Grandmas Speak Up on Helicopter Parenting

 

I celebrated Grandparents Day with 25 of my GaGa Sisters by participating in a thought-provoking conversation with Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success. Julie’s best-selling book (now in its 7th printing) focuses on an alarming trend she began noticing in 2005 while she was dean of freshmen at Stanford University — the increasing encroachment of parents into their sons’ and daughters’ lives, also known as “helicopter parenting.”

We began our meeting by introducing ourselves and answering the following question: “How are kids being raised today that makes you raise an eyebrow?”

The answers the grandmas gave were diverse and fell neatly into two groups.

Our grandchildren do not have enough:

• respect for teachers, parents and grandparents
• time spent playing outside
• time spent with parents
• time to just daydream or putter
• eye contact when speaking to an adult
• respect for safety (e.g. wearing bike helmets)
• attention from nannies who were caring for them
• appreciation of cleanliness and good manners

Our grandchildren have too much:

• pressure to do well in school
• praise for insignificant things
• over-scheduled lives
• high expectations from their parents
• time spent in extended daycare
• screen time (especially in restaurants)
• material possessions
• overindulging
• decision making power in family decisions

Why We Need to Stop Overparenting

After introductions, Julie explained her “macro” view on parenting. “Our job as parents is to put ourselves out of a job by raising our offspring to be independent. We need to feel confident letting them go so they can thrive and learn by making mistakes and experiencing the consequences.”

Instead, what she’s been seeing for the past decade is the increase in helicopter parents who coddle and protect their children so that they’ve become “existentially impotent” — young adults who do not know who they are because they’ve simply accepted what was offered them. They haven’t had a chance to dream because their future was dreamed for them.

In 2009, Julie gave her annual talk to the parents of incoming freshmen by telling them: trust your sons and daughters; trust the institution; please go home! Then  she went home and had a realization while cutting her 10-year old’s meat for him at the dinner table — she was a helicopter parent herself! She asked herself: when do you stop over-helping them with their homework, telling them they can’t talk to strangers, or saying they can’t go on overnights to their friends’ houses?

She started feeling more empathy for parents and children, whose childhoods have become exhausting and who have become victims of “check-listed childhoods.” Julie shared a poignant personal story to illustrate. When her now teenage daughter was 4-years old, Julie made a speech to parents at freshmen orientation telling them to trust their kids to make good choices and let them forge their own paths.

The next day when she picked up her daughter from preschool, her teacher took Julie over to show her Avery’s artwork and praised the child’s artistic abilities. Julie remembers smiling and nodding and trying to look interested, but inside thinking: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s not going to get her into Stanford.” She admits she’s gotten better over the years and realizes her daughter is not “some bonsai to be carefully pruned, but a wildflower of unknown genus and species. And it is her job to provide the nurturing environment where she can flourish.”

We’re all aware of the tremendous pressure on today’s students to achieve perfection so they can get into the “best” schools. But Julie explained that the U.S. News and World Report’s annual list of “Best Colleges” distorts the field of choices many students will consider. She believes that the best college education can be found at small universities that provide lots of individual attention. She shared a resource called Colleges That Change Lives with the names of only 40 very small schools. These colleges are “focused on building the kind of living and learning communities in which undergraduates engage with faculty and emerge well prepared for the world of work as engaged citizens of the world.”

Be an Advocate for Chores

At the close of Julie’s talk, she left us with one final bit of advice: Be an advocate for the importance of chores. A child who does chores has a greater chance of success in life, according to a study done at the University of Minnesota. The study concluded that those who were most “successful” began doing chores at three to four years of age, whereas those who waited until their teen years to start doing chores were comparatively less successful. Without chores, kids miss learning how to pitch in and how to work hard at tasks that may be unpleasant.

As grandmas, we can give our grandchildren the gift of listening to them, providing them some “down” time, and having conversations with them about their interests and dreams.