DEEP DIVE: Are We Helping or Are We Helicoptering?

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0:28when we're stressed we overthink things that maybe we wouldn't overthink when we're not stressed what fresh hell laughing in the face of motherhood every two minutes 50 women are punched in the face in new york with margaret ables and amy wilson you should stop micromanaging like what does that even mean if you're in it a podcast that solves today's parenting dilemmas so you don't have to it's me hi i'm the problem it's me

0:57Hey, everybody. Welcome to What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Amy.

1:02Amy Wilson:And this is Margaret. And today we are talking about, am I helping or am I helicoptering? Oh, boy. I have feelings about this. I have feelings about the term helicopter parent. I think it's usually pretty gendered. I think it's over applied. And yet I will say it's one of those things where you know it when you see it. I think that's probably right. And I think it's definitely a like, it's your fault, mom, for doing too much. Mom. Also, why did you leave your child unattended? I'm calling the police. It's definitely like, pick a lane. Whatever you do is wrong. Let's just assume that first of all.

1:44Right. Never take your eyes off your kid and then stop it, mom. Never taking your eyes off your kid. Right. So like what you told me to do?

1:50Amy Wilson:Yeah. And I think that this is something that has become extremely anecdotally true. Like kids today, they go to college and they call their mom to find out what to order for dinner. Kids today bring parents with them on job interviews. I mean, I'm not sure how much of the anecdote is true, basically. That being said, I think that there is a tremendous truth to the fact that we are all accidentally high information parents, whether we want to be or not. You don't have to go read 25 different parenting books. Every headline you see is, this mom has the secret to kids who sit quietly during dinner.

2:37Amy Wilson:And it's like, someone has figured out something you haven't. And I think that the general anxiety that is caused by, you have access to everything that is going on in the entire world all the time is very anxiety producing. And so that our ability to assess risk is fundamentally problematic, right? That this has been proven a million times in a million different ways that, you know, it's people are scared of flying versus taking their car. And your statistical risk of being killed in a car is exponentially higher than dying in an airplane crash. But the idea of an airplane crashing is so frightening that you over invest in the idea of that fear.

3:26Amy Wilson:Yes. Yes. Similarly, your ability to assess risk for your children, the most common example being stranger danger, stranger kidnapping, right? That like people that everywhere you go, there's a million traffickers just waiting in every park and around every corner to grab children and make off with them is a reality that we are extremely fearful of and is statistically insignificant. The people who tend to harm children are people who are close to our own home. It is very rarely a stranger. Can I give a recent example? It isn't even parenting related, but this is just a funny story. So the last time Margaret came to visit me in New York City, I forget what we were just going out to dinner or something.

4:17And you said something about like, but I'm like, I'm a little worried. I'm gonna get punched in the face. And I said, what are you talking about? You're like, people are, women are getting punched in the face in New York City. I'm like, what? And you were like, no, no, no, it's happening everywhere. I'm like, I live here and I don't know what you're talking about. But you're on TikTok and I'm not on TikTok, at least not very much. And so from your TikTok point of view, every time you open your phone, TikTok is showing you like, oh my gosh, you can hardly get to the corner in New York City. without somebody stepping out and punching a woman in the face.

4:47And I was like, I don't think that's real.

4:49Amy Wilson:Every two minutes, 50 women are punched in the face in New York. Right. And the more you watch it, I think Bethany Frankel had gotten punched in the face. Oh my gosh. Well, who knows? That could be a lot of people. Which maybe was a Bethany Frankel thing. But yeah, no. And it's to me, I laugh at the people who, you know, relatives of mine from the South who are always like, I hope you don't ever go into New York City. You don't go, right? Like, please, if you have to go, like take a taxi to your exact destination, because they literally picture it like there's an old movie called LA Story. Now this is before everyone's time.

5:25Amy Wilson:It's not even an old deluxe alert. It's a gone from popular culture alert. Sarah Jessica Parker as like a little, like barely teeny bopper. Like she's like young daffy. She plays Steve Martin's, Yeah, like very young girlfriend. But there used to be freeway shootings were kind of there's always a thing, right? It's like shark attacks in the summer and LA freeway shootings, people shooting at each other from their cars. And there's a scene in this movie, LA Story, where Steve Martin, and maybe Sarah James Parker, who's every is with in the car, they're just driving down the freeway. And like, they're just have a gun out the window.

6:00Amy Wilson:And they're just shooting at each other like bullets flying everywhere on the highway. and I think that's how people picture New York all of this to say that our input of anxiety producing material is huge higher bigger every day gives us an instinct to protect our children and then it's like your damn kid is gonna have to bring his mom to his job application you loser and that's not super fair so well I do think having done this podcast for such a long time right? I mean, I can separate out the mom blaming thing from the impulse, taking it away from the threats of being punched in the face everywhere we go and down to the like, a two year old who is struggling to get a, you know, third block to go a top two blocks, like something like that in the micro.

