Helicopter behaviour makes parenting a chore
Parenting is a highly demanding activity. Helicopter parenting, wherein the parents constantly monitor their children, can be seen as over controlling and over-protecting in itself. This can be applied to parenting of a toddler or a primary or secondary school child. Parents are constantly vigilant of a toddler’s activity, their milestones and how they explore the world around them. This can make things worse by constantly supervising the child and not allowing any alone time for children to explore and learn from others’ behaviours. When it comes to school children, parents may contact teachers constantly, which in turn could undermine the self-esteem and confidence of the child. In fact, this might look like a daily chore and affect the quality of life of parents, which in turn might impact the overall harmony of the family. Parents tend to do this for a number of reasons like fear of consequences, anxiety or peer comparison. This makes parenting a daily chore as they internally feel obliged to react to very situation and behaviour a child is involved in.
We have significant research evidence to prove that lifestyle changes are very important to maintain work-life balance.
I have clients who are currently going through stress, anxiety and burn-out from their profession and work commitments leading to a range of mental health issues due to lack of coping mechanisms and distraction strategies. There is a definite mismatch of work-life balance here. Needless to say, it affects the quality of life of such a parent and his or her family. From Dr Shankar Srinivas Kuchibatla Medical director and consultant psychiatrist