As a teacher of ages 4 up until 14, I think parents and people in general need to be concious toward what constitutes "over" parenting. Too often we as teachers see students that are behaving poorly, or having more trouble in school, because they do not have enough help or consistency at home. Parents reading articles like this might take them too literally and step too far from their child's life. Parenting should be a balance. You should know, as a parent, what is happening with your child's schooling, and be there to help. But you should not micromanage the child. Parent involvement leads to more academic confidence and success[1], and more behavioural[2] success.
As a parent, I think that teachers should pay attention to research on homework that says there is on average no academic benefit, but there is a huge cost in family conflict. You have enough time in the classroom to teach and provide practice time. Free family time up for what parents see best.
There is a slightly different way to interpret that.
Some students, despite being in your classroom, are really being homeschooled. For example, my wife and I both got extra assignments from our parents. The parents aren't just helping. The parents are teaching. You aren't trusted to teach.
Other students have parents that trust you to teach. Your job is to teach, and these parents expect you to do it. In theory, they are correct.
It’s because behavior is an emergent property of a dynamical system, and that means that if you want a particular behavior, you have to know when to provide input and when to let the system process.
If you want a plant to bear fruit, you have to nurture it for a while, and you will never be able to browbeat it into producing fruit before it has developed the facilities for doing so.
Part of effective parenting is resolving the dependency tree for healthy attitude/behavior in your child.
Half-OT, but you're making a textbook logical error in interpreting the science you're citing. This is an observational study, making claims about associations, yet you clearly indicate a causal effect in your words.
As someone considering starting a family, I have literally no idea what parenting is anymore. When I was younger I was pretty much left to my own devices, sent off to play with my brother and then packed off to school when old enough. My parents were too busy working, cooking and cleaning to do much fancy extra curricular stuff.
I do wonder now what I should be doing to prepare for parenthood. I feel that perhaps it's not the sort of thing that can be distilled down into an easy to read 200 page paperback.
I'm working on kid #2, and my takeaway is this: "parenting science" is like "nutritional science." It's almost entirely bullshit, and little to no progress has been made in the field ever. There is no use paying attention to it, other than doing/not doing the obvious things. (Don't eat too many calories; don't emotionally destroy your kids.)
Your kids will turn out how they are going to turn out. Instinctively, you'll love them and want to keep them alive, so don't worry about that. Other than that, do what you think is right and hope for the best.
Be present. That's about the sum total of it I think. If you are there, you will pick up on what is and isn't working, and you can work to make it better.
Really kids just want someone to love them and teach them how to be a person.
> As someone considering starting a family, I have literally no idea what parenting is anymore.
I started a family almost 15 years ago, and I'm still wondering myself. On the one hand, I can see firsthand how competitive the world is - much more competitive than it was when I was growing up - and I figure the least I can do is prepare my kids for the tidal wave of adulthood that's going to crash into them in another ten years or so. I'm encouraging them to participate in (and supporting them in, even though it's starting to break the bank) as much extracurricular stuff as possible, so their college applications look good, but on the other hand, I worry about stressing them out so hard that they don't feel like they ever had time to enjoy being children. As a parent, I feel like I'm walking a fine line between preparing them for the world and protecting them from it.
Something that worked for me: survey the parents that you know, and find the ones that seem like they are doing a good job and enjoying themselves. Then get a download of their system, write it down, ask questions, and form a plan. Don't take advice from parents that seem worn down or miserable.
Advice from someone who is a year and a half in: find a volunteer opportunity with the under 3 set, at least weekly, with your partner. The opportunity should include diaper changes and serious interaction with the parents, watching them interact as a triad/dyad with the neonate.
Unless you have had regular interaction with the 0-3 set and how people raise them, you won't know what you're getting into, and you won't have the right perspective.
n.b., I think it is something that can be written down, to a large extent, but you won't find it in the "parenting guide" section, you'd find it in the clinical guide texts for professional nurses and parenting educators.
If you think you were raised well, then by all means reproduce it. If not, fix what's broken. Don't overcompensate for perceived weaknesses in your upbringing, be honest.
For example, were you fat as a teenager? OK, make sure your kids have good eating habits. Notice this is not: put them in crossfit, feed them only vegetables.
You start by choosing the right partner. Seriously. No matter how many smart books about parenting you read, you will not have time and energy to follow them, if you are too busy divorcing at the moment your kids need you.
