Compound Interest and Raising Children

Why the Mother Reacted This Way: Helicopter Parenting and Its Causes

The term was first used in Dr. Haim Ginott’s 1969 book Parents & Teenagers by teens who said their parents would hover over them like a helicopter. So the behavior exists for a while but has escalated to a widespread social phenomenon only recently.

I believe this happens for two reasons.

Out of the Devastating Fear of Being Called a Bad Parent

Social media have rampaged into our lives and have brought about radical changes to our behavioral patterns. One of them is they have rewired our brains into making us more susceptible to criticism.

With every post or photograph we upload, we expose ourselves to a huge number of people, potentially to the whole world, so the criticism and the negative comments we can receive augment exponentially and it gets hard to handle. Due to a mere matter of numbers, they manage to penetrate our defenses.

In addition to that, internet anonymity facilitates cyberbullying without the fear of personal consequences. What is more, this specific way of communication blinds us to the impact our words have on others, since we are unable to see their hurt face expressions. As a result, we lose our ability to empathize, and we become even harsher.

The mother felt daunted by the idea of being blamed as indifferent to her daughter’s struggle and rushed in for the rescue to prevent the stigma of being called a bad parent.

As a result, parents don’t allow their kids to make mistakes anymore. They pave the path in front of them; they do anything to prevent them from failing. They take their child’s misfortunes personally and attempt to wipe out every harshness out of the road. They don’t have the luxury to tolerate failure out of fear of parent shaming. On the long-term, this will turn out catastrophic because by doing so they deny them so many valuable lessons.

You will never learn as much from success as you will do from failure.

Parents Mistake Selfish Interests for Unconditional Care and Love

Your purpose in life is to be useful, and it is a vital key to your wellness. Occupying the space air would fill otherwise won’t do you any good and it will only lead to self-loathing and hatred.

It is fantastic to feel useful. It is great to see that you can still be of some help to somebody. You are making a difference, no matter how small. It helps you feel important. And you are.

But that should come naturally as a product of your acute skills and your value; not by nurturing dependence, not by making someone else so useless they have no other option than to rely on you.

Many parents boast about the sacrifices they make, many times at their own expense. “I will do anything for my children. They are my life.” If you neglect your self-care, though, you will grow bitter, and miserable, and resentful, and at some point, you won’t be able to cater for anybody.

For some reason we have come to deem self-sacrifice as virtuous, but as Aristotle had said: “Altruism is to the same extent an erroneous bias as selfishness.”

Be a parent, not a martyr.

Based on personal experience, I have come to realize that behind this promoted sainthood lurks a dark and devious motive. Most of the time it is not apparent to the individual, but the devious incentive is there.

Parents exclaim their unconditional love to their children through the form of supposed self-sacrifice in order to set a future argument for when the child seeks to rebel or leave. They spin the thread skillfully, and they attach the strings with which they will control their child puppet.

“How dare you after all I did to raise you? Show some respect.”

They coerce the children with guilt to stay and reciprocate their parents’ thoughtful actions.

Their train of thought goes like this:

I raised you, so when I get old, you have to look after me as well.

To guarantee the success of their Machiavellian plan, they emasculate the individual’s capacity to exist on their own with surgical accuracy by not letting them do anything.

If you want your child to resent you, hate you, hold grudges, make your life miserable or even leave you to rot and never talk to you again, then, by all means, continue with this strategy.

What to Do Instead: The Compound Interest of Learning

Children are way more resilient than you think. They don’t need a deus ex machina that will decent from heavens and facilitate their lives with a gentle swift of his magic wand.

They need encouragement and approval; they need you to act out your trust in their abilities.

They need you to love them unconditionally.

You can’t be a successful parent, if you are not patient.

If your son attempts to eat by himself, don’t grab the spoon from his grip, because the idea of having to clean a possible food stain bores you to death. Applaud the initiative. He will get dirty today, but he will do it better tomorrow.

If he desires to get dressed by himself, let him. Give him the freedom to express himself with his outfit. Let him experiment and develop his style and taste.

If he is hungry and makes an effort to prepare himself a lunch, don’t think about the messy aftermath. He develops basic skills for survival and self-preservation. You can’t navigate the world, if you are in no position to feed yourself. Supervise him if it’s necessary and pat him on the head when he does something correctly and, by all means, ask him to help you with cleaning afterwards. That is how he will get the concept that our actions have consequences and that we are obligated to clean up after ourselves. That is how he learns to be responsible and self-reliant.

You will have succeeded as a parent when your children don’t need you anymore.

These small actions are the ones that bring the most significant results as time passes by.

They appear trivial to you, so you deduce that they have no intrinsic educational value. You have forgotten in the meanwhile how much demanding and difficult you considered them as a child. Several decades have passed since then, and now they are embedded in your muscle memory, so they manifest spontaneously and effortlessly.

But that doesn’t apply to your kid. They start at zero. These actions matter.

Don’t do them for them.

On the contrary, let them experience as much as they can. Give them chores, give them responsibilities. Allow them to feel useful. Offer some guidance, if needed, but mostly let them figure it out themselves.

These seemingly negligible victories that pile up over the course of time have the power to change your life radically and transform you into a completely different human.

It’s the concept of compound interest. The new piece of information you learn, not only adds up to what you already know but also reacts with your pre-existing knowledge and leads to the creation of something different and fresh. As far as learning is concerned, one plus one equals three.

So, please, allow that little girl to open the pack of chips herself. You can’t even fathom how this could transform her life.

It’s the small victories that make the difference.

One small victory at a time.