This document discusses helicopter parenting and its effects on adolescent development. It defines helicopter parenting as overly involved parenting that is developmentally inappropriate and prevents adolescents from developing autonomy and independence. While helicopter parenting may provide some benefits like safety and support, it can also lead to decreased self-efficacy, problem-solving skills, and well-being in adolescents. The document promotes allowing appropriate risk-taking and independence in adolescents to support their development in accordance with Erikson's theory of psychosocial development. It provides strategies for healthcare providers to assess helicopter parenting and promote autonomy through family interventions.

1. Helicopter Parenting
Identification of Overparenting in Clinical
Practice and Promotion of Adolescent Autonomy
and Independence
Nursing 810 Families in Health and Illness
University of New Hampshire
Kathy Boyd
Jacqueline Elliott
Stephanie Pierce
Kelly Watton

2. What is a helicopter parent?
• “Parents who, like helicopters, stay closely overhead, right above their child…rarely out
of reach, pay extremely close attention to their child, and rush to prevent any harm…,”
(Ingen et al., 2015).
• “…inappropriately intrusive and managing, but done out of strong parental concern for
the wellbeing and success of the child,” (Jayson, 2012).
• Helicopter parenting, or overparenting, “…involves the application of developmentally
inappropriate parenting through the use of excessive advice, problem-solving, and
provision of abundant and unnecessary tangible assistance, combined with risk aversion,
anxiety, and parental involvement in the child’s emotional well-being to the point of
enmeshment,” (Segrin et al., 2015).

4. What is said about helicopter parenting?
• “Kids who take risks while they’re young tend to be less fearful, more independent adults,
and kids who don’t take risks end up being nervous nellies,” (Bethune, 2013).
• “Our fear of children being harmed…may result in more fearful children and increased
levels of psychopathology,” (Bethune, 2013).
• “...there are actually some ways parents can be involved in their kids’ education that leads
to declines in their academic performance. In fact, one of the things that was consistently
negative was parents’ help with homework,” (Alter, 2014).
• “We feel guilty because we are working more, so we do more for them. Then they start to
depend on us. And that is a hard cycle to break,” (Hoder, 2014).
• “Of course helicopter parenting has a time and place with infants who need monitoring in
order to keep safe and away from harm! Beyond that, it infantilizes older children into
incompetence and unhealthily dependency,” (Sydney South Child Psychology).

5. Helicopter parenting could provide adolescents with:
• An advocate
• A better sense of goals
• Safety
• Emotional, financial, and social support
• Help with transitioning from adolescence to adulthood

6. However, helicopter parenting may lead to
adolescents with:
• Decreased self-efficacy
• Decreased peer communication
• Decreased overall well-being
• Decreased peer trust
• Decreased problem solving skills
• Increased peer alienation
• Increased dependence
• Negative self-image
• Failure to develop autonomous motivation
• Difficulty establishing sense of independence

7. The Effect on Children
• Children with helicopter parents are:
• More likely be medicated for anxiety and/or depression
• More likely to take pain pills without prescription
• More likely to be less engaged in school
• Less likely to express opinions and emotions

8. The Effect on Parents
• Helicopter parenting may:
• Lead to long-term tension in the parent-child relationship
• Place strain on financial and emotional resources
• Create expectations for reciprocation of practical and emotional support later in life
• Create less life satisfaction
• Increase risk of exhaustion, stress, anxiety, and guilt

9. What is a parent’s job anyway?
• To raise a child who is capable of taking on adult tasks
• It is acceptable to coach a child, but NOT take over daily decisions/tasks

10. Why are parents over-involved?
• They think it is better to “clear a path” for them in order to become successful
• By taking over, they feel it will be easier for their child to be a success
• They are satisfying their own emotional needs, including the loneliness felt from an
emotionally absent marriage or social life
• They feel wanted and needed
• They think it is safer for the child
• They believe it boosts the child's self-confidence

11. Opposition to helicopter parenting:
Free-range parenting
• Free-range parenting is based on the notion that children are given an excessive amount of
freedom without direct parental oversight.
• Children are provided with the opportunity to explore the world at their own pace.
• “Fighting the belief that our children are in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping,
germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers
and/or the perils of a non-organic grape,” (Free-Range Kids, 2015).
• Example: 9 year old child rides subway alone in NYC to the park
• The belief is kids mature quicker, feel more accomplished, have reduced anxiety, and have
better self-esteem.

12. Where does self-esteem really come from?
• By attempting something that is a little more difficult and either succeeding or failing and
trying again until you succeed.
• As a child, successes and failures and how you are treated in response to those life
experiences by family, teachers, coaches, and peers plays a huge role in self-esteem.

13. Erikson’s Psychosocial Stage of Development:
Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt
• Allowing the child to develop new skills and abilities will allow them to develop a sense
of independence and autonomy.
• “It is critical that parents allow their children to explore the limits of their abilities within
an encouraging environment which is tolerant of failure”
• He states “parents must try not to do everything for the child but if the child fails at a
particular task they must not criticize the child for failures or accidents,” (McLeod, 2008).
• The aim has to be “self-control without a loss of self-esteem,” (McLeod, 2008).
• A child that does not succeed at this stage, will feel inadequate in their ability to survive,
become overly dependent on others, lack self-esteem, and feel a sense of shame or doubt
in their own abilities.

