Family

S-mothering? Parenting from a Helicopter.

“You know,” my friend said, as I extracted a small, chokable object from my six-month old’s mouth, “our kids are being called the ‘helicopter generation’ because we are such hovering parents.”

Ha, I thought smugly, that will NOT be me. With the exception of saving my child from swallowing marbles, I am HARDLY a hovering parent. For starters, I don’t have time – between juggling work, the house, and the family, how can I possibly prevent the occasional dirt consumption? And frankly, it just isn’t in me – I am a laid back mom. I watched our second child climb up and down stairs before he could walk, laughed as he scaled the monkey bars by age three… And generally felt smug that I was NOT a hovering parent.

It seemed so easy.

Until six years later, when my daughter started school and came home announcing that she “didn’t have any friends” and that she “likes boy stuff better than girl stuff.”

Are you kidding me? I am raising urban children, sending them to public school, steadfastly not hovering …. And my kid is going to get tripped up in issues of gender identity? How can that be? I am going to march right into that classroom and tell those first-graders to stop thinking so small….There is more than “girl stuff” and “boy stuff” – and that they need to move beyond labels … AND… Another thing….

Wait. I’m hovering. Or am I?

While I know that my three-year old has the strength to scale the monkey bars, I have less confidence in the inherent kindness and open-mindedness of the first-graders surrounding my daughter. So I will try to shelter her.

It is so easy to swear off an image of being an overprotective parent, but it is much harder and more heart-breaking to figure out the balance along the way. Because ultimately, don’t we want to hand our kids a better, safer tomorrow? And don’t we want to help shape it?

And if we hover along the way, isn’t that okay?

And I think those questions become even more clouded for me as a working mother … Am I hovering more out of fear that I am missing too much of their childhood? Am I not hovering enough because I am pulled in so many directions? Or am I – as I like to think on a good day - doing right by my kids by showing them that life is a juggle — a series of choices and trade-offs?

I don’t know the answers any more. I do know, though, that I can’t be quite as smug as I once was.

Carolyn Ballard

Carolyn lives in Chicago and works out of NYC.  In a good week, she can get work and laundry done at the same time.  In a less good week, she is intimately acquainted with flight delays and managing her household remotely. Fortunately, hers is a pretty good household, with a supportive husband named Pete and a super-Manny named Johnny. Carolyn has two children, ages three and six, who are a constant source of amusement with their youthful insights (“You can’t break a promise. You can only break a maybe.”) Every year, friends vie to make the cut for her family’s hilariously funny Christmas cards.

© 2010 Work Life Balance.