Top head: Helicopter parents stop children becoming individuals
(and they even use Skype to listen in on their lectures!)
CHilDrEN are struggling to become individuals because they are so ‘over-parented’, the head of a top private school has warned.
So-called helicopter parents are taking up almost as much of teachers’ time as their children – as they hover over their offspring’s every move, she said.
and in a ‘terrifying’ example of the issue, she said over-attentive mothers and fathers use Whatsapp and Skype to listen to lectures alongside their student youngsters.
They are ‘poised and ready to assist’ with editing their sons’ and daughters’ dissertations to ensure they do not get bad marks in their degree courses.
Jane lunnon, head of £18,810-a-year Wimbledon High School in south-west london, urged families to give children more independence at school and university.
Mrs lunnon, 49, will address the issue at the Bryanston Education Summit. in an article for the Times Educational Supplement ahead of the conference in June, she called for families to be ‘ reminded of a sense of perspective’. She said: ‘There are parents supporting their children with their university assignments; using the wonders of Whatsapp and Skype to listen to lectures alongside their kids – poised and ready to assist in the dissertation-editing to come.
‘it takes helicopter parenting to a terrifying level. Schools, and indeed universities, are finding themselves spending almost as much time managing parents as teaching their children.’ She blamed ‘parents who swoop in and want to save their children from failure’.
Mrs lunnon cited reports last week that parents even pay for tutors to help them understand their children’s homework, concluding: ‘The result? Children who are so over-parented that they struggle to individuate at all.
‘These teens have no skill in forming their own narratives, in finding and using their own voices, in coping with their own disappointments, in making their own plans or devising their own dreams. This extends way beyond school.’
She insisted that children must be allowed to ‘form their own opinions, fight their own battles and risk making their own mistakes along the way’.