14. Childhood experiences that contribute to
healthy self-esteem:
• Being listened to
• Being spoken to respectfully
• Getting appropriate attention and affection
• Having accomplishments be recognized
• Having mistakes and failures be acknowledged and accepted

15. Childhood experiences that lead to low self-
esteem:
• Being harshly criticized
• Being emotionally, sexually, or physically abused
• Being ignored, ridiculed or teased
• Being expected to be perfect all the time

16. Helicopter Parenting and Population Health
• Improving the knowledge, skills, and confidence of parents is often the aim of parenting-
focused public health strategies and parenting programs.
• However, while much research has focused on parenting and parenting confidence,
relatively little research has focused on parental knowledge.
• Evidence-based research has focused almost entirely on parental knowledge of child
development processes and milestones, such as those described by the Bright Futures
campaign, with little consideration of alternative types of parental knowledge.

17. American Academy of Pediatrics:
Bright Futures
• Bright Futures is a national health promotion and prevention initiative, led by the
American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau,
Health Resources and Services Administration.
• The Bright Futures Guidelines provide theory-based and evidence-driven guidance for all
preventive care screenings and well-child visits.
• Bright Futures content can be incorporated into many public health programs such as
home visiting, child care, school-based health clinics, and many others.
• Materials developed especially for families are also available.​

18. Limitations of Bright Futures
• Lack of adequate predictive ability for assessing complex interactions between parents
and children
• Lack of long-term benefits as many parents forget developmental processes and
milestones as the child moves past each stage
• Lack of generalizability as most published research studies have a focus on parents of
very young children or high-risk populations

19. Healthy People 2020:
Early and Middle Childhood Topic and Objective
• Since there is increasing recognition in policy, research, and clinical practice communities
that early and middle childhood provide the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional
foundation for lifelong health, learning, and well-being, Healthy People 2020 have set a
goal for early and middle childhood health:
• Goal: Document and track population-based measures of health and well-being for early
and middle childhood populations over time in the United States.
• Objective EMC-2: Increase the proportion of parents who use positive parenting and
communicate with their doctors or other health care professionals about positive parenting

20. As health care providers, what can we do about
helicopter parenting?
• Family assessment and intervention
• Promote autonomy and independence of our adolescent population
• Focus on increasing parental knowledge of effective parenting strategies
and techniques in addition to educating parents about child developmental
processes and milestones as described by the American Academy of
Pediatrics Bright Futures campaign

21. Assessment of Parental Knowledge:
Screening Tools Available
• The Knowledge of Effective Parenting Scale (KEPS) is used to assess parents' knowledge of parenting
principles and procedures that have been empirically shown in numerous RCTs of the Triple P-Positive
Parenting Program to improve parenting competence, reduce child maltreatment, and provide positive
outcomes for the management and prevention of problematic child behavior.
• The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a behavioral screening questionnaire for emotional
and behavioral disorders in children and adolescents in which parents indicate how true statements are of
their child. It consists of 25 items across five subscales: emotional symptoms; conduct problems;
hyperactivity/inattention; peer relationship problems; and prosocial behavior.
• The Parenting Scale (PS) is a 30-item questionnaire that measures three dysfunctional discipline styles:
laxness (permissive discipline), over-reactivity (authoritarian discipline), and hostility (use of verbal or
physical force).
• The Parenting Practices Questionnaire (PPQ) is a 62-item instrument that assesses parenting styles
(responsiveness, coercion, and psychological control).
• The Parenting Tasks Checklist (PTC) consists of 28 items designed to assess task-specific self-efficacy in
parents. Parents rate how confident they are in dealing with difficult child behavior in common parenting
situations.

22. Family Interventions:
Promoting Adolescent Autonomy and Independence
• Evaluate adolescent-parent interaction
• Encourage the adolescent to use their voice
• Encourage independent interviewing of the adolescent
• Screen adolescents for anxiety and depression
• Treat anxiety and depression as indicated
• Referral to counseling and psychiatry as indicated
• Consider scheduling a family assessment with genogram and ecomap for families of
adolescents who exhibit helicopter parenting behaviors, an adolescent with anxiety or
depression, and/or an adolescent who reports poor social interactions, low self-esteem,
and exhibits poor sense of personal identity.

23. Family Interventions:
Promoting Adolescent Autonomy and Independence
• Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM): Families with Adolescents
• “Families frequently respond to an adolescent’s request for increasing autonomy in two
ways: (1) they abruptly define rigid rules and re-create an earlier stage of dependency,
or (2) they establish premature independence,” (Wright & Leahey, 2013).
• This stage also causes parents to reassess their marriage, career, and role caring for
increasingly dependent parents.
• Discuss and validate parental feelings of loss
• Adolescence often leads parents to feel as though they have ‘lost’ control
• Parents feel like there is a sense of emotional ‘distance’ and separation that occurs,
leading to a sense of lost emotional closeness.
• Adolescence are seeking independence and autonomous decision making, which often
leads parents to feel as though they are no longer communicating about daily life,
thoughts, and emotions.

