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13/11/2010Expat helicopter parenting

Expat helicopter parenting Expat expert Robin Pascoe discusses the pitfalls of over-parenting and its effect on Third Culture Kids.

It’s hard these days to pick up a parenting book, magazine, or website offering advice about raising children without stumbling upon the term ‘helicopter parenting’. What exactly does it mean anyway?

“It’s a term applied to parents who are over-managing, over-scheduling, and generally over-protecting their children,” I wrote in my 2006 book “Raising Global Nomads: Parenting Abroad in an On-Demand World”. In other words, some parents are hovering like a helicopter over their kids, possibly disabling them from forging their own independent lives.

While this kind of over-parenting is now rampant in the world in general, it can have more specific ramifications in the expat world.

"If a parent’s natural impulses around their children are to worry, hover, and discourage a child’s natural movement toward greater independence, those tendencies will likely also become exaggerated when adjusting to life overseas,” says Seattle-based therapist Josh Sandoz who just created a website International Therapist Directory to assist families abroad in finding proper counseling.

Having worked extensively with Third Culture Kids and their families, Sandoz believes that patterns of overly fretful TCK parenting tend to “maximize the challenges of the TCK experience while simultaneously minimizing the benefits.”


“These TCKs will much more likely miss out on opportunities to explore and know well the cultures around them, yet they are still deeply impacted by growing up cross-culturally,” he points out.

Security issues drive some anxious parents. But it is often education choices—as well as a hyper-vigilant concentration on homework and enrolling kids in numerous after-school activities—which can bring out the most fretful behavior in parents, even when the children are still very young.

“Parents at home and abroad are ever more convinced that their children’s fates are set at earlier stages—that is—‘if my kid doesn't get into “xyz” preschool, she will never get into Harvard,’” reports Tim Dwyer, COO of  School Choice International.

“For expat children, this means the loss of a more carefree childhood and the amazing experience of simply living in another country,” adds Dwyer.

Helicopter parenting can be worse for high school expat students headed for college, according to one global consultant on the School Choice International team who preferred to comment on anonymity:

“Parents subject their children now to excessive tutoring. This is all on top of forcing their kids to do extracurricular activities to beef up college applications.”

“In the end, the child suffers,” says the consultant, adding that some children have been known to pay someone else to do their homework because of the pressure they feel from their parents.

One expat mother of two young girls aged 4 and 6, living in Singapore and a full-time university professor, says she doesn’t believe her generation is any more involved with their children than previous ones.

But Yvonne McNulty admits that technology has provided no end to ways parents can be now involved in the schools of their children.

“I would say that with the increased use of email and online educational tools, parents don’t need to be ‘at’ school either (or physically hanging around) to stay connected and to know what is going on with their kids. I have access to their curriculum on a weekly basis, their social events, special events, PE days, and anything else I want to know, via the school’s website and online portal for parents.”

McNulty did, however, take a step that would seem to run counter to the behaviour of many other expat parents:

"My own girls are currently doing no extra-curricular activities—and we plan to keep it that way until early next year. Previously they were doing piano and ballet and it stretched us to the limit, and that was when I wasn’t even working fulltime!” she says.

“It’s rather blissful not to be under such pressure, for both me and them.”

Robin Pascoe
Robin Pascoe is the author of four widely-used books for expatriate families. At her website www.expatexpert.com/video_lectures, she recently posted short lectures which include many of these challenges of expat parents. 

 

 


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