Time to ground the helicopters
‘Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.’ — Yogi Berra
- • •
The image of a helicopter parent is laughable, at least until you think what kind of damage those whirring blades can cause.
Look out below!
But there’s a remedy to this Millennial generation-rooted ailment that afflicts many American families, and it doesn’t require $200 an hour psychiatrists or government programs.
A little elbow grease can make everything run more smoothly.
The problem, as outlined in today’s story by Press reporter Brooke Wolford, is hovering parents who over-control or over-intervene. All that extra attention results in kids with elevated levels of anxiety or depression, feeling less confident and therefore less competent. The consequences can range from troubling to tragic, not just for the kids and their parents, but for society at large.
What experts are discovering is that giving kids chores — that’s right, letting them roll up their sleeves and accomplish some simple, physical tasks on a regular basis — can do wonders for their mental health, academic achievement and overall happiness.
This isn’t really anything new. Even a chore as simple as regularly taking out the trash teaches a child responsibility and gives her or him a sense of contributing to the good of the group. The physical act helps balance the sometimes exhausting mental exercise demanded of good students. And as trivial as that one accomplishment might seem in the grand scheme of things, a child gains confidence in knowing he or she successfully completed the job without any outside help.
So what if the hoisted trash bag splits and nastiness spills all over the child? Well, that’s not all bad, either (after a bath). A lot of good comes from “failure” — the fear of which probably spins the rotors on otherwise excellent parents’ choppers. It’s through failure we learn better ways to do things, which increases our confidence and, therefore, our competence.
According to Dr. David Rock, an expert on human performance who has trained thousands of executive, personal and workplace coaches around the world, the broader consequences of helicopter parenting can be devastating. In referencing a newspaper story headlined “Helicopter parents not doing enough to let children fail,” Rock noted that “parents concerned about self esteem are not letting their children do difficult things, and as a result, we are developing adults who expect a lot from life but may not be willing to give much. This of course does not bode well for the future of western civilization, especially when you have other cultures instilling a mental model of the urgency of working hard and doing difficult things.”
So let’s keep it simple. For the good of the children, the family and society at large, let’s do our chores.
- • •
‘I have not failed, not once. I’ve discovered ten thousand ways that don’t work.’ — Thomas Edison