Am I a Helicopter Parent?

Nancy Gibbs recently wrote a cover story for Time Magazine called The Case Against Parenting: Why Mom and Dad need to cut the strings (November 30, 2009) that posits the theory that the new breed of “Helicopter Parents” is hurting our kids.  She cites the work of Lenore Skenazy who penned Free Range Kids: Giving our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry who was quoted in the article saying, “10 is the new 2.  We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.” Do I hover?  Yes, I suppose I do.  Do I check their Halloween candy, stand beneath them while they’re on the jungle gym, quiz them with flashcards and cut up their food for nearly every meal?  Yes, yes, yes, and shamefully, yes.  The piece made me ponder the degree of my hovering.

A few weeks ago I got in an argument with my husband because he admitted that on some days, when he has all four kids in the van driving home from school, he’ll pull up in front of our local grocery store, hand my 8-year old son a fiver and ask him to buy a gallon of milk.  I was horrified.  You have no visual on him!  He’s only 8!  What if some demented person in the dairy aisle grabbed him and snuck him out the back in a delivery truck?  He did not dignify my comments with a response but gave me the “you’re a freak” look and went about his business.  The story in Time argues that coddling our children stunts their survival skills.  I hate it when Paul is right.

Should I apologize for hovering?  Do I need to pull back?  Would my kids be better off with me being more hands off?  These are not easy questions to answer.  We live in a society with 24-7 media blaring stories of missing kids that end up in landfills, parents killing their kids and stuffing them into the trunks of their cars, peanut allergies and swine flu. I want to be hands-on. Is that so wrong?

Skenazy also notes in the article that people like Dear Abby recently endorsed the idea “…that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them.  That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing.” OK, now that’s just crazy! So it seems that while I have to admit to being a helicopter parent, I’m clearly not on the “wing-nut” end of the spectrum.