I just read another stupid parenting article. A helicopter mom defending the parenting tactic. Other then parents getting so easily triggered about generational criticism, I can see exactly why she is making a parenting mistake. Like, she didn't gave that many examples of how she was a helicopter parent, but amongst the few she did give I already saw one parenting mistake that could lead to several issues. -It's driving kids to school. In the Netherlands, we have a strong bicycling culture and in the old days kids used to ride their bikes to school by themselves, even if school was at a nearby village. In the helicopter parent era, it's becoming much more common to drive them to school by car. Now, this is obviously meant as a sweet gesture, but that sort of behavior actually leads to a couple of issues. First of all, whilst I disagree with the people calling bicycling to school an important life experience, it is still a life exxperiences that teaches kids things, and it's not that you could bike your way through a storm you stupid woman. She admitted she was the rare kid in her day who was always dropped of by her mom or the bus and it clearly shows. For one, it teaches children about the practicality of clothing, which in the modern day era is especially needed. It seems it's MeToo who caused it, but girls don't get sent away to change their outfits like they were even in my days as a student ten years ago whenever they wear something even remotely revealing. And for some reason its become trendy for boys to bicycle in their shorts even in the dead of winter. If you sent your kid to bicycle their way through the snow, they start to think more objectively about what clothes they are wearing in cold weather. Whereas a girl in a miniskirt and tights who is brought by car won't automatically have a cold from her outfit when it's bad outside whilst the girl who did is walking around with a runny nose the next day and thinking to herself that a cute outfit isn't worth getting sick. It are little lessons like this, that you take away from your child by helicopter parenting. These aren't lessons they are incapable of teaching themselves but why are you sending your child off into the big world without having taught them these lessons yourself? As a parent, it's your job to prepare them for the world. And then we aren't even talking about how spoiling them makes them assholes. Remember the horrible school I live next to? There's one student who has a car. Now, other then the question which high school student needs a car in a country like the Netherlands, he's a dick. He parks in the residential parking lots instead of the school ones all the time. Now, most dick behavior gets taught by a kid's enviroment. Considering there aren't any other children who have a car and the teachers do always park their car at the school parking lot, it's not like they taught him to park the car in the residential parking slots who are very visibly divided from the school's parking lot. So who did? Considering not a lot of high school students make the money to buy a car to begin with, I can safely assume it was a gift or a car he could loan from one of his relatives. Is it also safe to assume, that mommy or daddy who gave him the car also used to pick him up by car, and would typically park in residential parking slots whilst doing so? The few parents who pick their kids up generally have blocked a residential parking slot at least once in their life. You think that isn't something children will notice, and pick up themselves? THIS is how you get Karens, but obviously a Karen herself doesn't have the self-awareness to figure that out.
