Why helicopter parenting backfires on kids | Heather Heying | Big Think
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 29 авг 2024
- Why helicopter parenting backfires on kids
Watch the newest video from Big Think: bigth.ink/NewV...
Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: bigth.ink/Edge
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Helicopter parenting, and all of its associated forms, prevents children from exploring their emotional and intellectual landscape, and often their physical landscape as well, such that they become adults in body only," says evolutionary biologist Heather Heying.
Childhood is an important developmental stage that trains kids for messy, uncontrollable reality. If adults don't teach kids how to solve their own problems, or if they prevent them from experiencing harm, children become less capable adults who don't know how to deal with real injury and insult.
Parents can help their children by teaching them to be anti-fragile. Children grow from being exposed to ideas with which they disagree, encountering negative emotions, and engaging in activities with real-world outcomes like sport, cooking, and DIY.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEATHER HEYING:
Heather Heying is an evolutionary biologist and former Professor at Evergreen State College. She applies the tool kit of evolutionary theory to problems large and small, some seemingly intractable, some possibly trivial-what to eat, how to teach and parent and be an upstanding citizen, what to avoid, and what to seek.
Heather came to prominence after she and her husband, Bret Weinstein, stood up to supporters of an enforced “Day of Absence” for white staff and teachers at Evergreen State College.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:
HEATHER HEYING: Childhood is a feature of being a human. It is a big part of what makes us so incredible. It's a big part of what allows us to be the conscious, creative, analytical, mathematical, moral animals that we are. So what then is childhood for? The simplest answer is childhood is for learning to be human. And so if you prevent a child from learning on their own-either by doing all of their thinking for them and solving all of their problems for them, in the style that has been called helicopter parenting-or, and this is related but different, or if you keep them from experiencing physical environments such that the only things that they are experiencing are social or virtual environments, if you keep them from either of those things learning how to solve problems on their own, learning how to solve their own problems on their own, and being exposed to the physical world with all of its messiness and its undeniable reality you will create children in either of those situations, and especially if you do both to them, you will create children who don't know how to solve their own problems and don't know what actual harm is.
So, to be an animal on the planet is to move around the world and to risk being hurt. And if you have grown up never having been hurt, never having experienced gravity-if you watched the Road Runner cartoons and watched the Road Runner chase Wile E. Coyote off the cliff and saw gravity not take effect until the coyote noticed that he was actually over thin air and then he fell, that's funny, right? That's funny in a cartoon. But if you've actually never experienced gravity, if you haven't played enough on trees or on swings or whatever and fallen off and gone down and hurt yourself, you may not actually believe in the reality of it. And so kids will grow up if they've been prevented from experiencing the outdoors, which is unpredictable and cannot be fully controlled, they will grow up and anytime they feel hurt of the emotional sort or of the intellectual sort they will think: 'This is harm. This is harm.' And it's not. We need to create children who are in fact anti-fragile, and who grow more from actually being exposed to ideas with which they disagree and strong emotions that we might say are negative, and indeed to situations where physical harm could come but hopefully it won't. Maybe it's sport, maybe it's carpentry, maybe it's cooking a meal without using a recipe-using real ingredients. Anything where there's a physical result in the world that you cannot game, that you cannot convince yourself, 'Yeah I did that well.' Either you fell or you didn't. Either you caught the Frisbee or you didn't. You built the table or you didn't. The food is edible or it's not. And so having real-world results for the actions that you take allows people to realize, you know what, it's not all just a social construct.
Helicopter parenting, and all of its associated forms, prevents children from exploring their emotional and intellectual landscape and often their physical landscape as well such that...
Read the full transcript at bigthink.com/v...
What do you think about helicopter parenting?
I think that it is sad... Parents are sure that they're doing the best for their children and spending so much effort to defend their children, but counter intuitively they end up making their children's lives so much more miserable and make them suffer and struggle... Thinking of my mom..and my sibling... It's so tragic
I think is not good for our society, but I guess is not easy be a parent, I was raised by helicopter parents, so for me is hard to live in, I have a lot of difficulties to be atonomy even having 32 years and I also have a lot of trouble dealing with pressure, I had depression when I was 18, I couldn't deal with people teasing me, but now I know that if I had learned how to solve my own problems I would react better in those situations and wouldn't care so much about the external.
I think part of this has to do with societal and cultural manipulation from those who run the show. Not all of it but some.
As a single mom of 3 sons I didn’t have time for this type of parenting. I worked as a night shift nurse full time and raised my sons all on my own, physically and financially. I was often so exhausted I could barely function. They would remind me of things they had to do or sometimes (obviously when they were old enough) would just walk to whatever it was they needed to do. Just putting a roof over our heads and food on the table while trying to be a mom was insanely hard. I made it to the really important things and they were always provided for. Now at 24 and 19 they seem to be a lot more independent and responsible than their peers. They tell me it’s annoying when their friends get offended and annoyed by every little thing. I think because they had to handle a lot and figure out a lot of problems on their own it has helped them.