A single parent is not enough. No matter how much you love your kids... being alone with them all the time will drive you crazy. You need another adult person to share the burden, to provide feedback, to make a joke at the right moment and remind you that there is life after parenting.
Time spent with your children is more important than the toys you buy them. (Though some toys are better than others. That would be a long debate, but the short version is "Lego good, Barbie bad" i.e. the toy should be there to teach your child some skills, not just to be admired for how expensive it was.)
Be there to provide encouragement when your child succeeds at something, and comfort when it fails. Try to encourage your child to try new things, but don't push. Sometimes a child fails at something, and then a few days or months later succeeds; that is natural. Sometimes children evolve in "jumps"; for a few months you don't see any progress at some specific area, and then a huge change happens overnight.
Your children will try to manipulate you; probably before they learn to talk. That is also natural. Resist the manipulation, but don't get angry.
Always reward progress with praise, even very small progress. Be specific with the praise, i.e. describe exactly the progress you celebrate. For overcoming difficult problems, offer rewards.
In teaching, I am a fan of Montessori education: set up an environment where learning happens naturally, and then learning will happen. For example, your child is more likely to learn drawing, if they have pencils and paper always available; more likely to get mechanical skills if they have mechanical toys; and more likely to be good at computers when they have access to a computer. (Computers, that is a separate long topic. But again: don't use them as a device for playing shooting games or chatting online, rather use editors or encyclopedias etc.)
As my RPG-playing friends say: "If your child could do something alone, but you are doing it for them, you are stealing their experience points." Teach kids new skills. Yes, at the first time they will be clumsy and likely do it wrong. That's natural. You are investing in the long-term outcome.
The children will copy what you do. That is a f-ing huge responsibility! But also an extra reward for finally getting your own life in order.
Don't ever believe that the school will fix something. The teacher cannot be a substitute parent; they have dozens of other kids in the classroom, lessons to teach, exams to administer, and most importantly a ton of paperwork to fill.
Accept that sometimes you won't do things perfectly. As long as you avoid the worst mistakes, you are still doing a great job.
...you are right, I could probably go on and write 200 more pages. :D
I'm a little late on this reply, but I'll explain my philosophy for what it's worth. It has apparently been effective with my daughter (who is now nine years old).
Don't treat your child "like a child", treat them like a small person. What I mean by this hopefully will come through in my other points.
Just like every person is a little different, so it is for children. Don't be afraid to try other techniques if something isn't working for your child. A recent example of this in my case is helping my daughter with spelling. It took us a while to determine the best way for learn in this particular case.
If I need my daughter to do something, or I tell her no, I always try to provide an explanation as to why. This isn't easy, but so far it has been fruitful.
By the same token, she can always ask why and I always try to provide an explanation. Now that she's older, if she has a question about why something happens or works, we try to investigate it together by various means.
Don't be afraid to explain complicated concepts to your child, even at a very early age. My wife thought it was pretty funny that I was trying to explain that the string on a balloon is a tether and why you might call something a tether rather than a string. Early on it's not clear how much they absorb, but it seems to have worked (at least for my daughter).
Always let them know that how their opinions/feelings are important, even if you have to explain that they have not understood something correctly. In other words, don't just dismiss what they think or feel just because they are children. I try to use these as teaching moments. Occasionally you will be the one being taught. I think this concept in particular has made my daughter an outgoing person, and one who generally thinks about things before she speaks (well, for a nine year old anyway). One good example of this was when she was five or six, we had some pretty extreme flooding in our area. There was a news story on the local news station about one of the rescuers themselves needing to be rescued during an operation. I chuckled about that and pointed it out to my wife. My daughter who was sitting next to me made this observation: "Maybe he's new". I had to agree with her, once I stopped laughing. My point is she made an astute observation that I had not considered, and one that was extremely plausible.
Back to always providing an explanation, sometimes I don't say no, in particular to activities where she could be injured. Instead, I try to get her to analyze the situation (and help if necessary) to see if she can accomplish her goal in a safer manner. For example, I have a four wheel cart to move stuff around on. She wanted to ride it like a surfboard in the driveway. By asking her what would happen if she falls, she saw the wisdom in wearing knee and elbow pads, gloves, and her bicycle helmet (which she had for riding her scooter). I don't doubt the falls on the scooter while wearing pads helped her make her decision. By the same token, one day when I came home from work, her hands and chin were scraped up. She was reluctant to tell me what happened, but I got her to tell me that she got on the cart without her pads and fell off. I told her that's why I thought she should wear the pads (and that she wasn't in trouble). Kids will be kids after all.
