'Helicopter parenting': Study shows negative effects on kids' development
NEW YORK - It's often said kids do not come with a manual or a guidebook for how best to parent.
"There are many parents now who try to protect their children from experiencing hardship, sadness or failure or scrapes or bumps," said Dr. Dyan Hes, director of pediatrics for Concorde Pediatrics. "They want to protect them from everything, and they don't really let them do things alone."
A new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics is spotlighting the dangers of winging it, specifically -- what happens when parents hover.
"Parents are standing by their kids in the playground," said Dr. Hes. "Everything is padded. You have training wheels forever. You have a balanced bike. You have all these helmets. You have protections. Right? So some of them are great because it's for safety, because we don’t want them to crack their heads open."
A new study suggests helicopter parenting can have negative effects on kids' development.
Dr. Hes continued to say: "But sometimes you need to say, you know what? I'm going to let you ride your scooter to the corner of the block, and you don't cross the street without me. And you let them scoot down the block. But then you always see the other parents who stand right by your kid holding the handle or yelling at them the whole way, not letting them even have a minute of independence."
It's the idea of independence that has researchers intrigued. They found kids who lacked independence had higher rates of depression and anxiety.
A new study suggests helicopter parenting can have negative effects on kids' development.
Kids who were not allowed to make mistakes, or work through their own choices, didn't know what to do when left to their own devices.
"When we give children a space to be able to explore who they are, to be able to fall down, sometimes to be able to make mistakes, if they're not too big a mistake, that they tend to learn much more from those particular situations than they may from parents who may want to be able to tell the child what to do or, you know, is hovering over the child all the time," said psychologist Dr. Jeff Gardere.
A new study suggests helicopter parenting can have negative effects on kids' development.
Both doctors believe kids need to roam, play, engage and develop their autonomy. It's crucial to their development well into adulthood.
They need to develop a sense of self-reliance, critical thinking and confidence, which can not happen with too much supervision.
In fact, increased rates of it have lead to record levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide.