Are Helicopter Parents Overbearing

Juan Matallana

Mrs. Gonzales.

Period 4

27 April 2017

Are Helicopter Parents Overbearing

        “Helicopter Parents” are parents who take an overprotective or excessive interest in the life of their child or children. Once your kids are born their the most important thing in your life, you want to protect and help them make any important choices that may help them in the future but some parents take this way to seriously and they don’t let their child live a normal life. Parents like this spend extra money and time on things such as sports, and extra tutoring in order to have a ‘perfect child’. This controversy is having people thinking since there is a new wave of helicopter parents, will future generations have a harder time making decision by themselves without consulting their parents first. Hovering parents are harming present and future generations because generations in the future are not going to be responsible and think for themselves if hovering continues to happen. As a society we have to do something so this doesn’t continue to happen and my doing this we are helping ourselves and future generations.

        But were not just talking about the effects helicopter parents have on their children they also are disliked by college deans and this can minimize the chances of their child getting in a university. Parents often worry about their children going off to college but they know that everything is going to be alright because they trust their children in any decision they make which is not the case for helicopter parents. As dean Nona Nickelsen has to deal with “Nickelsen also might be lobbed a question like this one posed by a worried mother: My son’s classmate all have girlfriends and boyfriends what can I do to help my son find someone?” (Lum 3). Questions like this have nothing to do with the education of the student and also these types of questions are wasting the time of the dean when maybe the dean could be worried about more important things that are happening around their campus.  College students can choose if they want their parents to see their education records or grades for the semester by signing a paper but still parents are contacting professors and college officials to find out how their children are doing in the classroom by these point coordinators must sometimes step in to see what the problem is. As a result of contacting deans and officials about their child behavior in class and about their personal life they are lacking trust with their own children which may have large consequences in the future.

        Now parents are more worried about what happens to their child for one obvious reason which is this new wave of technology, since children are being exposed to all this social media parents are starting to worry especially helicopter parents. Especially cell phones at this point everyone has a phone even a 6-year-old and a phone is the perfect device to track your child every move you could even track them to see their exact location which is not a good thing because you’re not giving them their own space. There are apps that are made specially to see your child every move on the internet one of them is called “Forcefield” where parents pay a monthly fee to see their child search history and it also allows parents to disable all their child apps when they think is the proper time for them to go asleep. If children are not using their phones they are probably playing video games or doing some kind afterschool activity because for helicopter parents the most important thing for them is a schedule that has structure which is why parents overbook their child schedule for them to stay busy and not being able to do anything by themselves such as going to a party. If parents make their children stay at home not being able to do anything but just using technology or studying for an exam they have in two weeks and not being able to go outside because they don’t have permission may have effects in their heath as mention by Howard “Children who are too restricted may even have heath effects from sitting at home, eating too much, and not getting enough exercise” (Howard 4). Helicopter parents of this generation have more opportunities to control their children by technology as previously mentioned but actually the generation that invented the term helicopter parents were baby boomers and back then they had less resources to spy on their kids which is completely different from todays parents.