Before you criticize helicopter parenting: Remember, there is a strong correlation between parental involvement in a child’s life and positive outcomes. Of course, the helicopter parenting and positive outcomes could have a shared cause—intelligence, higher socioeconomic status, or the like—and anything can be taken too far, including parental involvement.
But in all, kids of parents like Amy Chua are far more likely to end up successful along most metrics than children of parents who ignore their kids.
I am fairly sure that helicopter parenting is not the same as being involved. I correlate helicoptering with making decisions for the kid or running errands for them, while being involved often is more on the level of asking about things, and giving support when asked.
Support: Your child wants to play guitar. You buy them a guitar and a textbook for beginners.
Helicopter parenting: Your child wants to play guitar. You read magazines and speak with important people, and upon their advice you decide that piano is better. You buy a piano and pay for piano lessons three times a week. You always drive your child to the piano lessons, wait outside, drive them back, and make them play on piano at home for the next two hours; three hours in days they don’t have piano lessons. You make your child attend every piano competition; you speak about each competion weeks before it and after it. (You also make your child play tennis and learn Mandarin Chinese.)
To be a bit more specific. In one job I had parents come in with their kids to make sure they fill out their forms correctly and basically doing the interview for them. Helicopter: takes many things from the kid, that it would do uncorrect, incomplete or wrong, thereby sheltering the kid from real life experience. Helicopter parents storm into the university office, when a problem arises—or when not. Phone the professors and basically prevent the kid from going out on its own.
Being involved sounds like asking lots of questions offering support when asked, or maybe stating opinions without being asked. Its about taking an interest in the kids life, not running it for them.
Eh, I wouldn’t be so certain, it’s quite possible that extreme helicopter parenting gets the best result along the dimensions the parents care about.
I’m skeptical of the “seek the Golden Mean” approach in general, I suspect it’s an easy justification for not seriously researching the pros and cons of the alternatives, and it tends to squash attributes onto a single axis.
I’m not particularly disagreeing with you in general, except maybe on levels of certainty. I don’t think everything that could be categorized as “helicopter parenting” is good, I just think the term “Golden Mean” fails to capture the important difference between “do 50% fo Amy Chua on all dimensions” and “Go 100% Amu Chua on some dimensions, and 0% on others”.
Also, I should have been clearer in distinguishing two concepts: protecting your kids too much; and pushing them too excel too much; though there is often an overlap. The same people do both and both are correlated with success for the child along almost every metric you care about (taking into account, again, that there may be a shared cause for the parental behavior and the child’s success.)
That distinction is very important. Overprotection is clearly stifling of future growth (eg this). But the best way to encourage future excellence is a much, much harder problem.
Before you criticize helicopter parenting: Remember, there is a strong correlation between parental involvement in a child’s life and positive outcomes. Of course, the helicopter parenting and positive outcomes could have a shared cause—intelligence, higher socioeconomic status, or the like—and anything can be taken too far, including parental involvement.
But in all, kids of parents like Amy Chua are far more likely to end up successful along most metrics than children of parents who ignore their kids.
I am fairly sure that helicopter parenting is not the same as being involved. I correlate helicoptering with making decisions for the kid or running errands for them, while being involved often is more on the level of asking about things, and giving support when asked.
Support: Your child wants to play guitar. You buy them a guitar and a textbook for beginners.
Helicopter parenting: Your child wants to play guitar. You read magazines and speak with important people, and upon their advice you decide that piano is better. You buy a piano and pay for piano lessons three times a week. You always drive your child to the piano lessons, wait outside, drive them back, and make them play on piano at home for the next two hours; three hours in days they don’t have piano lessons. You make your child attend every piano competition; you speak about each competion weeks before it and after it. (You also make your child play tennis and learn Mandarin Chinese.)
To be a bit more specific. In one job I had parents come in with their kids to make sure they fill out their forms correctly and basically doing the interview for them. Helicopter: takes many things from the kid, that it would do uncorrect, incomplete or wrong, thereby sheltering the kid from real life experience. Helicopter parents storm into the university office, when a problem arises—or when not. Phone the professors and basically prevent the kid from going out on its own.
Being involved sounds like asking lots of questions offering support when asked, or maybe stating opinions without being asked. Its about taking an interest in the kids life, not running it for them.
This is a very obvious false dilemma.
There’s a big difference between parents who are involved in their children’s lives and parents who shelter their children from the world.
Yes, you’re certainly right that one should seek the Golden Mean.
Eh, I wouldn’t be so certain, it’s quite possible that extreme helicopter parenting gets the best result along the dimensions the parents care about.
I’m skeptical of the “seek the Golden Mean” approach in general, I suspect it’s an easy justification for not seriously researching the pros and cons of the alternatives, and it tends to squash attributes onto a single axis.
I’m not particularly disagreeing with you in general, except maybe on levels of certainty. I don’t think everything that could be categorized as “helicopter parenting” is good, I just think the term “Golden Mean” fails to capture the important difference between “do 50% fo Amy Chua on all dimensions” and “Go 100% Amu Chua on some dimensions, and 0% on others”.
Yes.
Also, I should have been clearer in distinguishing two concepts: protecting your kids too much; and pushing them too excel too much; though there is often an overlap. The same people do both and both are correlated with success for the child along almost every metric you care about (taking into account, again, that there may be a shared cause for the parental behavior and the child’s success.)
That distinction is very important. Overprotection is clearly stifling of future growth (eg this). But the best way to encourage future excellence is a much, much harder problem.
Source?