I am going to let you in on a secret: teachers, principals, and other school employees talk about parents. Shhhh! It’s a secret! However, since the cat it out of the bag I will let you know that a lot of generalizations are made, during times of frustration some pretty negative things are said, and yes, there are often a number of positive conversations about parents as well. We recognize that parents never talk about teachers or principals so I thought it was important to come clean and let you folks know that we do talk about you.
I have never been very good with sarcasm, and as I have read and re-read the paragraph above I still wonder if I could have put it better. However, what I want parents to know is that the relationship we have with you is very important. Communication is the key, and when we have good communication things generally go much better with your child’s education at our school. Just like every student is an individual with unique qualities and characteristics, you parents are the same. There are times we forget that, especially when we make some of those broad-sweeping generalizations like I mentioned above. We do know that parenting is tough. Most of us have been through it. And, we know that people parent differently. Where we sometimes have difficulty is understanding why some parents deal with their children different than we did with our own. It is for that reason that I have spent quite a bit of time learning about different parenting styles, trying to figure out how we work with students who have been raised differently than how I was raised, and how I raised my kids. To that end, I have come across some interesting articles about parenting, and attended a very interesting session at this past year’s NASSP conference about the different ways parents are raising their kids today. James Pedersen, an individual who has researched parenting styles and written a great deal about them, groups parents into three general categories: Hyper-Parents, Hypo-Parents, and Traditional/Neo-traditional Parents.
Pedersen says that the biggest difference between parents today and those of days gone by is that today’s parents are “hyper-aware” and want to resolve all of their child’s problems for them. According to him, this is based on previous generations of child rearing that focused on wanting to raise children to be more sensitive and caring. That has come with a price because those more caring and compassionate people (us!) are parents now! Compared to previous generations of parents, we are more aware of what is going on in our children’s lives, are more demanding, and more questioning. Based on that, here a few types of parents, and perhaps you can identify what kind you are.
The Hyper-Parents are those that over parent. They are over-involved in their child’s lives and in many instances there tends to be blurred lines between their own goals for their child and their child’s goal. They tend to have overly high expectations and attempt to remove obstacles to insure their kid’s success. Included in this category of parent is the Helicopter Parent, who “hovers over their child, rarely letting them do anything by themselves.” A more intense form of parent, The Blackhawk not only hovers, but also attempts to shoot down anyone who they believe is in the way of their child’s success. Two other kinds of hyper-parents are the Curling and Snowplow. The Curling parent “smooths the ice” for their child, while the Snowplow “blasts through” their child’s obstacles. Also in this category is the Tiger Mom, where nothing their child does is ever good enough, nor is what anyone connected to their child does. And, there is the Attachment Parent who refuses to let their child go.
Hypo-Parents are those that under parent. One that I found very interesting is the Free-range Parent, and since attending the conference, there has been quite a bit written about these kinds of parents. In essence, they are the “anti-Helicopter,” “anti-Attachment” parent. Like free-range chickens, they allow their kids to roam believing that they need to make their own way in life and learn for themselves. Two examples in the news recently are the parents that were cited for neglect by letting their kids walk to a park by themselves about six blocks from home in an east coast city, and parents who live outside of New York City that allow their kids to visit the city on weekend evenings unaccompanied by adults. Interesting that neglect is a term used here when these folks believe the best way for their child to grow and learn is out from under the wings of the parent. We see a number of Best Friend or Karaoke parents, those that want to be the child’s pal or buddy rather than a parent. And there is the Pussycat Parent that doesn’t want to upset their child and therefore do very little in terms of providing guidance or structure.
The last group is those referred to as the Traditional or Neo-traditional parents. While the general assumption is that there is a parent at home keeping an eye on the kids as they grow up, there are a variety of different configurations. The Backbone Parent is not afraid of saying “no” or making difficult decisions. The Balance Parent insists on having balance in life and works to be sure that their child is not overextended. The Faithful Parent uses their religious beliefs as a foundation for parenting. There are a number of parents in our district that would fall under one of these categories, and they tend to be very supportive school and their children’s education.
John O’Sullivan provides a different perspective on parents that has merit as well. According to him, kids today are pawns in an adult driven, hyper competitive race to the top. This race takes place in academics and athletics that serves the needs of the adults, but rarely the kids. According to O’Sullivan, we have a generation of kids that are being pushed to accomplish the dreams of their parents rather than their own, and some of them are actually sacrificing what most of us would consider a normal childhood. He has a name for this kind of parent as well – The Avatar. They have assumed the identity of their child and are trying to live out their unlived life through their kids.
As I have learned more about parenting, and looked at the different ways parents make decisions, and the motivation for those decisions, I can put faces on a lot of these different types. But as I have dug in deeper, I have also done a great deal of self-reflection, and what I have determined in my own case is that I have characteristics of a handful of these types, or have passed through different phases of parenting. Some of that has been good, and regretfully, some it has not. The conclusion I have come to is that there needs to be balance and moderation, and perhaps the most damage that has been done to kids is with the extremes. I look at some of the kids in our hallways and am really concerned about how they are going to make it through life without mom and dad right there with them. I have wanted to ask a couple of moms if they plan to go to college with their child. By the same token, we have had kids that have survived in spite of an absence of parenting, and it impresses me the resilience they have shown. If you see bits of yourself in the short descriptions I have provided, perhaps spend a little bit of time thinking about what you can do better in order to help your child become an independent productive member of our society. Isn’t that the goal we all have for our kids?
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