Is Helicopter Parenting Hurting Your Family?

Did you know that helicopter parenting can hurt your entire family? Rather than protecting your children, this intrusive behavior can limit your child’s growth and independence while damaging your relationship with other family members.

Consider these facts:

1. Helicopter parenting hurts the children. Helicopter parenting involves hovering over your children’s lives and being involved in every detail, but this can actually hurt them.

• Kids who grow up with helicopter parenting are less likely to be independent and responsible.
• They grow to rely on their parents for everything, and many never move out on their own. They also struggle with financial responsibility and often can’t pay their own bills or support themselves.
• Children may also suffer from self-esteem and confidence issues because they’re used to being told that they need help with everything. They may be emotionally stunted and unable to handle the real world or have stable relationships of their own.

2. It can hurt your partner. If the parents adopt the helicopter style, they often neglect each other and hurt their marriage.

• You can become so focused on the kids that you ignore each other. You begin to depend for emotional connections and reassurances from your children instead of your partner.
• You don’t take the time for date night or other things that help you connect with your partner. Instead, you spend all of your time obsessively monitoring your kids’ lives and worrying about them.

3. It can hurt your own parents and other family members. By focusing solely on your kids, you often end up neglecting other family members.

• Neglecting other family members and not spending time with them is a serious issue for many people who decide to be helicopter parents. They simply don’t have the time to spend with their cousins, aunts, uncles, and others.

4. It can destroy your friendships. If you’re wrapped up in every tiny detail of your children’s lives, then you don’t have time for friends or other relationships.

When helicopter parenting, your own emotional health starts to suffer, too, since you’re not interacting enough with adults. You’re too busy overparenting to notice that you don’t have other healthy relationships in your life.

The Cost of Helicopter Parenting

There is a real cost to helicopter parenting – monetary, emotional, and physical:

1. Monetary. Children don’t learn to pay their own bills and grow to depend on their parents to support them forever. They may even marry and have kids of their own, but still rely on their parents for help. This creates an enormous financial burden.

2. Physical. Children don’t learn to be resilient. Helicopter parents are quick to help them and protect them. They don’t let them grow and learn from mistakes.

3. Emotional. Kids learn to get all of their needs met, and parents don’t let them evolve and deal with hard feelings.

4. Boundaries. The lack of physical and emotional boundaries between kids and parents creates a great deal of tension. This also affects spouses and other family members who get neglected.

5. Role confusion. Role confusion can appear with older kids not feeling like adults and still thinking they’re little. Parents and other family members may also get confused and don’t know what their real roles are anymore.

These are scary facts! Helicopter parenting can harm multiple members of your family. It’s important to realize its impact on everyone.

If you tend to adopt this type of parenting style, it will benefit you, the kids, and everyone around you to be aware of these facts so you can practice giving your children greater responsibility.