Helicopter Parent
A “helicopter parent” can be described as an over-involved parent of an adult child concerning college admissions and job searches. I found an article this evening on a Nashville TV Station web site that educated me on this phrase. The article is titled ‘Helicopter Parent’ Trend Invades Job Fairs. The article was somewhat amusing and a bit more troubling to me.
The Wikipedia definition of helicopter parent helps shed some light on what appears to be a growing trend. There is a cute little eight question quiz on a Newsweek site. They have slipped some tips between the questions to help parents avoid being a helicopter parent. I scored an A- on the quiz with five “A’s” and three “B’s”. Of course my answers are all theoretical since my oldest child is only four years old. I answered the questions as if I had a college age kid. Technically I could have a child in college if I had not waited until thirty five years of age to have my first child.
It seems that the phrase “helicopter parent” has been around for about 15 years, but it is gaining in popularity as more parents try to help their children coop with what I call as a sense of entitlement that has been so ingrained into the current generation of young adults. I suffered from the “sense of entitlement syndrome” myself as recently as a few years ago. I do not believe I got it from my parents as much as I did from TV and other influences based on the “you can be anything you want” mentality that has flooded the brains of children for the past few decades.
Another resource that offers some history on the phrase “Helicopter Parent” can be found on Word Spy.