Sample Student Essay—DEFINITION

The Helicopter Has Landed

I recently was talking to a friend of mine who spoke the term “helicopter parent.” I had not heard this term before and when he told me what it meant, I was suddenly filled with anxiety.  “A hovering parent,” he explained, “a parent who continues to protect their grown children, who does not let them make decisions on their own.  A parent that has not learned to let go and allow their children their own lives, good or bad.” My anxiety comes from knowing that I, too, am a pilot of my own helicopter, or at least a retiring one.  I thought, like many parents, I was helping my children, trying to give them a head start in life.  I wondered how parents learn to fly helicopters and why it is so hard to land them and keep them from flying at all.     

Each time a child is born and you hold them in your arms for the first time and kiss the sticky, matted tops of their little heads and touch the tips of their tiny fingers, a great bond forms that is almost a heart-aching feeling.  We promise this little bundle of joy that we will protect them, fix their skinned knees and give them a great life.  Even, perhaps, a much better life than we feel we had ourselves.  We do a great job at first because these precious babies are so dependent upon us for survival.  This turns out to be short-lived, however, because within that first year they become mobile.  They begin to make choices on their own.  They get into the garbage and they eat the dog’s food and the dirt in the yard.  We are suddenly stricken with fear about the best way to teach our children right from wrong.  We have a duty to this unknowing child who cannot grasp the list of reasons why these things are bad for baby.  There are a huge number of child rearing books that offer advice, so much so that it is confusing as to which advice or method we should adopt as our own.  This, I believe, is when parents begin instruction on how to start the rotors on their helicopter.

Society plays a large role in the expectations of today’s parent.  One man told me his three-year-old son started karate and he was hoping for his black belt (or whatever colored belt a small child could earn) by the time he is aged 5.  I read an ad in a magazine about soccer programs for children beginning at the age of 16 months.  I read where some parents write applications as well as the essay to get their children into the “right” colleges.  Society changed from parents giving their children the best, into what skills our children can be the best at before they reach kindergarten.  There is also a certain sense of secretly hoping your child will be the one to discover a cure for cancer or another deadly disease.   Because we want our children to be the “best.” we, as parents, try to steer them in the right direction, always making the decisions, in fear our children will not make the right choices.  Even when our children are young, we feel the need to helicopter them to programs and practices. We even them up when they fall down before anyone can see they have made a mistake or blame failure on their coaches or instructors. 

There are more single parents than dual parents. I believe the stress of one parent having to deal with the activities of daily living along with the stress of raising the children alone, gives them further flying instructions, as it was in my case.  Solving problems for my children became easier for me to do than the seemingly time consuming task of teaching them to do it themselves.  As my time became shorter and they became older, I taught them how to cook simple meals and do laundry and other household chores.  I gave myself credit, feeling I was teaching them to be self-reliant.

 It was not until my children moved away from my house but not away from my problem-solving abilities and helpfulness that I realized my helicopter was spinning out of control.  I realized the disservice I had caused my children.  Teaching them to do laundry was not teaching self-reliance but merely how to wash their clothes.  Because I solved their problems, made decisions for them, and gave them money when they had overextended themselves, I had robbed them from learning how to take charge of their lives and have the confidence in themselves to make their own decision.  I did not teach them how to pay their own consequences.  I was always so willing to pay them myself, whether monetarily or emotionally.  I think hearing the term “helicopter parenting” and researching the meaning of this now popular slang, actually helped me to see I was not alone in my parenting mistakes.  In our quest to keep our promise to provide for our children, we forget to let them grow and become their own person.  We forget that we need to “fly” less often.  I have been working on keeping my helicopter on its landing pad and have found my life to be less hectic.  I am able to better manage my own dreams.  My children are learning about failure and conquering their fears on their own now. Although they still ask for help and advice and it’s hard not to climb into my helicopter and fly, their lives are their own and they are happier.