Try to expose you children to new things. When you do, make sure there is some interaction. For example, just this week, I got my daughter to start doing a little astronomy. I recently bought a dobsonian mount telescope because it would be easier for her to use. She wasn't too interested until I told her that she was the one who would be pointing the telescope. I showed her what to do and let her point it at whatever she wanted to look at, helping a little along the way. Now she wants to get out whenever it's clear, despite the bugs (summertime...).
Don't be worried what other parents think. Feel free to listen to their advice. Also feel free to ignore it.
I don't know if any of this helps you or not, and I certainly have forgotten to mention some things, but it's worked for us so far. I can't say for certain (obviously) that going this route has made my daughter the person she is. All I can say is these are some of the concepts my wife and I have applied and that my daughter is an intelligent, thoughtful, outgoing person who has made me a better person just by knowing her.
I'd expect NPR to not use the word "crisis" in this context. There no obvious juncture, no imminent, looming problem that demands decisive action. There's just yet another op-ed pop-psyche piece about kids failing to learn "how to adult."
I'm not surprised by the existence of the article, it's as inevitable as my curmudgeonly response. I'm surprised NPR stooped to publishing it.
Yeah I was also thinking the term crisis was a bit of a stretch here. 'Over-Parenting Crisis' is in quotes, however, so I'm wondering if they've taken that title from one of the books?
Recently I watched a report by the US correspondent of the German public television. She spoke with parents who got into trouble because they let their children play near the house. A mom who put surveillance software on their children's phone. Parents who look on video feeds from the day care centres.
I found this shocking and also dangerous in the long run, people are getting used to surveillance might also accept it by the state.
FWIW: A "look at those crazy americans!" color story by a foreign journalist may, y'know, not be the most authoritative source for this kind of thing.
Obviously those products exist (and probably do in Germany too) and I'm sure that parent who got in trouble was a real incident. Nonetheless those of us actually raising children in this country don't actually do that stuff. Chill.
I can attest to parents looking at video feeds being very very common, at least in silicon valley (San Francisco bay area). Its not only day care centers but also parents installing cameras in their home to monitor their child who might be with a nanny. A lot of this is understandable for a parent of a very young kid going to perhaps an unknown day care. Of course there are a lot of ways you can go overboard - and people often do - but the base concern I feel is quite valid.
>Parents who look on video feeds from the day care centres.
I've never done this but I imagine the reason would be to spot times when the teachers are abusive towards the children, not to ensure everything is perfect.
I think a lot of parents don't know how to effectively parent and make up for that with enthusiasm. Too much involvement, not enough parenting. I am guilty of this.
I also think it’s a new form of keeping up with the Jones. Which is why it happens in the privileged set. Stay at home parent? Nanny? Housekeeper? Dad present at all activities? Coaching the team? All things are social signals and increased parental activity is how parents compete with each other.
I teach in a college. Many's the time I've been waiting to get into a classroom because the folks in there are wrapping up an exam, and students come out, instantly produce the phone, and I hear, "Hi mom, I did OK on the quiz, I think ..." That's too much.
I taught at a university for a couple of years. TBH, that feels normal-ish. I have plenty of folks including my parents with whom, depending on how often we've been communicating lately, I will share trivia.
If you think that is bad, wait until you have to speak with some 20-year-old's mom who is thinking that her kiddo should be getting an A for C-level work and you have to get litigious about supporting your grades. I had to write a policy into my syllabus saying that I won't (and, IIRC, legally was not permitted) to talk with other folks than the student about grades and assessments.
This is the peril of anecdotes. You took a momentary observation and wrote a whole narrative surrounding it. How do you know that this is a parental tether? Maybe she had spoken to her mother the night before and expressed some worry about that particular quiz. The call you heard was just a follow up and she is otherwise fully independent.
(I catch myself doing this frequently: that couple's marriage is in trouble—they're not even talking over dinner, that driver is on his phone scrolling through Facebook probably, etc. Those stories may be true but there's perfectly reasonable alternatives that would look exactly the same.)
