Here’s how to tell if you’re a helicopter parent

Once you become a parent, all you care about is raising your kid right, shielding them from danger and keeping their priorities above everything.

The world seems to revolve around your children and there’s nothing that matters more than them to you.

But in trying to help your kids live a wholesome life, make sure you’re not living your child’s life for them.

In simple terms, see that you’re not taking over their decisions, their dreams and most importantly, their lives. These are all signs of helicopter parenting.

Helicopter parenting is a type of parenting style wherein parents are over-indulgent in their kid’s life. They pay extremely close attention to their activities and make sure to interfere in their day to day lives. From choosing their friends to completing their schoolwork, helicopter parents are everywhere. While the main objective of such parents is to protect their children from getting hurt and being disappointed, experts believe being too involved in one’s child’s life may deprive them of their confidence and self esteem.

That said, if you want to avoid that and want your child to thrive, watch out for these signs of helicopter parenting.

Standing up for your child is one thing, but fighting their battles for them is a completely different matter. Helicopter parents tend to take matters in their own hands, which means they single-handedly try to resolve their kid’s problems instead of letting them handle it on their own. This could backfire when children grow up to be adults. They may run away from a crisis situation, might fail to overcome challenges on their own and may become dependent on other people.

So, until and unless you want your child to have such negative qualities, it is best to let them handle situations on their own. Give them the support and guidance they need, but let them do their thing.

As a parent, you may feel obligated to help your child with their academic work, may feel like it’s your duty to teach them house chores, which is justifiable. However, what you should avoid is doing their work for them.

Often parents cannot see their children struggling, which is why they step in and finish their work for them. While it may seem right at that particular moment, it may affect them later on in life. Not only will they lag behind in their studies, they’ll also be deprived of various other knowledge. Hence, let them do their own work, finish their own homework and chores.

One of the tell-tale signs of a helicopter parent is teaching your child’s teachers how to do their job. It usually happens when you feel your child underperformed and start advising their teachers or sport coaches about how they’re doing everything wrong and what they should do instead. That said, instead of taking your kid’s teachers’ class, make your child able enough to ask questions and express their opinion.

Everyone faces several problems in their life. What matters in the end is how you deal with them. Helicopter parents believe in protecting their children from failure and disappointments, which may seem like a great way to protect their self-esteem, but instead, it may cause more harm eventually. From damaging their ability to overcome difficult situations to constantly being fearful of failure, there are many ways helicopter parenting can affect the child’s psyche.

No matter what happens, your child should always have a say in deciding who his or her friends will be. Helicopter parents fail to recognize that. They decide everything for their children, even who their friends will be. While such parents may think they’re shielding their children from the wrong people, they’re only making them more doubtful of their ability to make the right choices and also giving light to negative emotions.