Helicopter parenting

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The dance of parenting is a most difficult dance. Sometimes it seems as though we are damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. “Helicopter parenting” is back in the news. This is the kind of parenting that involves doing for the child what the child should be able to developmentally do for him or herself. This can be difficult enough for the everyday parent, and even more so for the parent of a child with a disability.

I was probably very far from a helicopter parent when my children were young. I grew up roaming the neighborhood far and wide with my friends until dark, and that was how I raised my kids back in the 80’s. My daughter still jokes they had to drink from the hose in the yard during the day because I would lock them out. Now in my defense I had warned them they were letting the air conditioning out going in and out so much. And it was a small town. Anyway, that applied to my youngest son as well, the one with a brain injury. And again in my defense, he grew into his disability, as young children with a brain injury can do. So being the youngest, he benefited from the older two trailblazing an independent trail for him.

But as years progressed with him, and he entered his teen years, the disability became more and more evident. My parenting style, which had been treating my children as tops; giving them a good spin and watching them head off on their own, became more involved. What had been extra help with homework and some time in a special classroom became a 504 plan. I think I got kicked into high gear when I found in junior high they were just passing him along. He didn’t have a clue what was being taught, and still was making passing grades. We pulled him out of public school and put him in the only private school our small town had. He hated it. The next year he entered high school with a 504 plan and my new parenting style escalated.

I became that parent that called the teacher about the teacher’s behavior. We began having IEP meetings (Individualized Education Plan) and I was very outspoken. We eventually gave up on much of the public school system and placed him in online classes where we could keep a better eye on what was going in. He stayed in a few public school classes for the socialization. And he graduated.

Our parenting story isn’t finished there though. He is a young adult now who we can see still gaining cognitive skills. With a lot of support from his parents and many wonderful people at a local community college he was able to graduate with a certificate and a skill. We are still working with Vocational Rehabilitation on getting him a job. And yes, I say we, a sign of helicopter parenting. He and I just took the family dog to the vet yesterday. They came out at the end with the plan of care and a bill for $450. I said no, we wouldn’t be paying that and proceeded to select out what things I wanted to do, and which I didn’t. After they left the room my son told me he wanted me to come with him if he needed to bring his emotional support pet to the vet. When I asked him why, he said he wouldn’t be able to tell them no if they brought out a big bill.

Rather than seeing this as a sign of overprotective parenting, I celebrate that he is becoming aware of the times he has a hard time doing what he really wants to do. I hope we can help him to be able to learn to say no, and that will probably mean having me there to privately talk through what he wants and maybe even practice with me how he’s going to say it, and then supporting him as he does. At least I hope that’s how that will go.

Parenting, according to Dr. Marshall Rosenberg in Raising Children Compassionately: Parenting the Nonviolent Communication Way, involves trying to create “the quality of connection necessary for everyone’s needs to be met.” We try to create an experience of “mutual concern, a quality of mutual respect, a quality where both parties think that their needs matter and they are conscious that their needs and the other person’s well-being are interdependent”.

What separates this from “helicopter parenting” is the idea that both parties are going to get their needs met. We as parents are always going to have needs in regards to our children; we want to trust they will be safe, we want to enjoy our relationship with them and we would at times like it to be easy. Our children also have needs in each of these situations, and often the need is independence. I think letting go is one of the hardest things to do as a parent. Our job since the beginning has been to protect our children, and seeing them working on getting their own needs met can be very uncomfortable for us.

Parenting in the way Dr. Marshall is talking about takes self-awareness and an ability to communicate in an empathic way. This is where most of us get caught. We are often not really sure what we need and we want our children to behave in a certain way. We think that will keep them safe and make it easier for us. I think if we are open to allowing our children to be involved in communication that fosters mutual respect and decision making we will be pleasantly surprised that they will be able to problem solve with us. And this most certainly is not “helicopter parenting”.

Heather Schlessman

Heather Schlessman, PhD is a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner who has spent her career either working with or teaching about families. She is also a mother who, like so many other parents, spent years muddling her way raising 3 wonderfully different children, one who happens to be experiencing a disability. Fortunately she has a life partner who muddled along with her. Spending most of her time trying to be perfect, as that would be the safest way to live, she became aware of a desire to be able to see people in a more compassionate way. Little did she know that the person she needed the most compassion for was herself. There is a saying that when you are ready to learn a teacher will appear, and so it was for Dr. Schlessman. She was introduced to the work of Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, the developer of Nonviolent Communication, and her world completely changed. She learned a way to have an intimate connection with herself and others, a way to truly contribute. Her passion now is to help others find their way to a more compassionate life. You can find more of Dr. Schlessman’s empathic expressions along with her husband’s, Rev. Mark Schlessman on their website.