How to Raise Autonomous Children

This is from the Oct 6th Church News:

Balanced parenting: Learning to not hover like a helicopter

Being involved in a child's life is important, but just as with most things in life, balance is the key, new research out of Brigham Young University shows.

"I think as parents the hardest thing we do is to step back and let our kids make their own decisions, potentially making some mistakes," said Laura Padilla-Walker, one of the leads on the study and an associate professor in the School of Family Life at BYU. "Some parents are struggling to not be over involved."

In a study involving 438 students ages 18-25, from four universities around the country (not including BYU), results indicated that "helicopter parenting," or hovering parents who are potentially over-involved in the lives of their children, can have negative effects on early adult age-children.

"The main goal of the study was to establish helicopter parenting in the research," she said. "The media folks have been talking about [helicopter parenting] for a long time, but it's never actually been studied. So, the main point of the study was to say, 'Hey, this thing is real, it's not just media phenomena and it's something parents are doing.'"

Researchers used questions that looked at relationships of children and at least one of their parents. Five items assessed the degree to which parents make important decisions for their emerging adult children. Children rated items, including: "My parent makes important decisions for me," addressing items like where children live, where they work or what classes they take; "My parent intervenes in settling disputes with my roommates or friends," "My parent intervenes in solving problems with my employers or professors," "My parent solves any crisis or problem I might have," and "My parent looks for jobs for me or tries to find other opportunities for me," including internships and study abroad opportunities.

Other behavior items were addressed, including parent involvement in limiting and controlling friends, rules and boundaries associated with free time and money as well as control in college courses or a child's major.

Results indicated that one-fourth of the students reported that parents "make important decisions for me," and about one-third of the parents reported that they make important decisions for their children.

"It does seem to be parents who are trying to be involved, trying to help their kids, and their kids are even seeking them for guidance and help," Sister Padilla-Walker said. "But the parents don't value autonomy as much as they should and they aren't promoting autonomy in their children. So, independent decision making — with the given age of the kids in our study being 18 to 25 — is at a time they should be making their own decisions."

Although "helicopter parenting" is not universally related to negative outcomes, it is something that can have an impact on a child's ability to transition to adulthood.

"The college students whose parents had helicoptered have less achieved identities and were less engaged in school," Sister Padilla-Walker said. "Our study, taken together with other studies, suggests that helicopter parenting is not associated with severely delinquent behavior or anything on the part of children because it is involvement, but what it does seem to be associated with is a little bit of a failure to launch — perhaps that transition to adulthood. … They are just taking a little bit longer to get to those adult roles that we would hopefully like them to get to."

The study does not suggest that parents should not be involved in a child's life — even at the emerging adult age, Sister Padilla-Walker said.

"They need their parents still at this age — we've done several other studies that have suggested that parental involvement and warmth are very important still for your college-age kids — but over involvement is what we want to avoid here, stepping beyond your bounds."

Sometimes that includes letting them make mistakes.

"We need to allow our children to make decisions and that might mean making some mistakes and using that agency to learn some lessons," she said. "We still need to be there and be involved and help them when they ask — jointly making decisions with them, perhaps — but we don't want to be stepping in and taking away that agency."

It is the process of working with children, rather than just doing things for them, that is crucial, she said.

"Most helicopter parents would probably say that they weren't helicopter parents," she said. "And some kids are all too happy for their parents to do things for them. … Part of it is letting the child lead. If they come to you for help, there is nothing wrong with sitting down with them and scheduling classes with them, doing it jointly the first time so they know how to do it the next, but not doing it for them."

There is a difference between being involved and being overinvolved, she said. By being proactive parents while still staying within certain boundaries, parents can be involved and still help their children.

"Before they go out and do things, prepare them for it, and talk it through with them," she said. "Help them to feel confident that they can do it themselves. And then when they get into that situation you have talked to them, and they have some ideas of what they can do. Then you have encouraged them, but you haven't done it for them."

Sister Padilla-Walker joined with co-author Larry Nelson, also from the School of Family Life at BYU, for the research. The study is published in the October 2012 edition of the Journal of Adolescence.

By Marianne Holman