I think this is a symptom that today's children don't have the same type of bond with their peers as previous generations. Yesteryear, kids would have discussed classwork with their friends and classmates. All socialization has been removed from classrooms, outside of 'group activities.'
The only people they know how to talk to are their parents.
I'm in the EU so can't read the article, but that doesn't feel like over-parenting. My daughter might do that, but she's a pretty independent lass, at age 14 currently wandering around central London or Camden market somewhere as part of her summer holidays - not sure where.
I don't see anything wrong with a kid (or even an adult) having a strong relationship with their parents.
I had a flatmate who talked with her mom every night. Literally every night. For hours. She was just close with her family. It wasn't like she was at school or anything, we were both grown adults with working lives.
That seems strange to me. When I was in school (many years ago) I think I called home maybe once a week, and I don't remember talking about schoolwork much.
Ah, come on, that's a bit rich. Seems reasonable (& healthy even...) to be chatting with mom about an exam coming up, then give her a ring when it's over.
Sure, if mom is still supervising, then that's a bit awkward...
I offer the following hypothesis - competition for entry into "the best" colleges, competition for "free money" through scholarships, and competition for "good jobs" after college has driven parents to micromanage their children's school "career."
The margins for "error" - i.e. achieving suboptimal grades and cultivating interests outside of "school stuff" - have shrunk since I was a kid.
This is, of course, in addition to the need for parents to acquire bragging rights about their children.
> Some schools have an explicit policy against parents doing kids' homework and in favor of kids raising issues and concerns themselves rather than relying on their parents to do so. These schools are part of the solution.
I'd love to see these policies tested, e.g., have five high school kids with class scheduling issues attempt to resolve them themselves, and another five have their parents call, and compare how the process goes.
I'm not convinced this is a real problem. The term helicopter parenting was first used in 1990 [0]
New Yorker article on same topic from 2008 [1]
Articles and posts like this are chock-full of anecdotes and head-nodding, but short on studies or other data to even correlate against. Seems like this "crisis" has been happening for a long time.
Is there a longitudinal study on children who have been "helicopter parented?" vs those who were raised "free-range"?
It’s a difficult balance to strike and it’s easy to judge parents either way. I’m plenty guilty of being on both sides as a parent. My particular challenge, however, stems from PTSD from childhood abuse and neglect, so I feel even -more- pressure to give my child everything she needs and wants because I don’t want her to feel as alone and unwanted as I did. But I do worry that comes at the price of her independence, which is something else I definitely don’t want to take away from her.
The paradoxical thing for me is that much of what I’ve achieved has come about because I was forced to do things on my own and fend for myself. It built a lot of “character” but at the same time I’m not anywhere near happy or content.
If you find a behavior you don't like, figure out what's causing it. It's probably not random, parents are probably not just being dumb.
Test scores, or minor misbehaviors, or other things, can disproportionately influence someone's future, to extents that are not realistic or human. Children, left to their own devices, will have trouble surviving in a world that runs on rules that don't actually make sense. Parents can sense this, so they try to protect their children, and they play by the rules that they see. There's no advantage to being fair, to doing things the "right" way, because the message has already gotten out that the rules are arbitrary. It's not important what you know, it's important that you pass the test.
Or, as they say, "best predictor of future behavior is past behavior" (very horrible sentiment).
If you don't want parents being overzealous and a bit crazy about their children, stop making society so damn competitive and inflexible. There are so many pitfalls someone can fall down just by accident, just by being human.
The eternal debate continues between the "overbearing fascist helicopter parents" and the "free-parenting grossly negligent degenerates". (I have no horse in this race and find these pieces interesting nonetheless)
Controversy sells/generates clicks. Nobody wants to read a well-reasoned, balanced article when they're jonesing for that next micro-dose of e-dopamine.
This topic is always a great opportunity to share stories about what childhood was like just a few decades ago, so I'll share mine.
When I was 5-10, a typical day for me was spent alone or with friends outside, from sun up to down, with zero adult supervision. There wouldn't even be an adult who knew where I was going or where I was. They simply gave me the responsibility of returning home before the sun went down, and over those years I always did, mostly because I was hungry. The only exception was one day when I traveled too far, realized too late that the sun was going down, and collapsed from exhaustion trying to get home. My family searched for and found me during twilight. I learned valuable lessons that day.
