The Seven Myths of Helicopter Parenting

Katie Rophie:

1. You are not a helicopter parent if your kid is not in a zillion extracurriculars. In the recent clamor on the subject of whether this generation of parents is hovering too much and oversteering, overmanaging, and otherwise spoiling their children, I've heard parents say, "But we don't know any actual helicopter parents." They say this because they don't know anyone who fits the obvious caricatures--that is anyone who schedules Mandarin classes for their 5-year-old and dutifully shuttles them off every Saturday morning for theater-to-express-yourself classes. But the overabundance of extracurriculars is only one small part of the larger, disturbing phenomenon Madeline Levine chronicles in her voice-of-reason-ish new book, Teach Your Children Well, which was excellently reviewed this weekend in the New York Times by Judith Warner.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 2, 2012 3:38 AM
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