A Letter To Helicopter Parents

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 Dear Parents,

      Have you ever heard of ‘helicopter parents’? If you do, do you think yourself is one of them? No matter what helicopter parents are, and whether you are one or not, I just simply want to tell you – do not be the helicopter parents of your children.

      Helicopter parents are those parents who overprotect their children.  They are just like a helicopter hovering over their children, ready to provide immediate aid whenever their children need help. For example, when the children do not know how to do their homework, helicopter parents will tell them how to do it directly, but not let them learn to find out the answers by themselves. When the helicopter parents themselves do not know how to do their children’s homework, they will ask others for help, instead of giving their children a chance to ask their classmates. So, do you agree you yourselves are helicopter parents now? If yes, I really want you to know the harm that may do to your children, and also yourselves.

      Firstly, for your children, having an easy, trouble-free path means they do not have to face important life experiences. However, people have to learn from their mistakes.  If the children have all their problems dealt with by you, they cannot learn problem-solving skills. Then, because they have no experience in tackling problems themselves, they remain immature and don’t know how to solve problems even when they are grown-ups. It is really horrible for children to become this.
  
     Secondly, facing difficulties makes children better people and more independent. Then, they can even cope with any adversity. How good it will be if your children become like this, isn’t it? However, if you overprotect your children, they will not have a chance to learn to face difficulties. That means they cannot even grow up to be a better person and become independent. How sad it will be! You want to try your best to protect your children, but it will actually hurt them. Therefore, if you do not want these tragedies to happen, please do not be helicopter parents.
Thirdly, being helicopter parents is bad to yourselves. I think helicopter parents are really busy and may live a hard life. You do not only need to go to work, but also spend a lot of time trying to give your children a happy life. However, this really makes you lose face. Do you want yourselves to lose face in front of other people? Probably not. So, would you still continue to be helicopter parents?

      Finally, let me tell you the horrible consequence of being helicopter parents from a real example. Have you ever imagined how it will be if parents treat their children as primary school students even when they are already university students? A recent photo in Young Post (October 19, 2011) shows rows of parents sleeping on mats in a gymnasium after accompanying their children on their first day at university in Wuhan, Hubei province. Can you imagine such a scene? And can you believe they are parents of university students, not primary school students? They really treat their ‘little emperor’ as babies, right? What do you think about those parents? And do you want to be like them? I have no doubt you do not.

      Do you still want to be helicopter parents?

Yours faithfully,
Alice
Alice Chan