I recently looked up my childhood home on Google Maps to see how far I would go, and I would regularly travel within about a 3-mile radius. The surrounding area was heavily wooded and mostly vacant.
I would see a black bear probably once a month. My parents just told me to make noise as I traveled, to keep them scared off of my position. I knew never to play with their cubs. I knew never to run from them. I knew to stand ground and be loud and aggressive if I was ever approached or charged by one.
I fell off my bike and skinned my knees probably 40 or 50 times. I have many memories of limping my bike home on foot for a mile while sobbing in pain, and then squeezing my dad's hand as hard as I could while he poured hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol over my bleeding knee. Every time this happened, he would just tell me I was going to heal up fast and get right back on the bike.
A common route for me was to ride my bike along the side of the highway a few miles to a corner store so I could buy chips or candy, or visit a waitress my family knew at a local breakfast spot for some free eggs. Nobody ever stopped their car and tried to "rescue" me. The people at the shops knew how I got there, they were not concerned.
When I was about 10, my family moved to a rich white suburb outside a major city. Their policy of letting me be independent and go wherever I wanted unsupervised continued, but in this new town I was regularly approached by adults asking if I was lost, strangers asking where my parents were, and adults on golf carts with walkie-talkies reprimanding me and sending me home for no particular reason.
I found their concern for my well-being incredibly insulting. I was insulted that they thought I couldn't handle myself, and later I was insulted by the way I realized they were judging my family and my parents. As a result, I was downright rude to a lot of them, and kind of earned a negative reputation. Ended up getting blamed for a lot of vandalism despite never vandalizing anything, and causing problems between my family and other local families, simply by locals assigning blame to me for all kinds of things based purely on my reputation of being out unsupervised a lot and being rude to certain adults.
So I got a taste of both worlds just by moving. I don't think the problem of over-parenting is restricted to time and trend. I think it has a strong geographical and cultural component, too. I suspect that if I went back to my hometown, I might still find kids unsupervised, riding their bikes and skinning their knees in the summer. I've also heard from people outside the country that this helicopter parenting thing seems to be largely restricted to the US.
[+] [-] christofosho|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020099/ [2] https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/sm6/McCormi...
[+] [-] btilly|7 years ago|reply
As a parent, I think that teachers should pay attention to research on homework that says there is on average no academic benefit, but there is a huge cost in family conflict. You have enough time in the classroom to teach and provide practice time. Free family time up for what parents see best.
[+] [-] burfog|7 years ago|reply
Some students, despite being in your classroom, are really being homeschooled. For example, my wife and I both got extra assignments from our parents. The parents aren't just helping. The parents are teaching. You aren't trusted to teach.
Other students have parents that trust you to teach. Your job is to teach, and these parents expect you to do it. In theory, they are correct.
[+] [-] notduncansmith|7 years ago|reply
If you want a plant to bear fruit, you have to nurture it for a while, and you will never be able to browbeat it into producing fruit before it has developed the facilities for doing so.
Part of effective parenting is resolving the dependency tree for healthy attitude/behavior in your child.
[+] [-] kbuchanan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hannob|7 years ago|reply
Half-OT, but you're making a textbook logical error in interpreting the science you're citing. This is an observational study, making claims about associations, yet you clearly indicate a causal effect in your words.
[+] [-] laurieg|7 years ago|reply
I do wonder now what I should be doing to prepare for parenthood. I feel that perhaps it's not the sort of thing that can be distilled down into an easy to read 200 page paperback.
[+] [-] rayiner|7 years ago|reply
Your kids will turn out how they are going to turn out. Instinctively, you'll love them and want to keep them alive, so don't worry about that. Other than that, do what you think is right and hope for the best.
[+] [-] war1025|7 years ago|reply
Really kids just want someone to love them and teach them how to be a person.
[+] [-] commandlinefan|7 years ago|reply
I started a family almost 15 years ago, and I'm still wondering myself. On the one hand, I can see firsthand how competitive the world is - much more competitive than it was when I was growing up - and I figure the least I can do is prepare my kids for the tidal wave of adulthood that's going to crash into them in another ten years or so. I'm encouraging them to participate in (and supporting them in, even though it's starting to break the bank) as much extracurricular stuff as possible, so their college applications look good, but on the other hand, I worry about stressing them out so hard that they don't feel like they ever had time to enjoy being children. As a parent, I feel like I'm walking a fine line between preparing them for the world and protecting them from it.