6:52I do sometimes see parents out in the wild, like interfering, like rushing to fix something rushing to put the straw in the juice box, whatever it is, in those little helping ways. And I do see that sometimes and think you need to let the kid struggle for a minute. You need to let the kid try to buckle their own car seat, even though it's such a pain in the touch or try to put their own shoes on, even though you're already three minutes late to go somewhere that it's that very micro helping. I do think that's something that you can look at for yourself and make sure sometimes you're letting your kid get at something by themselves, even if it'll take them longer.

7:27Amy Wilson:And I'm going to argue that there's a lot of macro stuff, too. I think it's both. Amy, let me lay a little National Institute of Health on you, okay? So they have studied, because this is obviously like anecdotally based. This is what they say. Emerging evidence suggests that overprotective and controlling parenting, often referred to as, quote, helicopter parenting, unquote, may have negative implications on the child's mental health, such as anxiety and depression. This is the theory of helicopter parenting. The majority of studies found a direct relationship between helicopter parenting and symptoms of anxiety and depression.

8:08Amy Wilson:However, there have been no longitudinal studies of sufficient quality to determine if helicopter parenting precedes the outcome of anxiety and depression. So long-term studies have not been done. Helicopter parenting and there's anxiety and depression in the kid, but they haven't proven that first comes a helicopter parenting and then comes the anxiety and depression. That's how I interpret that. Correct. That being said, I think for the purpose of the conversation, there are lots of studies. And I think that there's been a lot of writing on the fact that people that this generation is suffering from a lot of this generation, meaning I would say kids today, and up to 25, let's say, are struggling with anxiety and depression.

8:55Amy Wilson:And that in the oldie times, maybe people didn't acknowledge their anxiety and depression in the same way. There's lots of factors. But that the anxiety and depression that is manifesting in kids today, according to therapists and psychiatrists, does seem to have an element of, it used to be, I feel like our generation, when people went to therapists, it was like, you know, they had a presenting trauma, right? Like my parent was an alcoholic. I had the X or Y, like very specific problem kind of. And now it's a more diffuse kind of anxiety and depression that is a little bit like, I don't know kind of how to function in a scary world.

9:39Amy Wilson:Does that make sense? Yeah. And then there's the pandemic, right? Which caused we all spent more time at home together. I think if there's any measurable failure to launch among high school and college aged kids right now, it's not because their mothers are annoying. It's because we all spend a lot more time together and they're away from peers during those formative years. And it is an anxiety producing time. And the anxiety of what was going on out in the world, coupled with the being taken away from your peers and being secluded. I think that causes anxiety and depression, but it's not because mom is annoying.

10:16We've lived through an anxiety producing time that brought us closer together with our nuclear families by design.

10:23Amy Wilson:Agree, but also want to push back a little bit because I don't think the thesis has to be mom is annoying. But I do think there's a problem to get at here, which is an instinct to over parent that comes from a very valid place that we should be working against nonetheless. So it's not about blaming mom, but it is about saying there are places where you and I have both done this. And there are places that our peer parents have done this and that there is a way to fight against the instinct to be the helicopter parent to kind of move stuff out of our kids way that can be fixed without it becoming stop being so annoying mom.

11:05Right, right, right. Maybe it's the helicopter parenting thing itself. I mean, just listening to this from 30 ,000 feet, it's like, okay, yeah, anxious parents are more likely to have anxious kids because they parent their kids in ways that manifest their anxiety. And we can put this, you know, cute little label on it. But when we're stressed, we overthink things that maybe we wouldn't overthink when we're not stressed.

11:23Amy Wilson:Yes. And I think that is valid and understandable and also something to be worked against as much as possible. Yeah. So let's talk about potential symptoms of helicopter parenting. Okay. And we're going to make as we like to do based on our friend Casey Davis of Struggle Care Podcast. Morally neutral. We are going to approach the term helicopter parenting as a morally neutral term. That it is something that like, it is an instinct that many of us have to keep our children safe because of wonderful or protective instincts in ourselves. But we're going to try to define it and see where we can work around those instincts for our kids' greater good.

12:07Amy Wilson:Being overprotective. Being overprotective. Correct. So the first symptom of helicopter parenting is being overprotective.

12:17Amy Wilson:Another symptom, which I think sort of gets forgotten in the helicopter parenting is putting excessive pressure on children. And this isn't only a mom thing. I mean, this is sort of the cliche of the dad who is screaming at their kid and making them cry on the baseball diamond because they're not hitting the ball correctly, right? Yeah, Yeah, this is the battle hymn of the tiger mom that she would, Amy Chua, that she's like, I would tie my kids to the piano bench until they got their song perfect. And don't you wish you were like me? And it was presented glowingly pretty much in the press. Correct.

12:49Amy Wilson:Although she would not just in the interest of legality, tie her children to a piano bench. Amy is using that as a metaphor. Micromanaging. I think this is the thing that we often think of, which is like mom does everything for the child. And this one I think is the root of a lot of things. And this is where we can talk about this as a problem that is also comes from a place of like care for the parent and not judgment of the parent. Intense desire to provide a different childhood for your children than your own. And I think this is a huge crux of what's really going on in helicopter parenting.

