- As the father of two children, aged 5 years and 18 months, helicopter parenting can be easy to die for.
- I constantly catch myself by trying to protect them from hypothetical dangers.
- However, I learn to let children understand and do things by themselves.
You know those Terminator Films, when Arnold Schwarzenegger enters a room and immediately begins to assess potential threats with his cybernetic vision and his AI? Inasmuch as parent of two young children5 years and 18 months, I am exactly like that.
I enter a restaurant and my “danger radar” launches into overdrive. Ratchant knife here. Teapot de la Sching Bester there. Go to a friendAnd I only see electrical taquine factories, acute corners and guilty of the head and breeding objects full of bursts to be stuck at art at hand.
My life is full of children’s added to children. As if we eat grapes, my intrusive thoughts reflect on an undead grape that manages to roll on the ground and later find themselves obstructing the throat of my 18 month old son. Or when my elder walks with a pencil in hand, and I imagine that she slides and getting impressed.
I did not worry like that when I was younger
These obsessive thoughts of security seemed so foreign to me. When I was younger, I threw caution in the wind by subjecting my body to all kinds of risky activities, launching myself with various scars and funny noises not resolved in my bones. Now, however, as a parent, and with a fully matured response to fear, the palpable tension I receive when I see a toy car left on a corridor or a knife placed in a precarious manner near a counter edge can be almost unbearable.
It is so easy to want to protect our children from danger and evil – it is the most natural instinct as a parent. I certainly do not want them to be covered in the same scars with which I grew up.
But we are at a time when we can access so many studies on parenting, and well-being and mental health have never been as ramp as at the moment. Some studies have shown that the overextraire, also known as helicopter parentingCan have links with the anxiety and depression of children, and children generally develop problems of confrontation when they strike obstacles or unexpected things as they wish.
This style of parenting also has links to Lower self -esteem and confidence. After all, how can children face future failures and setbacks when their parents are no longer in the image, influencing things to all angles in the background and the foreground for short-term security?
As a medium to grow in an Asian family, I certainly experienced a good dose of helicopter parenting – at least until the birth of my younger sister, anyway. I was 10 years old at the time, and she was the first daughter of the family, so all the attention was suddenly focused on her after having been over me for a decade. After that, it gave me space to learn things by myself and be independent and adaptable.
I believe that if we, as parents, can train and feed our children to be just a little “better” than us – or at least let them understand for themselves – we are on the right track.
I try to correct the courses and give more independence to my children
So instead, I am Give my elder more independence. She even helped me with the preparation of meals using plastic knives, and we will start cooking, with her helping to stir the meals on the stove. I will let my youngest sail the stairs by himself, with me half a dozen steps below, offering encouragement. It is also quite skilful to use tools such as forks and pencils.
I always surprise myself leading or microchipping my children or doing things for them that they can do independently, especially when the time is against us. But being aware of my own attitudes and behaviors is half the battle, and I slowly give them more tasks to make them more independent while offering time and patience to answer their many questions.
It will be difficult, and there will undoubtedly be anger attacks and tears when things do not manage my children, but my partner and I will be there to help them and build these crucial skills of resilience and critical thinking that ‘ I prepare them for life.
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