[+] [-] idoh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnathan|7 years ago|reply
Unless you have had regular interaction with the 0-3 set and how people raise them, you won't know what you're getting into, and you won't have the right perspective.
n.b., I think it is something that can be written down, to a large extent, but you won't find it in the "parenting guide" section, you'd find it in the clinical guide texts for professional nurses and parenting educators.
[+] [-] cheez|7 years ago|reply
For example, were you fat as a teenager? OK, make sure your kids have good eating habits. Notice this is not: put them in crossfit, feed them only vegetables.
[+] [-] Viliam1234|7 years ago|reply
A single parent is not enough. No matter how much you love your kids... being alone with them all the time will drive you crazy. You need another adult person to share the burden, to provide feedback, to make a joke at the right moment and remind you that there is life after parenting.
Time spent with your children is more important than the toys you buy them. (Though some toys are better than others. That would be a long debate, but the short version is "Lego good, Barbie bad" i.e. the toy should be there to teach your child some skills, not just to be admired for how expensive it was.)
Be there to provide encouragement when your child succeeds at something, and comfort when it fails. Try to encourage your child to try new things, but don't push. Sometimes a child fails at something, and then a few days or months later succeeds; that is natural. Sometimes children evolve in "jumps"; for a few months you don't see any progress at some specific area, and then a huge change happens overnight.
Your children will try to manipulate you; probably before they learn to talk. That is also natural. Resist the manipulation, but don't get angry.
Always reward progress with praise, even very small progress. Be specific with the praise, i.e. describe exactly the progress you celebrate. For overcoming difficult problems, offer rewards.
In teaching, I am a fan of Montessori education: set up an environment where learning happens naturally, and then learning will happen. For example, your child is more likely to learn drawing, if they have pencils and paper always available; more likely to get mechanical skills if they have mechanical toys; and more likely to be good at computers when they have access to a computer. (Computers, that is a separate long topic. But again: don't use them as a device for playing shooting games or chatting online, rather use editors or encyclopedias etc.)
As my RPG-playing friends say: "If your child could do something alone, but you are doing it for them, you are stealing their experience points." Teach kids new skills. Yes, at the first time they will be clumsy and likely do it wrong. That's natural. You are investing in the long-term outcome.
The children will copy what you do. That is a f-ing huge responsibility! But also an extra reward for finally getting your own life in order.
Don't ever believe that the school will fix something. The teacher cannot be a substitute parent; they have dozens of other kids in the classroom, lessons to teach, exams to administer, and most importantly a ton of paperwork to fill.
Accept that sometimes you won't do things perfectly. As long as you avoid the worst mistakes, you are still doing a great job.
...you are right, I could probably go on and write 200 more pages. :D
[+] [-] ubertakter|7 years ago|reply
Don't treat your child "like a child", treat them like a small person. What I mean by this hopefully will come through in my other points.
Just like every person is a little different, so it is for children. Don't be afraid to try other techniques if something isn't working for your child. A recent example of this in my case is helping my daughter with spelling. It took us a while to determine the best way for learn in this particular case.
If I need my daughter to do something, or I tell her no, I always try to provide an explanation as to why. This isn't easy, but so far it has been fruitful.
By the same token, she can always ask why and I always try to provide an explanation. Now that she's older, if she has a question about why something happens or works, we try to investigate it together by various means.
Don't be afraid to explain complicated concepts to your child, even at a very early age. My wife thought it was pretty funny that I was trying to explain that the string on a balloon is a tether and why you might call something a tether rather than a string. Early on it's not clear how much they absorb, but it seems to have worked (at least for my daughter).
Always let them know that how their opinions/feelings are important, even if you have to explain that they have not understood something correctly. In other words, don't just dismiss what they think or feel just because they are children. I try to use these as teaching moments. Occasionally you will be the one being taught. I think this concept in particular has made my daughter an outgoing person, and one who generally thinks about things before she speaks (well, for a nine year old anyway). One good example of this was when she was five or six, we had some pretty extreme flooding in our area. There was a news story on the local news station about one of the rescuers themselves needing to be rescued during an operation. I chuckled about that and pointed it out to my wife. My daughter who was sitting next to me made this observation: "Maybe he's new". I had to agree with her, once I stopped laughing. My point is she made an astute observation that I had not considered, and one that was extremely plausible.
