HELICOPTER PARENTS, YOU ARE THE "NEW PARENTS" OF TEENS. HOW IS THAT WORKING FOR YOU?
What is the parent's job? To protect, teach, love, nuture, guide, keep safe, make happy, make things better, provide a happy, healthy, loving childhood...we want the best for our children.
It is so sad to think that while we were always there to give them a hug or an ice cream to make it better when they were sad when maybe we should have let them be sad and learn how to cope.
All those great motives have often ended up with entitled, unresillient, emeshed teens who still thinks ultimately that mommy is an extension of themselves there to provide, fragile, easily defeated as they have been spared defeat. And there is a big side of teen traumas that had nothing to do with parenting styles.
The first generation of Helicopter Parented kids are now reaching their teen years. And we thought jockeying for a view of our toddler in the paddling pool with all the other attentive parents was tough. The hours of constant vigillance, watching like good parents from a reasonable distance to let the child learn, but constant baby and toddler care was taxing.
But now many parents are contacting me about the right teen car tracker that will tell how many kids are in the car, that disables texting when driving, that disables the radio, that won't move without a fastened seatbelt for the rider and driver...etc I know parents who have four trackers on their teens--the iPhone, the iWatch with heart beat function, one in the car, one on a necklace.
Probably you are finding parenting teens to be a lot harder than you thought it would be.
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