Helicoptering

One thing that I think I need to work on with Jupiter is being less of a helicopter sometimes. A helicopter parent is a term for one who hovers over their children like a helicopter to the extent that they do not let them learn from their own experiences. It is a form of over-parenting. I do not think that I am as bad about it as some parents I see, but I do think that I could work on it a bit and so I have been. Mostly I have trouble letting him make a mess because it causes more work for me, but I just need to get over it and clean up the mess and be thankful that he had the chance at a new learning experience.

The other day we were at the Magic House and all but one small section of the museum was closed until noon. Jupiter was playing in a water area that has a stream of water on several levels with boats and dams and watering cans, as well as a little fountain area, an enclosed water gun case, and a couple other things to help teach young children about how we can interact with water. I decided that I was just going to let him loose and only intervene to tell him when playtime was almost up.

Of course it went very well. He splashed a few other kids who had parents giving me dirty looks for not scolding him about it, but those kids just walked away and he suffered his own consequences for being anti-social. I really did not need to intervene. He got good and wet even though he had a smock on, but he had a great time and I could actually see him learning a lot. It was as if I had a scope peering into the working of his brain.

I was recently watching a YouTube video of Stephen Colbert interviewing Neil DeGrasse Tyson when a question about increasing scientific literacy came up. The first part of his answer was about how parents need to get out of the way of their kids and allow them to explore freely. For example, do not stop them from banging on pots and pans because they are being noisy and dirtying dishes. That is them experimenting with acoustics. That part of the video, which is linked to at the beginning of this paragraph, really reminded me about this helicoptering concept and that many of us parents, myself included, need to work on it.

I hope, for Jupiter's sake, that I am being harder on myself than I need to be and that I really do let him experiment for himself more than I think I do. Hopefully I am just remembering the times when I get it wrong. Us humans tend to do that kind of selective remembering. But even so, I think it is a good thing to be reminded of from time to time.