Back to always providing an explanation, sometimes I don't say no, in particular to activities where she could be injured. Instead, I try to get her to analyze the situation (and help if necessary) to see if she can accomplish her goal in a safer manner. For example, I have a four wheel cart to move stuff around on. She wanted to ride it like a surfboard in the driveway. By asking her what would happen if she falls, she saw the wisdom in wearing knee and elbow pads, gloves, and her bicycle helmet (which she had for riding her scooter). I don't doubt the falls on the scooter while wearing pads helped her make her decision. By the same token, one day when I came home from work, her hands and chin were scraped up. She was reluctant to tell me what happened, but I got her to tell me that she got on the cart without her pads and fell off. I told her that's why I thought she should wear the pads (and that she wasn't in trouble). Kids will be kids after all.
Try to expose you children to new things. When you do, make sure there is some interaction. For example, just this week, I got my daughter to start doing a little astronomy. I recently bought a dobsonian mount telescope because it would be easier for her to use. She wasn't too interested until I told her that she was the one who would be pointing the telescope. I showed her what to do and let her point it at whatever she wanted to look at, helping a little along the way. Now she wants to get out whenever it's clear, despite the bugs (summertime...).
Don't be worried what other parents think. Feel free to listen to their advice. Also feel free to ignore it.
I don't know if any of this helps you or not, and I certainly have forgotten to mention some things, but it's worked for us so far. I can't say for certain (obviously) that going this route has made my daughter the person she is. All I can say is these are some of the concepts my wife and I have applied and that my daughter is an intelligent, thoughtful, outgoing person who has made me a better person just by knowing her.
[+] [-] jknoepfler|7 years ago|reply
I'm not surprised by the existence of the article, it's as inevitable as my curmudgeonly response. I'm surprised NPR stooped to publishing it.
[+] [-] tcfunk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tehabe|7 years ago|reply
I found this shocking and also dangerous in the long run, people are getting used to surveillance might also accept it by the state.
[+] [-] ajross|7 years ago|reply
Obviously those products exist (and probably do in Germany too) and I'm sure that parent who got in trouble was a real incident. Nonetheless those of us actually raising children in this country don't actually do that stuff. Chill.
[+] [-] jaiprabhu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alasdair_|7 years ago|reply
I've never done this but I imagine the reason would be to spot times when the teachers are abusive towards the children, not to ensure everything is perfect.
[+] [-] thorell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conductr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaxBarraclough|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimhefferon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarecrowbob|7 years ago|reply
If you think that is bad, wait until you have to speak with some 20-year-old's mom who is thinking that her kiddo should be getting an A for C-level work and you have to get litigious about supporting your grades. I had to write a policy into my syllabus saying that I won't (and, IIRC, legally was not permitted) to talk with other folks than the student about grades and assessments.
[+] [-] billbrown|7 years ago|reply
(I catch myself doing this frequently: that couple's marriage is in trouble—they're not even talking over dinner, that driver is on his phone scrolling through Facebook probably, etc. Those stories may be true but there's perfectly reasonable alternatives that would look exactly the same.)
[+] [-] linuxftw|7 years ago|reply
The only people they know how to talk to are their parents.
[+] [-] Angostura|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragontamer|7 years ago|reply
I had a flatmate who talked with her mom every night. Literally every night. For hours. She was just close with her family. It wasn't like she was at school or anything, we were both grown adults with working lives.
[+] [-] donovanh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emptyfile|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpindar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnathan|7 years ago|reply
Sure, if mom is still supervising, then that's a bit awkward...
[+] [-] squozzer|7 years ago|reply
The margins for "error" - i.e. achieving suboptimal grades and cultivating interests outside of "school stuff" - have shrunk since I was a kid.
This is, of course, in addition to the need for parents to acquire bragging rights about their children.
[+] [-] gukov|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smelendez|7 years ago|reply
I'd love to see these policies tested, e.g., have five high school kids with class scheduling issues attempt to resolve them themselves, and another five have their parents call, and compare how the process goes.
[+] [-] thomasfedb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gowld|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|7 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snqXOvnHzcQ
We are raising kids lacking conflict resolution skills who can't discuss and would rather coerce someone who doesn't conform to their ideas.
