicopter parents think that their child is the only one in the entire classroom. This makes it difficult as a teacher and especially among peers for their child to not feel isolated. Most of their peers won’t figure it out until the higher grades but when they do, it will not just hurt their peer relationships but their entire social structure.

My personal message to helicopter parents: Please stop!

It is very possible that helicopter parenting is hurting your entire family. Rather than protecting your children, this intrusive behavior can limit your child’s growth and independence while damaging your relationship with other family members. 

What is helicopter parenting?

Helicopter parenting first was used in 1969 by teenagers in a book called, Parents and Teenagers, which teenagers felt like their parents hovered over them like a helicopter. What those teenagers felt over 50 years ago, still ring true in some households today. In a nutshell, helicopter parents are viewed as being overly involved in their child’s life- to the extreme.

Consider these facts:

• Helicopter parenting hurts children in the long run. Helicopter parenting involves hovering over your children’s lives and being involved in every detail, but this can actually hurt them.  

• Kids who grow up with helicopter parenting are less likely to be independent and responsible.

• They grow to rely on their parents for everything, and many never move out on their own. They also struggle with financial responsibility and often can’t pay their own bills or support themselves.

• Children may also suffer from self-esteem and confidence issues because they’re used to being told that they need help with everything. They may be emotionally stunted and unable to handle the real world or have stable relationships of their own.

• It can hurt your partner. If parents adopt the helicopter parenting style, they often neglect each other, and it will hurt their marriage.

• You can become so focused on the kids that you ignore each other. You begin to depend for emotional connections and reassurances from your children instead of your partner.

• You don’t take the time for date night or other things that help you connect with your partner. Instead, you spend all of your time obsessively monitoring your kids’ lives and worrying about them.

• It can hurt your own parents and other family members. By focusing solely on your kids, you often end up neglecting other family members, even your other children.

• Neglecting other family members and not spending time with them is a serious issue for many people who decide to be helicopter parents. They simply don’t have the time to spend with their cousins, aunts, uncles, and others.

• Some parents will even overly focus their energy on one child over another. This can lead to resentment in the child that doesn’t receive enough attention than the other.

• It can destroy your friendships. If you’re wrapped up in every tiny detail of your children’s lives, then you don’t have time for friends or other relationships.  

When helicopter parenting, your own emotional health starts to suffer, too, since you’re not interacting enough with adults. You’re too busy over-parenting to notice that you don’t have other healthy relationships in your life.

The Cost of Helicopter Parenting

There is a real cost to helicopter parenting – monetary, emotional, and physical:  

1. Monetary. Children don’t learn to pay their own bills and grow to depend on their parents to support them forever. They may even marry and have kids of their own, but still rely on their parents for help. This creates an enormous financial burden.

2. Physical. Children don’t learn to be resilient. Helicopter parents are quick to help them and protect them. They don’t let them grow and learn from mistakes.

3. Emotional. Kids learn to get all of their needs met, and parents don’t let them evolve and deal with hard feelings.

4. Boundaries. The lack of physical and emotional boundaries between kids and parents creates a great deal of tension. This also affects spouses and other family members who get neglected.

4. Role confusion. Role confusion can appear with older kids not feeling like adults and still thinking they’re little. Parents and other family members may also get confused and don’t know what their real roles are anymore.

5. Rebellion. Some children will begin to rebel just to enjoy their own personal freedom. Once they have their freedom, it could lead to poor decision making because they didn’t have the skills to socially interact with others as well as learn from the mistakes.

These are scary facts! Helicopter parenting leads to more harm in multiple ways. It’s important to realize its impact on everyone.

Helicopter Parenting First Hand

Recently, I had a student whose parent is a helicopter parent. Always, making decisions for the child, not letting the child advocate for herself, and most importantly, not letting the child learn from their own mistakes.

This student was easily manipulated by another student to give them their cell phone to “borrow”. When the student tried to ask for the cell phone back, the other student just they couldn’t “find” it and walked away.

Now, the student who gave up her cell phone didn’t know what to do. While she could have asked an adult for help, or tried to stick up for herself, or not even give up the cell phone in the first place- to a student that is not even her friend and that she barely knows. She just ended up going to her next classroom and sat crying without any explanation. The teacher sent her to the office, not knowing what happened.

This could have been any problem for a student. But you want to make sure your child knows how to handle a situation that could have been easily avoided.

Final Thoughts

If you tend to adopt this type of parenting style, it will benefit you, the kids, and everyone around you to be aware of these facts so you can practice giving your children greater responsibility. It also may be difficult to try and lift the reigns of being so overly involved in your child’s life. So, try just to give your child independence little by little over time and watch you child grow in more ways than you thought possible.