Before I Had Kids™, I thought I knew the things I would worry about and the things I wouldn’t. We were all better parents before we became one, and it’s safe to say I’ve learned a lot in nearly 15 years of raising our four amazing humans.
My childhood was largely happy and uncomplicated, and it involved a great deal of free license to explore the world around me — be it on horseback, by foot, or on the back of an ATV. I grew up in rural southwestern Pennsylvania just outside of Pittsburgh, where rolling cornfields begin to rise into the Appalachian foothills. My parents encouraged independence at home and as we moved through the world, making sure we knew how to navigate life with an equal dose of caution and curiosity.
It’s hard to strike the balance between helicoptering and free-range parenting, but I’d say they did a pretty good job. They gave us the space to make mistakes as well as the support to weather them. That’s how my husband and I want to raise our kids, too.
We are finding it increasingly hard to imitate their approach these days. The things the algorithm pushes for parents to fear, like being kidnapped in a Walmart parking lot or using the bathroom at school, are not even statistically close to being the things that are most likely to hurt today’s kids, and as a result helicopter parenting has taken many different forms — but not for all the right reasons.
According to Pew Research, today’s parents are most worried about mental health, bullying, kidnapping, physical violence, drugs and alcohol, and gun violence, in that order. I myself worry about many of these things — how could you not?
The things many of us fear most are often vivid and terrifying, but the risks most likely to harm children are usually more ordinary and close to home. Traffic accidents, unsecured guns, drowning, mental health crises, unsafe sleep, and access to medications top that list. Parenting anxiety is often pulled toward the dramatic. That’s why we worry about mass shootings that understandably draw national attention — but it’s unsecured guns at home that are the biggest risk to our kids. Headlines scream about fentanyl, which is a legitimate concern, but they rarely mention the dangers in our medicine cabinets. It would be understandable if you wanted to wrap your child in bubble wrap, stick them in a room, and lock the door.
My own kids are living a very different childhood than I did. We live in a vibrant, diverse, walkable community. While there were only woods and cornfields outside of my front door, my children walk to school, the boba shop, and their friends’ houses. My older kids bike around town, and we battle about helmets constantly. We talk about how to interact in a community, how to use manners. How to navigate traffic, how to tip at a restaurant. My kids mess up; we keep trying. Our household has family members who navigate the world with disabilities and neurodivergence, which often requires creative parenting and extra thought as we consider independence, too. I know many of you are right there with me.
I have a circle of friends and neighbors who keep an eye out for our crew — and we do the same for theirs. They have full permission to “mom voice” any of my kids if they see them making missteps while working on their independence. I’ve used my mom voice on a few of theirs, too. In a world that feels increasingly disconnected, this village feels more vital than ever.
I’m working hard to drown out the noise that tells me to be anxious about the wrong things. I know there’s an almost zero percent chance of a stranger taking my kid in public, but I know the fear my immigrant neighbor has around letting her child walk to school in today’s America is valid. I empathize as I tamp down mild anxiety about my own kids walking to the library. I am ever-aware, as an adoptive mom, that my white children and my Black children live a different reality every time they step outside our front door.
To manage it all, I lean into my village even harder. I remind myself of the librarians that have watched my kids grow up, the friends and trusted shopkeepers who have eyes on my kids, and the many ways our community has worked hard this year in particular to keep our immigrant neighbors safe.
Due to my work covering the intersection of technology and parenting, I also spend too much time online. This is why I have to tell you, friends: We are largely worrying about the wrong things here, too.
I see so many parents who are afraid to let their kids traipse down the block or go up to a counter to order their own food, tasks my 7-year-old handles with ease. I don’t fault them for this; we are being spoon-fed this anxiety by tech companies that want to keep us scrolling. As a result, though, I see many of us tightening the reins in the physical world while letting kids loose in the digital one.
We are a tech-forward family who is focused on raising our kids with guardrails and good digital literacy skills, but it takes constant monitoring and conversation to do it well. We’ve had sneaking; we’ve had accidental spending. We’ve seen it all and I know it’s exhausting. I urge my fellow parents to resist the urge to snap too far back in the opposite direction, though. Barring kids from using the internet altogether can be just as harmful as unfettered access. Just like we teach our kids to do a myriad of daily tasks with increasing independence, we need to sit thigh-to-thigh with them and teach them to use the internet well, too. This is where teaching meets helicoptering: if you lay the groundwork by hovering a bit, you’ll have less hard work to do on the backend. You’re working yourself out of a job.
As we head into yet another summer, I’ve seen a lot of chatter (again, too much time online), about a “‘90s summer.” In the ‘80s and ‘90s, I spent my summers alternating between a babysitter and community day camps laden with puffy-paint related crafts before graduating to days alone spent on the phone with my best friend, in the barn, or watching hours of daily soaps. Similarly, this summer, we’ll utilize a patchwork of childcare and burgeoning independence to balance my remote work tasks with lots of dinners at the public pool. Some days will have more screens than I’d like, and other days will feel like quintessential snapshots of perfect summer memories.
I’d like to encourage my fellow parents to do the same too. Consider this my poolside State of the Union, as I raise a crisp LaCroix high: Raising independent kids is a gauntlet these days, but we can do it. This summer, let’s encourage independence where we can and offer support where we can’t yet. In the same way we clapped when our toddlers graduated from cruising along the coffee table to walking across the room alone, our big kids need to see us encouraging other first steps.
Just like toddlers, they will fall sometimes. There will be goose eggs (metaphorical or physical). That walk to the corner to mail a card, that first ice cream cone purchased without your help, the bike ride to their friend’s house — the pride on their face when they return home safely will tell you everything you need to know. It takes trust in our children, and in our parenting skills, to find that sweet spot between helicoptering and guidance, but it's what our kids need to thrive as adults in this world we are handing off to them.
Meg St-Esprit, M. Ed. is a journalist and essayist based in Pittsburgh, PA. She’s a mom to four kids via adoption as well as a twin mom. She loves to write about parenting, education, trends, and the general hilarity of raising little people.
source https://www.scarymommy.com/parenting/its-really-fcking-hard-not-to-be-a-helicopter-parent-these-days
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