[+] [-] tarr11|7 years ago|reply
Articles and posts like this are chock-full of anecdotes and head-nodding, but short on studies or other data to even correlate against. Seems like this "crisis" has been happening for a long time.
Is there a longitudinal study on children who have been "helicopter parented?" vs those who were raised "free-range"?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/11/17/the-child-trap
[+] [-] finaliteration|7 years ago|reply
The paradoxical thing for me is that much of what I’ve achieved has come about because I was forced to do things on my own and fend for myself. It built a lot of “character” but at the same time I’m not anywhere near happy or content.
[+] [-] projektir|7 years ago|reply
Test scores, or minor misbehaviors, or other things, can disproportionately influence someone's future, to extents that are not realistic or human. Children, left to their own devices, will have trouble surviving in a world that runs on rules that don't actually make sense. Parents can sense this, so they try to protect their children, and they play by the rules that they see. There's no advantage to being fair, to doing things the "right" way, because the message has already gotten out that the rules are arbitrary. It's not important what you know, it's important that you pass the test.
Or, as they say, "best predictor of future behavior is past behavior" (very horrible sentiment).
If you don't want parents being overzealous and a bit crazy about their children, stop making society so damn competitive and inflexible. There are so many pitfalls someone can fall down just by accident, just by being human.
[+] [-] JTbane|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikec3010|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notadoc|7 years ago|reply
> The research found, on average, children were playing outside for just over four hours a week
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/27/children...
[+] [-] throwaway0255|7 years ago|reply
When I was 5-10, a typical day for me was spent alone or with friends outside, from sun up to down, with zero adult supervision. There wouldn't even be an adult who knew where I was going or where I was. They simply gave me the responsibility of returning home before the sun went down, and over those years I always did, mostly because I was hungry. The only exception was one day when I traveled too far, realized too late that the sun was going down, and collapsed from exhaustion trying to get home. My family searched for and found me during twilight. I learned valuable lessons that day.
I recently looked up my childhood home on Google Maps to see how far I would go, and I would regularly travel within about a 3-mile radius. The surrounding area was heavily wooded and mostly vacant.
I would see a black bear probably once a month. My parents just told me to make noise as I traveled, to keep them scared off of my position. I knew never to play with their cubs. I knew never to run from them. I knew to stand ground and be loud and aggressive if I was ever approached or charged by one.
I fell off my bike and skinned my knees probably 40 or 50 times. I have many memories of limping my bike home on foot for a mile while sobbing in pain, and then squeezing my dad's hand as hard as I could while he poured hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol over my bleeding knee. Every time this happened, he would just tell me I was going to heal up fast and get right back on the bike.
A common route for me was to ride my bike along the side of the highway a few miles to a corner store so I could buy chips or candy, or visit a waitress my family knew at a local breakfast spot for some free eggs. Nobody ever stopped their car and tried to "rescue" me. The people at the shops knew how I got there, they were not concerned.
When I was about 10, my family moved to a rich white suburb outside a major city. Their policy of letting me be independent and go wherever I wanted unsupervised continued, but in this new town I was regularly approached by adults asking if I was lost, strangers asking where my parents were, and adults on golf carts with walkie-talkies reprimanding me and sending me home for no particular reason.
I found their concern for my well-being incredibly insulting. I was insulted that they thought I couldn't handle myself, and later I was insulted by the way I realized they were judging my family and my parents. As a result, I was downright rude to a lot of them, and kind of earned a negative reputation. Ended up getting blamed for a lot of vandalism despite never vandalizing anything, and causing problems between my family and other local families, simply by locals assigning blame to me for all kinds of things based purely on my reputation of being out unsupervised a lot and being rude to certain adults.
So I got a taste of both worlds just by moving. I don't think the problem of over-parenting is restricted to time and trend. I think it has a strong geographical and cultural component, too. I suspect that if I went back to my hometown, I might still find kids unsupervised, riding their bikes and skinning their knees in the summer. I've also heard from people outside the country that this helicopter parenting thing seems to be largely restricted to the US.
[+] [-] guard0g|7 years ago|reply
Here's an idea. Why not have "how to be a parent" classes taught in high school or college?
[+] [-] geoffreyhale|7 years ago|reply