STEALTH PARENT?

Helicopter parents hover over their children with a goal of keeping them safe and shielding them from negative consequences. “Stealth parenting” takes this phenomenon further.

Even more attached and protective, stealth parents often operate under the radar, striking quickly when needed and intervening in their child’s life without their knowledge.

From authoritarian to uninvolved, parenting styles reflect how moms and dads interact with their children and vary with the times.

“Stealth parenting is like the high-tech version of helicopter parenting. It relies on apps, cameras and technology to track, monitor and intervene on behalf of their child 24/7,” said Lauren Tingley, a certified Simplicity Parenting discipline and guidance coach and creator of Simply Well Balanced (simply-well-balanced.com), a website that offers parenting and homemaking tips.

To compare the differences between stealth and helicopter parenting, motherhood expert Abigail Wald gives this example: “Whereas a helicopter parent knew a child had a test the next day and made sure they studied for it, the stealth parent uses the advent of ubiquitous technology to text the child before the test, reminding them to have a high protein snack. Maybe they even check the school portal to learn of the student’s grade before the student does.

“In other words, smartphones and the internet have dramatically altered parenting’s reach, enabling the helicopter parent to make even more targeted and intrusive strikes into the landscape of what used to be a child’s set of responsibilities,” said Wald, a certified Hand in Hand Parenting consultant and Mother Flipping Awesome podcaster.

Stealth parenting thrived during distance learning in the pandemic, Tingley said.

“These parents simply cannot stand allowing their student to fail and suffer the consequences,” she said. “For younger children this may be a parent who completes an online learning assignment on behalf of their child that they refused to do themselves.”

For older children, stealth parents may complete job or college applications or use the child’s email address to act as the student.

“There are even instances of parents using their child’s social media accounts to smooth over disagreements with their friends,” Tingley said.

Parents may think they know what’s best for their child, but this extreme parenting style can undermine a child’s ability to develop resiliency and create issues with motivation, self-esteem and a huge gap in soft skills that are essential to success, Tingley said.

“During my years as an academic advisor, I met many 15- to 18-year-old students who had never made a phone call, scheduled an appointment or made their own purchases at a store. If we want children to be able to navigate a complicated world, we need to show them how and create a dialogue about the best steps for them to take in order for them to be able to advocate for themselves,” Tingley said.

A parent’s job is to act as a guide.

“We should be there to support and help them learn to help themselves. If parents always jump in to fix everything for the child, they will never learn how to solve problems themselves,” Tingley said. “They may also not realize how challenging some situations may be if they have been shielded from adversity by parents who swoop in to save them before they even know something has gone wrong.”

Before condemning stealth parents, consider the world in which we live, Wald said. School shootings are commonplace, and there are entire websites devoted to backpacks that can double as a protective shield.

“We have spent the last year in a pandemic, telling our children that breathing the wrong air might kill us. Yes, it’s true, but it’s terrifying,” Wald said. “Teenagers now have to contend with their mistakes being digitized forever and perhaps even screenshotted for all to see, resulting in temporary teenage mistakes that wipe out lives with a wand of unforgiveness for those same teens. I feel for them.”

Being a parent requires adults to love and care for another being with all they have and then let them go, Wald said.

“As much as we would love to have the illusion we can control the outcome, we can’t. And some of us have a harder time with that than others,” she said. “The question is not just what will this do to our individual child, but also as a society. What will be the outcome of children who are electronically monitored to make sure they grow right?”

Stealth parenting is like the high-tech version of helicopter parenting. It relies on apps, cameras and technology to track, monitor and intervene on behalf of their child 24/7. LAUREN TINGLEY