Helicopter, tiger, lawn mower… oh my!
Like fashion, parenting styles seem to go in and out of popularity. In the past the alliance was often formed between the school and the parent. Students would fear a call home if their behaviour was below the standard expected. Punishments would be reinforced by parents and the educators would be awarded the utmost support. This dynamic has been shifting quite consistently since the 1990s.
We had the introduction of the ‘helicopter’ parent, who hovered around their children. Constantly assessing risk and removing any potential danger.
From there we had the ‘tiger’ parents who valued productivity. They had high expectations of their children and invested in extra curriculars instead of allowing time for free play. Emotions, in general, were not valued.
We are now in the era of the ‘lawn mower’ parent. This term has been coined based on the way these parents literally remove all obstacles and challenges out of the path for their child. This type of parenting builds up the parents’ tool kit of skills by depriving their child from developing any of their own. It is protection and mollycoddling to the point of robbing this next generation of agency and self-esteem.
As a parent I can assure you that watching my children go through something difficult, whether that be failure of some sort, bullying, sickness, etc is difficult. In fact, I would much prefer to be going through it myself to spare them from having to face it. But that isn’t preparing them for life and isn’t that the job of a parent? Like a teacher, parenting in many ways is to render ourselves obsolete. To empower our children with the skills they need to navigate a plethora of situations with confidence and support.
What we are seeing in large quantities in schools are parents defending their children without question. They are expecting schools to create great dossiers of evidence before any consequence is enforced. Often times parents are called and meetings arranged for schools to be told the parents don’t believe it is worth their time to even attend. With the current teacher shortage, this is creating a hefty workload for teachers already operating in survival mode. In addition to this is the feeling of being unsupported because parents seem to be reigning supreme.
Now I know this sounds as though I am not on the side of the parents but let me clarify that this is not the case. What I am questioning is this ‘us and them’ mentality that I am seeing. The lack of trust in the education system and the suspicion around the agenda of educators and educational institutions at large. What I am proposing is steps toward unity between home and schools. A shared sense of values around expectations, behaviour and support. Perhaps going back somewhat to the alliance I alluded to in the beginning of this piece
If we continue on this current path of division, those at the greatest disadvantage are our young people. They are not sure where to invest their trust and it also undermines the authority of those professionally trained teachers working tirelessly to impart skills and knowledge.
The world can be a scary place and, as a parent, I often reflect on the fact that in this modern world, we know too much. We have so much information that we didn’t ask for being hand delivered to our devices it can be difficult to make heads of tails of it all. So, what I am suggesting is that we start small, simply, with the people in our lives that we get to interact with face to face. With the families in our community, with the educators supporting our children and with the children themselves. Instead of working in isolation, we need to overlap. We need to get curious about the reasons behind decisions and we need to work together. Let’s land the helicopters, tie up the tigers and power down the lawn mowers and meet as humans. Humans that want the best for the next generation, knowing the best doesn’t mean that we have to know it all, nor is it removing all of their challenges or removing their agency. Let’s get clear on our values and once we do we may be surprised how much we are united already.