I honestly don't think my parents let me try my own way even though I've been trying and trying and he thinks his way is best for me and not mine..
Failure is the best teacher there is. Helicopter parents do not understand this and instead attempt to keep their kids from every experiencing failure.
You have to let kids fail. It builds character, no not everyone's going to like you, get over it.
Not an easy thing to accept I bet if one has wrecked their child with care. Thinking they have done best for their child but ending with almost opposite.
I'm happy to be a latch key genXer who grew up before the invention of cellphones. We got to roam around free with no way for our parents to contact us. I may have gotten a lot of scrapes and bruises, but I had fun while getting them.
Plenty of people still grow up this way...I'm a millennial and grew up that way. Do what ever dumb shit with friends getting lost on bikes and coming home as needed...also if there's any issues with kids it's your generation of parents that got away from the latch key life style.
Helicopter Parenting has caused serious problems within people of my generation, but it's gaining more popularity as time goes on. We're relying on these kids to rebel against their parents by demanding they be allowed to fail, but perhaps that won't happen. Perhaps parents won't allow that to happen. There's this obsession with shielding kids away from the harshness of reality, but when reality hits, as it always does, there are absolutely zero coping mechanisms that have been instilled. I believe this is one of the many factors that contributes to higher rates of suicide now than in measurably harder times in the past; an increasingly (and needlessly) complex world, which kids are given absolutely no skills with which to cope in.
Helicopter parent and coddle your kids, you can and often will create a person how is unable or unwilling to pick themselves up when life knocks them down. As mean as it sounds both helicopter parenting and coddling create dependency and weakness. Life can and often will chew up and spit out people that are not strong enough to face it or are too dependent on others.
Highly agree with everything that was said. I'm a child of a helicopter parent and it's really not great. I understand these parents are worried and want to protect their kids, but it's life. You need to experience things on your own and fail to grow.
A lot of hot takes in here, for the several who seem to assume helicopter-parenting is an exclusively liberal idea, I have to disagree.
Liberal families, conservative families, mothers, dads, all can fall into the trap. Parenting like that isn’t about politics its about insecurity.
Silly to call it a liberal idea. It's a form of abuse and psychological control, period.
🙌🙌🙌
If we were going to go down the "political" path-being a 1 dimensional here- republicans are more likely to be the Christian and religious households - those households are more likely to be stricter, more controlling, more helicoptery and sheltered, less importance put on individualism as a whole
This is not a jab, this is a very 1 dimensional weak arguement to go along with the conversation topic, since that's what people are using here
*not directed at you, ofcourse
Omg. this explains young Millenials and gen z- the safe space and speech is harm crew.
Thank God I grew up in the 80s where all parents were free range. Childhood was such a blast. As opposed to kids nowadays glued to screens… How unnatural and abnormal. I make it a point to force my children outside to venture on their own.
I love when people think their bubble speaks for all... Millennial here and grew up as a latch key kid. Walked home from school, did hood rat shit with friends on bikes etc...
The one thing your generation did do en mass is get away from all this. If millennials are so sheltered. It's your generations fault for creating participation awards and becoming helicopter parents. Not sure how gen x turned down this path of parenting on such a scale.
What's tragic is when you try to raise your kids this way people call the cops on you
Latch Key Kids *FTW!*
Just don't let CPS find out
I had helicopter parents if I complained they just got worse till they kicked me out and were offended when I got lucky and got into a great foster home they then outcasted me because how dare I be happy without them. Sorry some random people were better parents
For a more in depth dive on this subject, read the coddling of the American mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, and antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Nico Bruin thx
iGen by Jean Twenge talks about this as well. Haidt and Lukianoff reference her book a lot.
BIG THINK IS SUCH AN AWESOME CHANNEL, Big Think have both inspired me and helped me in my own personal development. I would really want to thank this channel for everything it has given me. This channel has actually inspired me so much so that I have even started my own channel. I see my channel as my way of making the world a better place and to give back for everyone who have given me things and inspiration in life, I’m grateful for all the support I can get in growing my channel.
Love you, Heather! (And Bret!) Thanks for helping me and my husband be better parents.
What an intelligent and good lady
Hu, so when my parents pulled me away from reading and playing inside and kicked me out to play with other kids on the street that wasnt just so they could have a quiet house for 5 god damn minutes? Just good parenting XP
No, but seriously, my parents did that. They also limited the time we spend in front of a screen, forced us to pick a sport or an instrument so we'd be out and about, meeting other kids outside of school.
My parents did this without any of those self-help books, though.
I am not certain what exactly was in all of those bloody books during the 90s but holy god it seems to have done some freaking damage.
Hey, does anyone know if helicopter parents and bulldozer parents are kinda the same or is it just "bad parenting" in different ways?
