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A happy life isn't an easy life
Why struggle matters
In the short term, doing everything for kids feels like a favor, because it gives them an easier life. A happy life is not necessarily an easy life. Challenges are what form a person, and overcoming them is what gives humans their satisfaction.
Hovering parents
Helicopter parenting and being around the kids all the time work against that, even though kids need to know they are loved and appreciated. A childhood weekend might mean being told to get out of the house and come back for dinner.
One household's approach
In one household, the parents co-parent on that principle: the kids come home and are responsible for their own homework, and the parents do not do everything for them. They learn to make it in the world within the scope of the family, which prepares them for an outside world that can throw a lot of curveballs.
Why does struggle build confidence?
Psychologist Albert Bandura proposed in 1977 that the strongest source of a person's belief in their own ability is mastery experience, meaning actually succeeding at something hard. Easy wins, and wins handed over by someone else, do little to build it. Bandura called the belief self-efficacy and developed the idea at Stanford over decades of research.
Where does the term helicopter parent come from?
The image appears in Haim Ginott's 1969 book Between Parent and Teenager, where a teenager says a parent hovers like a helicopter. The phrase spread widely in the early 2000s as college administrators used it for parents who contacted schools on behalf of their adult children. Ginott was a child psychologist and a parent educator.
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