I recently read a post online that shared that a significant percentage of child leg fractures occurs when a parent is attempting to shepherd a child down a slide. So the parent puts the child on his lap, and then slides down with the child. Problem is, the child's shoe gets stuck halfway. Normally, the child would stop sliding, everything's fine. But the parent's weight drags everybody on, and so, aaargh, fracture happens.
That's a really neat analogy to what the Ministry of Education has been circulating on helicopter parenting - that the weight of our parenting can sometimes do more harm than good.
Are we the sort of parents who rush down with our kids' homework when they forget to bring it to school? Or argue with teachers to get one more mark for them? Or do their art homework to get them the "A"? No, the MOE says, let kids learn the consequences of forgetting homework, the initiative to negotiate with teachers and the realisation that art is just not their thing :D
I agree with the idea that the whole point of parenting is to bring up a child so that he can become an independently valuable contributor to society. And one of the best ways to learn life lessons and independence is to make mistakes yourself, and internalise how to avoid similar mistakes in future. So as parents, we (eventually) learn to allow kids to pack their own schoolbags, work out their own homework schedule, and deal with the consequences of their misbehaviours.
I think one really extreme example of helicoptering, as the MOE terms it, is the recent case of the parent who sued the ACS principal for confiscating his son's iPhone because he broke the school rule which prohibits use during school hours. What possible good could have come out of the lawsuit for the kid? The court may be barred from disclosing his name, but I bet everyone in his school will know him henceforth and forevermore as "The Kid Whose Parents Sued The Principal". How mortifying. Thankfully, the suit failed. Otherwise that kid (and worse, his schoolmates) might have come away with the conclusion that if you make a mistake, refuse to learn from it, and instead blame someone else. What sort of parents do you think *they'll* grow up to be?
But wait a minute. Doesn't parenting mean... to parent? To guide, coach and mentor? To intervene when necessary? Parenting doesn't *only* mean being there to give a listening ear, or to provide unconditional support. When things are heading in the wrong direction, it's our job to give a little nudge yes? We don't let a child touch a hot pan, just so he can get burned and "learn his lesson". We don't let a child experiment with smoking, just so he can realise (40 years later) that it was a bad idea. And yes, we don't let our children play computer games all day, just so they can screw up their exams, and realise "oops".
Parenting *does* involve intervention. If we coach and teach employees to avoid mistakes, why wouldn't we do the same for our children? The purpose of coaching and teaching is to eventually train younger people for independence. But we do share our experience with the younger ones - so that they don't necessarily have to make all our mistakes themselves.
So here's something that I strongly believe there is way too *little* intervention about - social media behaviour. I've written about this in my previous blog post on
"Children to be Proud of". So here's a bit more on this. To recap - the things people, including children and teenagers say on social media (Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram etc), is out of control. Jimmy Kimmel has a "Mean Tweets" segment where celebrities, sports stars and politicians read out the crazy things people say about them. It's funny at first, then when you think about it, really unfeeling. And Jimmy Kimmel himself admits, it seems like people forget that they're talking about real people with real feelings.
It's not acceptable to say when someone's sad - why don't you go and jump off a building - and then say, just joking! It's not acceptable to mock someone's who overweight - and then say, just teasing what. It's not acceptable to gang up on the quiet
wallflower or mass unfriend the class oddball and then say, the world is like that. That may well be the hard truth of life, but it's our job, as parents, to teach our children to *pro-actively* change that ugly aspect of our world, and not to merely accept it with a shrug, or even join in!
What's one possible consequence of our failure to coach and intervene? The papers recently reported that a guy mocked the death of a police officer on Facebook, and the Minister for Home Affairs was quite rightly upset about this. Now, go look at the online interactions of our young people. If no one tells them - hey guys, this is simply not acceptable -
who do you think they grow up into? Words matter. If our young people don't learn this when they're young, then even when they're older, they haven't grown up. If you're a teacher, or a parent, or a grandparent, don't let this happen.
It matters.
So I strongly urge parents to do this - know what your kids are up to. Keep an eye on what they say online. Invading their privacy? Come on. They're kids. If we saw a kid about to stick his finger in a power socket, would we back away in order to respect his privacy? It *is* that serious - what we say affects how we think, and how we think governs how we live. There's hardly anything more important. And let's face it - if Facebook can look at what our children say, how come we can't?
The MOE's quite right that we ought not to "helicopter", but we absolutely still have to *parent*. Don't come away thinking, let the children decide themselves. They're *children*. That's what parents are for - to teach our children. And don't settle for anything less than - is my child, and how he behaves, something I am proud of? Yes, we will love them no matter what. But don't settle there. You love them too much to leave it there.
Am I proud of a child who joins in cyber-bullying, name-calling, or the circulation of images that demean women, or families, or races?
Should I be more proud of a child who doesn't join in?
Or should I be proudest of the child who stops others from doing it, and grows up into the kind of adult who will do the same?
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