I knew this kid with helicopter/bulldozer parents who would endlessly stress their kids about school, be super restrictive, basically insist that they stay home and learn for school at all times, and aggressively supported that agenda by "bulldozing" teachers for bad grades, etc.
That kid developed nervous phyiscal ticks when people tried to look him in the eye. He's better now, but a mental health professional had to have words with the mother. And then another mental health professional had to have that same conversation with her, until she realized that she couldn't just shop around for "another opinion".
Children are both incredibly easy to break, and incredibly resistant. That kid's alright today, but I also know kids that took the path of self exploration and making their own mistakes who still have not graduated because they started dealing weed in 8th grade.
she is explaining twitter lol
when is the last time you saw a group of kids on bikes or down the park,,, away from adults (the important part))... it been at least 15 years for me
I’ve watched two boys on my street never leave their house during their entire childhood. They are both failing as young adults.
I do love Heather!
This young generation was taught since childhood that there's a button for everything, so in order to hover above the rest they're miserably trying to flaunt a higher moral compass by character assassination and paradoxical judgments on older generations. Being spoiled is ugly as adults.
I remember some of the helicopter parents when my son was in school.
Their kids got penalized or disqualified from a wrestling match and they were apoplectic.
I often times gave my son the dressing down his coach would have and then trained him on how to avoid the problem going forward.
A related issue is that a lot of parents who want to give their kids unsupervised time so they can learn independent judgment get harassed by busybodies.
And those busybodies are empowered by the state to take children from their parents.
_looking at you, CPS_
Government is and always has been the problem.
Funny that this video came up under a Evergreen State College search.
Bravo ...
I agree that children who does not get insulted grow into adults who can not handle insult, but how to get the children insulted ? Is it by allowing them to be mocked, name called by class mates?
Kids who are socially desirable by the age of four grow up to be better at handling insults. The mocker senses this and sees no point in continuing. A large part of socialisation is a result of understanding what really is a threat and what isn't a threat. Kids learn this by engaging in rough and tumble play and pretend play, something that good parents allow and encourage.
Yes
I ran away from the attack helicopters and educated myself. Success.
Love Dr. Heather! She's been so active in reforming Zoology & her articles on Gender & Sex associations have been so helpful in getting a proper hold amongst today's distorted post-reality!
Respect!
What about my safe space?
But we can't count on parents these days
We should be autodidacte, that's how it goes
Nope , didn’t learn
Kind of obvious tbh but guess I needs to be stated nonetheless
I feel like today's generation really suffers from that issue...
I wanna be mommy please America give me greenpassport and freedom.
I agree that "Helicopter parenting" is counterproductive. But why not also discuss the lack of personal responsibility children are taught in schools today? Children use to have household chores to do if they wanted to get dessert? Liberals don't have an adequate understanding of duty and obligation.
👌 If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. My top entrepreneur @evenkingsfall (his insta) always says you have to THINK BIG to WIN BIG! Always keep that mindframe! Don't stop the hard work 💥
And everything this person had just said, CPS will take your kids for.
@@littlecaladan Helpful to their bottom line, hurtful to most kids.
Kobe
This video could have been summed up in 2 sentences.
This is under the same understanding of white and male fragility
This is a psyop, protect your kids! No one else will.
If you protect your children their whole life, who will protect you when you're old?
@@Gulgathydra the reason this idea is really a psyop, is that it's a psychological ploy that encourages parent to hand their kids over to the state. The " nanny state" if I may be so bold. Most kids raised by the state, can't cook, can't organize or clean up after themselves. They have never read an unabridged book. All the books they have read from the school library have been modified. Most of them can't do any real wird skills at all, they can't think for themselves and know only the surface of world events.
What this argument essentially is saying is to throw your kids to the wolves, so that the wolves can sexualize them and shape them and form them to the image of the world and you as a parent really have no right to prevent this..
Really? Because I think she was advocating for parenting your children, rather than over-parenting them.
The nanny-state is one of the things children need to be protected from. Helicopter nanny-stating is just as destructive to children's development as helicopter parenting.
Hence the general sentiments of opposition to CPS (my own included) in the video's comment section.
@@misfithomemaker3683 Sheltered kids are less likely to fight against the state
Don't be scared to get the belt out once In a while.
I'm glad my parents belted me. I'd be in jail had they not taught me consequences.
Why? To indoctrinate your child with the physical and mental abuse they're going to receive from their abusive mate and friends? I think real love based on compassion works better.
@@mtnvalley9298 compassion doesn't change self destructive behaviors for many. Hence our prison over population problem.
@@beastlyendeavour9184 Hardly an apt correlation. Yes, some self destructive people do end up in prison, but the reasons for prison overpopulation extend way beyond transgressive behaviors. How about marijuana convictions for starters. Federalize a drug that is essentially legal on a local level and that problem goes away. Again, I suggest leading with compassion.
@@mtnvalley9298 children need boundaries set for them with corrective measures. Without they will feel insecure leading to dependency issues such as drugs which lead to criminal behavior.