Persuasive Essay On Helicopter Parents

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Wait- it’s a helicopter parent, coming to the rescue to whatever minor inconvenience almost defeated their child this time. For those unfamiliar with the term, a helicopter parent is overprotective and is always “hovering” over their child. These parents usually just want the best for their child, to grow up to be successful adults. So they try to help by doing their child’s homework, talking to their kid’s teachers for them, choosing their child’s college major. They insist on knowing the whereabouts of their child at all times to keep them out of trouble. And while they may be helping short-term, they are hurting long-term. Helicopter parenting fails to promote both independence and happiness in children. One important skill for everyone to develop is self-directed executive functioning- which in short is the ability to set and carry out goals for oneself. This skill is essential to independence because it

They don’t feel like they can do anything for themselves, and this hurts when coming from a parent. As a child, your parents are the people you most want to be proud of you. So when you feel like a parent does not trust you to be independent or make simple decisions, you start to doubt yourself too. Also, when helicopter parents shield their children from consequences, they never experience failure. This can result in a fear of failure and disappointing others. Both of these combined cause low self confidence that can lead to anxiety and depression. This is confirmed by a study done by University of Edinburgh in 2016, which found that while having caring parents correlated with higher levels of emotional well being, having overcontrolling parents had lower levels of well being, and higher levels of anxiety and depression- even into age 70. (Stafford 9). The effects to helicopter parenting are serious and are detrimental to the happiness of the children