Helicopter parenting is a parenting style of which the parent hovers overhead overseeing their child’s life. Such a parent pays an extreme amount of attention to their child’s or children experiences and problems. These parents take too much responsibility for their children experiences and especially their successes and failures. Children are overshadowed by their parents always playing with them and trying to control the child behaviour and giving the child no time for itself.
Parents who use this type of parenting style are normally motivated by either a feeling of anxiety, overcompensation, fear of extreme consequences and peer pressure from fellow parents. This type of parenting can sometimes get to the extreme with some parents doing their child’s project, constantly shielding him from failure and not letting the child make its own decisions. This tends to affects the child’s growth and learning experience making them have low self-esteem and a child not being able to cope with failure or loss.
Why Are Singapore Schools Turning Away Helicopter Parenting?
The number of schools in Singapore that are turning away helicopter parenting is on the increase. When a child forgets their book at home and their parent offers to deliver in school during class hours; these parents are turned away since they hover around the children unnecessarily at the expense of the child’s independence.
Many schools in Singapore are doing their best to discourage helicopter parenting actions. These schools are for the idea that parents need to give the children room to grow up. When your child forgets a book item or other school material, letting them stay in school without the forgotten item will teach them to be responsible and pack their school bags carefully.
Some schools have even made efforts through writing letters to parents to discourage them from being overprotective to their children. They also encourage children to report any forgotten school items to the teacher as a way to teach them integrity. There are some exceptions are made when a child forgets necessities like spectacles or medication. Some schools have gone all the way to lend pupils money for lunch or recess.
Anxiety, Depression And Lack Of Confidence
According to a study carried over a five year period on primary school pupils in Singapore. The research team found that pupils with parents who are constantly interfering make the children be very self-critical and be fraught with anxiety symptoms and high depression tendencies.
Parents, who intrude constantly in the lives of their children, may possibly signal to them that anything they do is not at all good enough. Consequently, the child may well turn out to be scared of making even the slightest blunder. Such a child will end up blaming themselves and thinking they are not perfect. This perfectionism behaviour can become detrimental to a child’s well being and the child eventually develops depression, anxiety or may get suicidal in critical cases.
Fear Of Failure
Children need to get used to viewing failure and risk- taking as a normal part of daily life. Parents are encouraged to give children the chance to get in trouble so that they can figure their way out of the situation. This way they will get the chance to be familiar with failure and recognize they will always come out on top through all situations.
Children need to be more accepting of failure and all experiences that prove to be uncomfortable for them. They also need to know how to respond to bad name calling without adults intervening. Many children are to be given a chance to face and solve their challenges.
Inhibits Independence
Domineering parenting has been known to cause phobias. Your child will learn to overanalyze a situation they are unfamiliar with and to extremely avoid and push away situations that make them uncomfortable thus they face the situations with immense fear. These children end up being unprepared for independent life later in life.
False Sense Of Entitlement
Children, whose parents are excessively involved in their social and academic lives, end up getting used to their parents doing things on their behalf and even finding solutions to their problems. The over protectiveness displayed by their parents, makes a child develop a belief that life always is easy and that things will be handed to them as their entitlement. This makes the child be maladjusted to the daily way of life as they will be expecting someone to do things for them instead.
Unreasonable Expectations Of Success
Some parents have a belief that their children are always destined for success. This gives the child a false belief that failure is bad and they strive hard to shun failure. These children view failure as a bad thing.
Such a blurred view of failure makes these children ill prepared should they face any sort of failure as they do not know how to handle it or even how to react to it. This can also lead to believing they are not good enough for the tasks they are undertaking or lead them in their adulthood expecting success comes naturally to them without hard work.
Undeveloped Life Skills
Children need to start learning to do basic skill from a young age, building up as they grow. This will better prepare them to be able to lead an independent life. There are those children whose parents do not let them do any task. Simple tasks like a child packing their own lunch, washing clothes, cleaning up and even preparing a meal will get your child on positive responsibilities.
Conclusion
Helicopter parenting is a type of parenting by which a parent is constantly involved in their children’s lives, both social and academic. These parents are motivated by various fears and do their best to shield their children without giving a chance at experiencing life.
This type of behaviour from parents is highly discouraged from some schools in Singapore. These schools have resulted in turning parents away when they show up during the class hour to either deliver school items forgotten by the child.
These parents unknowingly, teach their children not to be independent, responsible and even ill adjusted in life experiences. These children later in life experience challenges as they never got the chance to take responsibility for their mistakes in their adulthood.
We have more articles on parenting tips for you: Parents’ Top Tips For Partnering With Your Child’s Teacher and Parents’ Guide to Tuition & Enrichment in Singapore.
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