Share:
Helicopter Parents - Definition, Signs and Help
Helicopter parents want to fulfill their children's desires, while at the same time frantically watching over their free time, keeping friends from them who do not conform to the parental image, and keeping the child away from any danger - real or conceited. Caring becomes obsession.
contents
- Definition of helicopter parents
- Carefree childhood?
- Blocked development
- Problems in childhood
- Incapable of conflict
- Psychic neglect
- Lack of trust of parents
- The child as an object
- securing power
- Pressure on the children
- rebellion
- causes
- A scared society
- What to do?
Definition of helicopter parents
Helicopter parents do not allow other people to play with their child or that the child is alone.
They plan kindergarten, school and education of their children in detail. They call the child's teacher at each incident and know their number by heart.
Overprotective parents hinder their child in development. The affected parents are also called helicopter parents. Image: BillionPhotos.com - fotolia They take the children to school by car, pick them up, attend their kids' football every time they play football, and secretly watch when their ten-year-old meets friends.
They feel exhausted because their child is a "24 hour job," but instead of letting themselves and the child have freedom, they are afraid of not doing enough.
They do not give the child any responsibility, do his homework, pack the knapsack and do the laundry.
They fear the catastrophe if the child does not bring all the ones home and consider "failures" at school as a personal failure.
Helicopter parents have the calendar brimming with the children's program - from sports to tutoring to ballet lessons. They do not give the child a chance to do what they want, even if that means sitting on the sofa.
Carefree childhood?
The caregivers do not experience a carefree childhood. The allegedly child-loving parents place the highest demands on the overprotected: The child's weekly plan is filled to the brim with tutoring, sports courses, extracurricular education, homework control and a performance ideal on which the family measures "their" results.
Such children do not have one thing in common: free time, in which they discover the world on their own, spaces in which they discover themselves with their peers, and they do not have to feel their abilities, without having to produce results.
On the contrary, those affected are under pressure of expectation. If the parents already invest so much in the scion, then he should also be grateful.
Blocked development
The child is caught in a vicious circle: because the parents put it at the center of the lifeworld, they do not even look for role models to orient themselves. Moreover, this circling around the child does not go hand in hand with giving the child the greatest possible freedom to decide.
That would mean that the child could move in a different direction than the one the parents think is right. Therefore, they do not educate the offspring to act independently, but even prevent their own decisions.
Own decisions of the child block such parents especially by fulfilling all material wishes. The child develops a standard of attitudes that has nothing to do with the reality outside the home. At the latest, if the environment is to fulfill their claims as well as their parents did before, there is a rude awakening.
Outside the parental glass bell, at school, meeting peers, and in social relationships, many of these children are negatively affected: they have never learned to solve problems, they do not know how to negotiate compromises, and they can not to motivate oneself for achievements.
Many of these children will be cases for occupational therapists, speech therapists and psychotherapists.
Not infrequently affected children have to psychotherapy. Image: Photographee.eu - fotolia Josef Kraus, President of the German Teachers' Association, says: "In children of helicopter parents, an increasing insecurity is observed, a helplessness coupled with high standards. Because the children rely on the parents to do everything for them. "
Problems in childhood
In kindergarten and school, the child is no longer prince or princess, but part of a group. Teamwork is difficult for him, because so far it has always been in the center. Some of these children isolate themselves from the groups and retreat into their own world.
Others try without compromise to push themselves into the center of each group. Now conflicts are inevitable. The others do not regard the child as a guiding figure, because those affected could never develop "leadership qualities".
They are not the center of attention because they can inspire others, but believe that they automatically become stars. But if the other children in a child do not make a star, this behavior is annoying at best.
Other children do not accept the main role of the helicopter child at all. However, those affected have not learned to use other strategies to achieve "glory and honor" but become aggressive.
Instead of really being in the spotlight because they are popular, they become unpopular. No one volunteers to play with the little king the mother picks up from school, and helicopter parents often curb the exclusion by blaming the others. Blame the classmates, other parents or teachers - but never your own child.
Incapable of conflict
The helicopter child learns that it is perfect and does everything right - as long as it follows the will of the parents. If you think you are perfect, you do not have to develop or fight. In addition, children lose their aspiration to achieve goals.
Those affected can not fight conflicts because they are "right" anyway. They have never learned that someone can have a different opinion that they must respect.
But other children do not do that. Even socially minded children, who like to be part of a group, will not submit to the whims of an individual.
The little prince and the little princess are now helpless because conflicts only ever solved their parents. But if parents but intervene because the classmates do not want to play with their offspring, that drives the concerned even more in the isolation.
Psychic neglect
Helicopter children are socially under-challenged, and that often leads to mental neglect. Such children can hardly build bonds, they are incapable of organizing everyday life, they can not take responsibility.
Narcissism and depression are among the common disorders of such children. They do not take any necessary risks, but at the same time have high expectations of what a life looks like. The combination of both programs failures in work and relationships.
Lack of trust of parents
Parents who care so much for their children seem superficial, as if they had a particularly close relationship with them. Finally, "raven parents" are those who neglect their offspring and leave themselves to their own devices.
Helicopter parents never tire of denouncing this neglect and constantly find "confirmations" in reality: minors who end up on the street, victims of sex criminals who followed strangers because their parents were not watching them or children, who land in the gutter because nobody helped them in school.
In the idea of helicopter parents, one necessarily follows from the other: leaving the children to their own devices can only come to a bad end.
When such parents are worried about their children, they are actually afraid to take control. Excessive care is an equally efficient and insidious form of violence.
