Parents today have it so much harder than parents of the past, this is because of one simple fact, helicopter parenting. If we think back to this phenomenon and where it started and how it got to this point, is actually quite interesting.
Starting in the 1980's, quite a few things started to happen. Child Abduction started to become more apparent in society after a child by the name of Adam Walsh was abducted and murdered. Shortly after, his father John Walsh created the show America's Most Wanted. This along with missing children's faces showing up on milk cartons, reminded parents every morning at breakfast of another tragedy. From this point on and through the 1990's, we saw more and more cases from commercials to billboard ads. Parents were led to believe at some point that over 1 million children a year were abducted.
Parents started to become paranoid that their child was at a very high risk of being abducted and while that is a valid reason for paranoia, it gave rise to a motion that would lead to the helicopter parenting of today.
The paranoia from the 80's and 90's and the ripples that started, has blown into a tidal wave. In 2015, a couple from Florida were charged for their 11 year old son playing basketball outside in the backyard for an hour and a half. Here is the case:
"Two Florida parents were hit with felony neglect charges after their 11-year-old son was reportedly playing alone in the backyard for an hour and a half.
According to his mother, the boy arrived home before his parents and was locked out of the house, so he shot some hoops in the yard until they arrived.
A neighbor saw the child outside alone and called the local police. When his mother and father arrived home, they were met by a police officer, who arrested them for child negligence."
This is just one example of how far things have come. To be arrested and charged for something that was extremely common placed and not at all harmful to a child, and in fact is good for the child to exercise good judgement in passing their time, is quite absurd.
There's no need to do the "what if's" or "could've" and "maybe". If we as parents put ourselves in their place, we'd all feel frustration for them.
Today, most children are "bubble wrapped" for such long periods of their lives and when they reach their young adult years, we expect them to behave properly. What a joke!
What we see more and more today are teenage toddlers and adult teenagers. Many parents today are so focused on trying to make their progeny happy little children that live in a Utopian world where it's just full of love and joy, where they're special to the world and everyone loves them. When they reach the teenage years where they're no longer cute and innocent, and people expect a certain level of standard behavior from them and they realize no one loves them but their family (sometimes). Is it any wonder why teenage suicide and depression is on the rise in a very tremendous way? They've lived their lives as children in a dream world, only to wake from that dream as teenagers and realize that dream was never reality. To say that it is a great disappointment would be an understatement.
The greatest harm we're doing to our children today is NOT letting them do things out of our own fear, even if that fear is illogical. We think telling our children "no" is somehow hurting them. There are many so-called experts that are child psychologists who would tell us that saying "no" to our child is stunting their growth. Yet, here we are at a time where there are more children who tell their parents to "f**k off", who expect society to change for how they feel, who even go as far as killing their parents and anyone else who doesn't agree with them.
True love for our child means saying "no", because we're helping them build structure by giving them the opportunity to learn to cope with not having expectations met. True love for our child is spending time with them doing arts and craft and sports, because we want to help them build their brain in problem solving, imagination and practicing their motor skills. True love for your child is telling them the truth that they're special only to us and their family members, because we want to teach them the reality that not everyone is going to pay even the slightest attention to them and there's no reason to expect it, and that they have to work for that attention.
Having a child isn't just about taking care and feeding them. It's about the long term, it's about adding another adult to the world and society. The lessons we teach them should be with that focus in mind, in the adult we want to create rather than the children we want to spoil.
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