Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education A great article...

YES! I hate being the parent who gets glared at for sitting on the park bench while my children happily play. Fifi can make it down the slide just fine, she's 8...

Thanks for posting the link. The article was quite interesting --- especially given that it's almost nine years old. Certainly, things are not better almost a decade later. Ouch.


I think that many parents today believe they're obligated to hover --- it's as though not being constantly attentive to their children is somehow being a bad parent. I agree with the article that this kind of attention is actually bad for the child and inhibits healthy development.

I wonder how people think their kids will suddenly be able to cope on their own when they go to college or otherwise move out if they haven't had a lot of practice at solving their own problems and making their own decisions first. And this process has to start during the preschool years.

Having worked in college administration for the past 13 years, I can tell you that they don't expect their kids to be able to cope on their own when they get past high school. I have seen the number and severity of "helicopter" parents increase steadily during my time in higher education. These parents not only want to be involved in their children's housing choices, roommate choices, roommate conflicts, conduct cases, and coursework. They also want to be involved in their children's employment issues and discipline, as well. It's downright scary to me. It's simply not healthy for a child OR a parent's emotional development.

Wow, wow, wow. That is so depressing.

I don't think that "coping" figures into the equation, here.

I feel like at this stage I have to helicopter to some extent due to food allergies. Other kids running around the playground with a bag of peanuts makes me rather anxious to say the least. I try to remind myself that that is the only reason I am doing it, and it is good to be reminded to stay out of his friend conflicts and other such stuff, as the food-police need for helicoptering can over-extend into other areas quite easily.

It is nice to have articles like this to help remind me what the goal is - to raise an independent, problem solving kid, who can cope with the world around him. As much as I whole-mindedly subscribe to it, it can be hard to put it into practice when you are so worried about the safety (for me food allergies) of your child. But if I conscientiously try every day to let him be his own problem solver, he will be better of for it. I think (since I know there are many of us here with food allergy concerns) the combination of having extreme smarts and life-threatening or life-altering diagnosis makes it harder to stand back and let life skills develop on their own. We feel an obligation to aid- to max out their potential. I am sure all parents do. Because when you see such astounding potential, as in gifted children, maybe we take a much too nurturing relationship to that. Maybe our job isn't to nurture their academic skills so much. Maybe that really in the long run is better left to them.

I agree.

Wholeheartedly.

(With both of you, to be clear.)

Yes, yes, a THOUSAND times yes. We still have to intervene because DD is frequently not skeptical/cynical/assertive enough to manage the behavior of those around her as aggressively as she actually NEEDS to in order to... um... stay alive, I guess. So yes, I do go to fairly obnoxious lengths there, sometimes. I wish with all my heart that I didn't need to, of course (in spite of what others must sometimes think of me).

Other people are constantly surprised that we don't "helicopter" in other ways-- often not even to the extent that my DD's academic peers are over-parented, quite honestly.

I trust that my DD is able to solve most of her own problems... and I never dictate solutions TO her. (oy) I may help her brainstorm when she is 'stuck' somehow and has not been making progress on her own... or when it is very clearly an asynchrony/maturity issue and she simply doesn't have the ability (developmentally) to tackle a particular problem.

Luckily for me, my DD wouldn't tolerate genuine helicopter parenting for a second. I mean, I guess that is lucky. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way, frankly.

But it does mean that I very seldom have to tell her "NO. YOU need to figure this out," because mostly she is already doing that and wants me to respect her choices. Which I do.

THIS! I know I am a helicopter parent and I so do not like being one but majority of it is because I worry about DS's allergies. It was a big step for me to let him attend public preschool and every day I have to worry and we have had our issues with that. And today, I too another HUGE step when he started his very first ever summer camp through the therapy place we go to. The go far and beyond trying to make all their kids safe (there are more kids with food allergies) and if there is a camp I would trust, THIS one is IT! Yet at the end of the two our camp today when I went to pick him up, his face was covered in hives. I have no idea what he reacted to but even after giving him allergy meds it still hasn't completely disappeared 3 hours later. I so hope this was a one time occurrence and it won't happen again when he goes back on Friday but if it happens again, I know my helicoptering will kick in and I'll want to pull him out and not take any more risk .

Needless to say, I spent those two hours in the waiting room in that same building wanting to be there should anything happen. I was the only mom there the whole time.