Helicopter parents get involved in everything, in school, friendships, hobbies. Such children soon find it difficult to find friends at all. If older children hate one, then parents snooping around the children's world with their own rituals. Helicopter children are shunned and are ridiculed. They are lonely.
An overprotected child becomes a dependent adult who does not know how to orient himself in the world. Helicopter children often look for somebody in their later life who will relieve them of all problems and do not know how to handle them themselves.
In everyday life, the problems accumulate, often developing an anxiety disorder, because the children did not learn to organize the things of daily life. At the same time, those who are so impressed think they are something completely different, but they shrink from real achievements. They commute between presumption and helplessness.
Helicopter parents themselves see their commitment as a sign of special affection for their child; while projecting their own fears on the child. They do not trust each other and they do not trust their child. They never give their child the feeling that you can do it even when we are not there.
This can extend well into adulthood when helicopter parents tell their children "I'm afraid what will happen to you when we're gone" and suggest to children, hopefully long-term self-employed: you can not come alone deal.
Helicopter parents are barely aware of their distorted perceptions, even grotesque cases in which the long-grown son of a multi-month trip around the world calls his mother on the return flight at the stopover, and the mother complains: "I'm worried that you would Missed airplane."
The child as an object
Helicopter parents can not bear that the child goes his own way. The over-care sometimes changes to psychological attacks when the child becomes independent and no longer works.
Allegations such as "I have wasted for you 20 years of my life" alternate with showing the child the terrible fate of self-determination: "Then you'll be in the gutter."
If the child eventually becomes self-employed, even though the control parents did everything to prevent it, the situation can become dramatic.
For outsiders, it is now obvious that the child does not have to be protected from the dangers of the outside world, but that the problem is the parents' fears.
securing power
When adults always take everything away from children, they secure their power. Children whose daily routine is regulated, who learn that someone else makes the decisions for them, someone else evaluates their behavior, draws the conclusions for them, consumes and sometimes only produces what others ask of him.
What they themselves want, what excites them, they could not get to know, because this requires a person's own development, without his educators constantly sparking in between.
Pressure on the children
Helicopter parents glorify their children on the one hand and prevent "deficits" immediately by promoting or trying to prevent these "deficits" ever arise. But the child does not have to "earn" material things and prove himself that way.
It weighs heavily on the shoulders of the children. Image: Konstantin Yuganov - fotolia The parents spoil their child, but at the same time they demand that it does not leave the way of life which the parents imagine.
rebellion
Some helicopter parents rebel in their puberty. Parents are often at a loss, because they did everything "to make the child feel good". Although the rebellion is a necessary step to emancipate, it quickly leads to self-destruction in those affected.
Now they reject what they do, with less control. Really good. They refuse training, they reject applications for jobs that they would enjoy because their parents get involved.
Often they are now doing the exact opposite of what their parents want and that is often a way down. They know nothing of the real dangers in society but believe that a "true life" is waiting outside.
What the parents warned about, the "bad guys" really exist, and now the trapped in the Golden Cage urges them to get to know this life. But for the hard life on the street they also lack the skills.
If the children develop successfully independently, the relationship with the parents does not relax at all. The more independent the children become, the less the parents have the overview. As a result, the more successful the child becomes on the path, the more worried they become.
Unconsciously, they now often torpedo the life success of those affected, and increasingly voice their fears against the fugitive. The child can not right the parents.
causes
Overprotective parents often have not received recognition even as children and have trouble orienting themselves in life. Now they are compensating for this lack by focusing too much on their children.
The child should once have "better". What an independent child understands as "better" does not matter. Above all, the projection of the parents does not permit a substantial range of parental care: to leave the child alone when it wants to be at rest.
The parents want the child to become "happy," but subject their own wishes to what happiness looks like. Parents overestimate their ability to regulate things, they are afraid of the vagaries of life, in which everything is different than expected.
At the same time, they disregard children's ability to govern their own lives, and they are equally overcritical of other parents, educators and teachers as uncritical of their own behavior.
A scared society
Helicopter parents are not the syndrome, but the expression of a frightened society. A child is considered a risky investment today. Parents are insecure because even good grades do not promise jobs and the neoliberal barbarism constantly suggests "you have to be better than the others".
On the one hand, so insecure parents now want to give their child every chance to survive in this shark tank, on the other hand, they perceive the outside world as more threatening. For children romping around in the woods, they fear that they will fall off the careers ladder at elementary school age, and Huckleberry-Finn would probably be prescribed Ritalin today.
There is also no room for innocent children's adventures because their essence is that they can not be controlled.
In addition, the one-child family is a phenomenon of late capitalism. A few generations ago, grandparents, older siblings, uncles or aunts took over part of the social supervision, so that the children got different inspirations for their own development.
Long school hours, TÜV-certified playgrounds, organized events in each area paralyze the initiative of parents and children. Those who, as was the case twenty years ago, have their children throwing their knapsacks into the corner after school and romping about on the waste land, are now widely regarded as irresponsible.
What to do?
Helicopter parents do not understand that psychological well-being mainly comes from their own successes. They mistrust the abilities of their children and themselves.
Children who become independent adults have to test their limits and get to know each other. This necessarily involves risks that children can only go through on their own.
Indigenous cultures all had initiation rites in which the girl matured into a woman, the boy into a man. Helicopter parents deprive their children of these experiences, and thus they put the children back to a level of development that eventually no longer corresponds to their physical maturity.
A child should also know that it can trust its parents as it has to find its own ways. Helicopter parents face the task of sometimes losing control, because life is made of risks, and a child needs to be aware of these risks in order to deal with them. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)