We parents are caught in a paradox. We desperately want to keep our children safe and ensure their success. We are also often terrified that they will get hurt and that they will fail—so we do everything we can to prevent that from happening. Yet many of those very efforts to manage our fears have paradoxically reduced our children’s safety and their odds of success.
For over two decades, I have researched children’s development, injury prevention, and outdoor risky play. I have learned that when we prioritize children’s play (especially the kind of play that involves some risk and lack of supervision) and the freedom to play how they choose, we help create environments where children and youth thrive. When we don’t, the consequences can be dire.
This is an excellent article. My fave part:
What kids are dying from today are mainly car crashes and suicides, not playing outside unsupervised with friends. Parents are worrying about the wrong causes of injuries and harm. In fact, the very strategies that parents use to try to keep their children safe – driving them around, maximizing supervision, and minimizing freedom – are unintentionally increasing the likelihood of injuries and even death.
I don’t think it’s in the right community tho.
Cars are also the main reason I don’t like my kids being outside unsupervised. Everyone drives a goddamn tank these days.
Not dying from things you’re not doing isn’t a cause for doing those things. I get the point but it’s kind of proof of cautious parenting working.
We desperately want to keep our children safe and ensure their success. We are also often terrified that they will get hurt and that they will fail—so we do everything we can to prevent that from happening.
Some of us know letting kids take risks is better for their development, but are terrified of being ratted on by busybodies who didn’t get the memo and persecuted by CPS.
“Helicopter parenting” is being driven by more than just a change in attitudes of parents themselves.
It is a push and pull thing. Some of it is coming from parents pushing to be more interactive, but I agree that society is shutting itself off from dealing with it.
Who gives a shit if someone calls CPS? Unless you’re doing something actually harmful they’re not going to do anything. Tell those people to fuck off and carry on living your life.
You’re either delusional or privileged if you think CPS doesn’t have the potential to fuck up your life even for something that isn’t actually harmful, especially since some of the people at CPS have paranoid attitudes themselves.
You want to base your whole approach to parenting on how some hypothetical helicopter parent could potentially respond, combined with a handful of CPS case outliers, but I’m the delusional one? OK then. I’ll stick to my delusions and you can keep your kids on a leash until they’re teenagers.
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