HELICOPTER PARENTS

HELICOPTER PARENTS

Helicopter parents is the term for parents who hover over their children, the sort of parent we’d call “overprotective.” An example of helicopter parenting occurred in Colorado Springs in 2012, where, at a neighborhood event, a whole host of parents got way too involved.

You’re thinking, “Well, after all, what parent hasn’t gotten worked up during their child’s Little League or Youth Football game?” (I've seen parents running up and down the sidelines of soccer games screaming at their child.)

But this wasn’t a baseball or a football game. This was a neighborhood Easter egg hunt! Unruly parents hurdled over the rope marking the boundary of the hunt, and started scooping up the eggs for themselves, since, as one parent said, “You better believe I'm going to help my kid get one of those eggs. I promised my kid an Easter egg hunt and I want to give him an even edge." This, in spite of the fact that there were thousands of the colored eggs lying in plain sight for the kiddies.

With the larger reach of their biscuit hooks, these helicopter parents easily pushed the children aside to grab the goodies. How proud they must have been at the end of the day.

One parent, however, takes the award for "Most Hovering Mother of the Year." She has two boys in college and she schedules  every hour of their lives, in addition to monitoring their personal email accounts and bank account balances. She obtains copies of every syllabus and emails them their homework assignments for every class, which they never miss because she gives them wake-up calls every morning. She performs all these services as she holds down a job. How's that for hovering! 

Wow! Has she never heard of the biblical responsibility that parents train their children to be independent? I wonder if their bosses are going to give them a wake up call every morning to make sure they're not late to work. (They won't, but she will.)

I can picture her at dinner when the lads are home from college. I can see her filling each spoon with food, placing it their mouths, then massaging their throats for safe swallowing.

Parents have become super safety conscious. Gone are the halcyon days of being a child and bouncing around in the breeze in a fast moving pickup. No. By law, the parent must purchase a car seat in which they must always buckle their little bodies. I remember seeing a pack of at least nine Cub Scouts in the back of a white pickup arriving to play a baseball game singing, "How Much is that Doggie in the Window" at the top of their lungs, having a great time. (They piled in the pickup and left in a depressed state: we beat them to win the championship.)

Today, when a child skates or rides a bike, the latest, safest helmet must be atop the cranium and buckled snugly under the chin. (Not saying these are bad things, just sayin'.)

At Port Washington in New York, officials at Weber Middle School are worried that students are getting hurt during recess. They've instituted a ban on footballs, baseballs, lacrosse balls, or anything that might hurt someone on school grounds. They're not only banning playing football; tossing the pigskin is also verboten. The Port Washington czars have also banned cartwheels and games of tag.

 Did you hear the story of the ultra helicopter mother? She wouldn’t let her kids play football, baseball, basketball, or soccer. She relented and did let them compete on the chess team, but they had to wear helmets. (That’s a joke; lighten up!)

Let's move to an area where helicopter parents are as rare as congressional fiscal responsibility and it's the one area in which we need them. In fact, we might say that it's an area in which parents show little, if any, interest at all in their child's safety. I'm talking about their spiritual safety, the biblical education of their children.

I'm not talking about the parent who drops the child off at the door of the church for Sunday school, then heads for Starbucks; that's too obvious to mention.

I'm talking about something deeper; something that escapes our notice because it's culturally ingrained in us. It's the separation of the child from his parents for his spiritual training.

Let me explain by asking, "How well do you know your child's Sunday school teacher?" "How well do you know what that teacher is teaching?" Is he/she presenting the accurate gospel or does he/she have works mixed into it, like Lordship salvation? How about the youth pastor? How well do you know him? Ever quizzed a Sunday school teacher or a youth pastor on the gospel? Have you just assumed they're OK? How about visiting your child's Sunday school class so you can hear what they're hearing? How about taking an in-depth look at the teaching and the ministry of the youth pastor. After all, you're trusting them with you kids, and what if you learned that your children are learning the ways of the world in that group?

Are you assuming that the teacher at your Christian school is presenting faith alone in Christ alone, or are you depending on the school's doctrinal statement to tell you? Be careful. One parent learned that the principal didn't agree with his own school's "faith alone" statement. He said, "There just has to be more to being saved than 'just believe.'" (He was firing teachers who taught faith alone.) When it came to the teachers in the school presenting the gospel, one parent found the situation to be desperate.

The Christian camp to which you send your youth--have you been a noble Berean and checked it out? Many camps are so hungry for counselors, they'll lower their standards and have some leading the campers into grace, others into law. One parent found that the materials used at a Christian camp instructed the children not sin for a day and come back and tell the others how they did it.

This is one area in which I wish there were helicopter parents because their biblical instruction, their introduction to the gospel from someone other than yourself is as crucial as it gets. There one mother who came to a church for the first time who, before she put her children in children's church had a sit-down with the youth pastor and gave him the third degree over the gospel and sat in her daughters' Sunday school class just to make sure all was in biblical order. I say, "May her tribe increase!"

Let's go deeper. Where did we come up with the idea that children must be separated from their parents at church and in Sunday school? What could be better than their hearing and interacting with their parents and other adults concerning the gospel and the truths of Scripture in open discussion, asking questions and getting biblical answers?

I noticed a while back that teens have a difficult time relating to and talking to someone outside their own age group. I've found that it's a rare teenager who can carry on a conversation that's more than a few monosyllables with an adult. Why? Because they're segregated from adults. And that's not their fault--their schools and their churches are keeping them separate.

It would be eye-opening to sit down and figure out how many hours a day/week you and your child are separated. Take a typical first grader--he leaves for school at 7:05 AM and returns to hearth and home at 2:45 PM. That's an absence of 7 hours, 45 minutes per day, and a total of 38.75 hours a week! If both parents have to work to pay the excessive taxes we have to deal with, then it's after school care for the tykes, adding more hours absent from the parents.

We could add to that "lessons mania,"the phenomenon of enrolling children in acting lessons, horseback riding lessons, violin lessons, judo lessons, and on top of that, getting them on soccer teams, softball teams, and youth football teams. All that means more time under the influence of anyone and everyone other than the parents. 

Once the family is reunited at the end of the day, there's the meal to prepare or go get from the local fast food chains, homework to do, and then it's time for bed, so everyone can get up and do it all over again.

Julius Caesar began The Gallic Wars, by writing, "All Gaul is divided into three parts." So is the modern family: father, mother, children finding themselves in an AAA condition: All divided Almost All the time.

You will one day leave your church in the hands of your children and their friends.

That's food for serious thought.
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Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Newsletter."

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org