24. Family Interventions:
Promoting Adolescent Autonomy and Independence
• CFAM Interventions
• Linear and circular questions
• Commend adolescent and family strengths
• Offering information and opinions
• Validate, acknowledge, and normalize emotional responses
• Devise rituals
• Encourage open, honest communication
• Mutual respect between parent and adolescence
• Two way trust is necessary to communicate feelings and ideas.
• Negotiation of expectations. Make it a discussion about how the adolescent allots their
time.

25. Family Interventions:
Promoting Adolescent Autonomy and Independence
• Discuss appropriate teenage-parent boundaries
• Domains of adolescent autonomous functioning through parental promotion or control:
• Promotion of autonomous thought
• Encourage independent ideas and emotions
• Encourage an independent identity
• Promotion of autonomous decision making
• Negotiate appropriate decisions and circumstances
• Allow choices in work, home, and school activities
• Promotion of autonomous separation
• Allow independent choices is free time and leisurely activity

26. Family Interventions:
Promoting Adolescent Autonomy and Independence
• The idea of autonomy and the behaviors that constitute autonomy vary greatly across
cultures.
• The culture defines the ways in which someone acts upon their autonomy
• Parenting styles vary across cultures. Controlling behavior in one culture is
appreciated and loving behavior is another culture.
• How the child views and acts on autonomy is influenced by cultural behaviors and
expectations.
** Culture impacts the meaning the child gives to parental behaviors **

27. Family Interventions:
Promoting Adolescent Autonomy and Independence
• Cultural contexts may mean different views of autonomy.
• In Belgium children leave home early and marry early. This culture promotes autonomy as
individual responsibility i.e. economic independence is highly valued.
• In Mediterranean cultures, autonomy through individuation is promoted within the family
of origin. Children have the right to make personal choices but remain within the family
unit until married.
• In the United States, cultural beliefs promote independence and self-orientation with age
appropriate autonomy.
** Consider the cultural implications of autonomy and how adolescent and parental
behavior is viewed through a cultural lens **

28. References
• Alter, C. (2014, March 24). 6 things overprotective parents do wrong. Time Magazine.
Retrieved from http://time.com/33438/6-things-overprotective-parents-do-wrong/
• American Academy of Pediatrics, Bright Futures. (2014). Home page. Retrieved from
https://bf.aap.org/Pages/default.aspx
• Bethune, B. (2013). Helping with homework isn’t important, talking about post-high
school plans is. Yahoo News. Retrieved from https://ca.news.yahoo.com/helping-with-
homework-isn%E2%80%99t-important--talking-about-post-high-school-plans-is-
213539281.html
• Burton, N. (2014, November 20). The secret of self-esteem: Where does self-esteem really
come from? Psychology Today. Retrieved from
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201411/the-secret-self-esteem

29. References
• Doyle, K. (2014). Having controlling parents may affect later relationships. Reuters
Health. Retrieved from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/834100
• Fingerman, K. L., Cheng, Y. P., Wesselmann, E. D., Zarit, S., Furstenberg, F., & Birditt,
K. S. (2012). Helicopter parents and landing pad kids: Intense parental support of grown
children. Journal of Marriage & Family, 74(4). Retrieved from
http://ejournals.ebsco.com.libproxy.unh.edu/Direct.asp?AccessToken=8U0PNPOV03X14
044XNTJJYW3XP3WV99OP&Show=Object
• Free-Range Kids. (2015). Home page. Retrieved from www.freerangekids.com
• Hoder, R. (2014, March 21). Still doing too much for your teen? You’re not alone. Time
Magazine. Retrieved from http://time.com/33146/still-spoiling-your-teen-youre-not-alone/

30. References
• Ingen, D. J, Freiheit, S. R., Steinfeldt, J. A., Moore, L. L., Wimer, D. J., Knutt, A. D. ...
Roberts, A. (2015). Helicopter parenting: The effect of overbearing caregiving style on
peer attachment and self-efficacy. Journal of College Counseling, 18(1). Retrieved from
http://ejournals.ebsco.com.libproxy.unh.edu/Direct.asp?AccessToken=7D3TRTIB3J5NX
NNRV3R3MMRONX0TBOOIT&Show=Object
• Jayson, S. (2012, September 25).Do helicopter parents help or harm the kids? USA Today.
Retrieved from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/LIFE/usaedition/2012-09-25-Helicopter-
parents_ST_U.htm
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its effect on well-being. Sociological Spectrum, 31(4). Retrieved from
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31. References
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child? An examination by parenting professionals of the concept of over parenting.
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• McLeod, S. (2015) Erik Erikson. Simply Psychology. Retrieved from
http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html
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32. References
• Sydney South Child Psychology. (n.d.). Helicopter vs. free range parenting: What works
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Parenting.html
• United States Department of Health and Human Services, Healthy People 2020. (2014).
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childhood/objectives
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