13:28Amy Wilson:And I think that many people of our generation felt neglected as kids, you know, they felt their parents never expressed love for them, or didn't express it in a way that was meaningful to them. I mean, I remember playing with my kids at some point in front of a much, much older relative. And I don't know, my son and I were kind of messing around and kind of wrestling and cracking up. And he said, I never, ever did anything like that with my mom. Like my mom and I never laughed together. I think his mom was a depression era mom who was trying to keep kids alive and, you know, cleaning clothing on a washboard tub and didn't have time to play and wrestle and have joyful moments.

14:15Amy Wilson:But that maybe that sometimes tips a little bit into like every moment must be magical. And I want to provide this kind of glowing magical childhood that becomes problematic. Yeah, that makes sense. I have a thought on these symptoms of helicopter parenting. I want to bring it up after this. After an afternoon at the pool, my mom's skin needs a hydration reset. The perfect solution? Osea's Undaria Algae Body Oil. It has an amazing citrus scent and a non-greasy texture, so my skin feels silky smooth and stays that way. Osea is clean. clinically tested skincare from the sea, so you can see and feel the difference from just one use.

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17:06Amy Wilson:WFH. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. So these symptoms of helicopter parenting, this came from Parents magazine about you're overprotective, you're micromanaging, like these are very subjective, and they're very hard to measure.

17:47And again, it goes back to what I was saying in the beginning, like, well, I know it when I see it, that mom over there is being overprotective. But like, what does that mean? And I'm trying to think of how I would define it as a behavior you can define. And I feel like a symptom that I would indicate is if you're doing something for your kid, or you have restrictions for your kid or worries about your kid that are very much out of the main of what the other kids have.

18:11Amy Wilson:What was the topic we were talking about, Amy? And you said, it's like the standard definition. I think we were talking about conflict with our spouse. And you said, well, the rule is like it has to fit the community standard of this issue, basically. Oh, it was Eve Rodsky, the community standards of caring, right for fair play. Exactly. So for helicopter parenting, how do you know if you're micromanaging? Well, if your kid is the only kid who can't have a play date after school because you don't know what they might be eating at somebody else's house, right? If your kid is the only kid on the baseball team that has to wear two helmets, whatever.

18:50Like if your kid is the only kid at the pool who can't hang around and play outside of the pool, they have to come sit right next to you because what if they fall in the pool? If your kid is the only kid with that, I feel like that's maybe something you can look at for yourself because how can you tell a micromanager, you're micromanaging. you should stop micromanaging like what does that even mean if you're in it?

19:08Amy Wilson:I think the way I understand it best is to constantly come back to anxiety. What am I afraid of? Is this fear realistic? Is this fear true in community standards? Like could a child at any time be walking to school and a van pulls up and someone grabs them in and takes them away? There is some chance of something very bad happening of them getting struck by lightning as they're walking to school. There is always going to be some chance, but it's going back to the anxiety and saying, is this thought that I'm having true? And am I bringing my own baggage into it? If you were someone, and if you want to put headphones on your kids, I'm going to talk about something a little bit sensitive or turn off before I continue.

19:57Amy Wilson:If you were a person who was a victim of abuse as a child, of any kind of abuse. Your brain is probably telling you that every person who your child encounters is potentially an abuser. And that's the truth of your own brain. And so the community standard, what does it matter to you? You had the experience that that was true. And so you're going to bring that experience. And so I think the helicoptering comes in as like, I can stay with my children every minute of every day so that nothing bad ever happens to them. That's the story that it becomes. And that you have to start winding that back and say, what I really have to do is prepare my child for different situations.

20:43Amy Wilson:Do they understand? Because this is what is so tough about this and kind of unfair about this. the more that you try to protect them, they underdevelop the skill of being able to protect themselves, which is eventually the skill they actually need. If you don't let your kid go down the stairs by themselves because they might fall and hit their head, then they're going to get bad at navigating stairs by themselves. Right. Right. That we have to understand is the relationship between taking chances and self-confidence and self-esteem that we often talk about, like, self-esteem is a mystery box and you have to find it and open it and then your kid will have self-esteem.

21:20Amy Wilson:Self-esteem comes from, I walked all the way to the library and I picked out a book and I checked it out by myself. And then I walked all the way home with my book. I can do tough things. Yeah. But so say like, there is a difference though, between my kid is going to be able to go to the library, walk two blocks by herself and sure somebody in a van could jump out, but that probably won't happen. I mean, statistically that is absolutely true, right? That same person who tends towards anxiety in their parenting. If you are at the town pool, it's, you know, the danger. And I'm talking if your kid is not able to swim very well, that danger is right there.

21:56It's maybe there's a lifeguard. Maybe there's plenty of people around, like maybe your anxiety levels are excessive in a situation that there are controls put in place for if the kid falls in the pool, but the pool's right there. You see what I'm saying? Like, I think sometimes we stop it, like, don't worry about stupid stuff. That's never going to happen. Like sometimes the edge of the cliff is in front of you. And how do you sort of negotiate it appropriately and not look at it like the edge of a cliff when it's just a pool with sufficient supervision?