Free Range vs. Helicopter Parenting: Get the Facts

Parent Cafe
21

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Our school district has 6th grade camp - 4 nights away from home, in cabins, to try to blend middle schoolers who came from multiple grade schools. I dropped DD off and stayed a while talking to other parents while they loaded up the buses. The parents all compared notes on what they packed, how many pairs of socks and long and short sleeved shirts and…
I had given the DD the packing list from school and a suitcase, and assumed she had it covered.


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Much of this depends on the type of child. I have one child who I could have given a list to in kindergarten and he would have had it all covered. I have another child who I would have had to check his suitcase after he packed but he would have likely overlooked some important item on the list.

I know wives who still have to check their H’s bags before they leave on vaca to make sure they packed the right variety of clothing for the different things that they’ll be doing.

22

My parents was free helicopter range. I did stupid things but not super stupid things. I give my kids some freedom but not entirely Mosley codling either. But much more cautious with first kid, less so with second kid.

23

I was another free range kid…walked to school alone from first grade on, including crossing a major urban thoroughfare. When we got home from school we were sent outside to play until called in for dinner. From about 11 on I walked through Golden Gate Park alone daily to participate in the EC that eventually became my career. I can not imagine an SF parent allowing their little girl to do that now!! No doubt Child Protective Services would intervene. It was a great childhood. Like many here I was fairly permissive with my kid re doing things independently, (although far more involved in their academic/EC world than my parents were) but was reined in by the very different parenting expectations in my suburban town. I didn’t want to be the “slacker parent” that everyone at the elementary school was talking about!

24

I was a helicopter kid before helicoptering had a name. The tiger moms would have been proud of my mother. My H was a free range kid doing things that would have turned me gray had I been his mother. I swore I’d raise our kids without the helicopter. H swore he’d raise out kids with tighter reins. Together we hit the middle. Whew.

25

I think a “in the middle” approach can be the best. The child has some independence, yet isn’t so without some supervision that they end up maimed or dead. And of course, as the child ages, particularly in high school, the child has a sensible foundation so he/she can be trusted with more independence…so when he/she gets to college, s/he doesn’t go hog-wild.

26

Yeah, but wolves don’t go the extra mile to ensure the chewed food they regurgitate is certified organic & GMO-free.

27

Haha, you are too much.

28

Are boarding school parents “free range”? Or do they simply outsource the 'coptering?

29

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think my dad had the right approach to things (not that he did in other things), and that is that kids have to learn as they grow up to fall down and skin their knee, and that a big lesson is learned in how you recover from the bumps and such.


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this was my philosophy…you have to let kids experience the little bumps to help them learn how to avoid the bigger ones. I also didn’t over-react when they did hurt themselves…kids look to the parents’ reaction to learn how they should react. If a toddler falls down, and the mom over-reacts, rushes over, makes a big deal over it, the kid becomes a big old crybaby.

I had a friend who would totally over-react when her little ones would fall down or bump themselves…her kids were the biggest crybabies I ever saw. The most minor bump would elicit a 20 minute cry-athon …on mommy’s shoulder, with mommy saying all the “poor thing,” “poor baby” crap…She must have thought that I was heartless, my kid would fall down, I’d say, “any blood?” “No?” “ok” If there was blood, I’d say, “ok, let’s get a band aid.”

30

I couldn’t stand my kids’ 5th grader friends whose parents had to be called in the middle of night during a sleepever because the kid was homesick.

31

Post #29, my kid had a friend like that but her parents warned us. She didn’t turn out well in high school, went to an alternative high school after my daughter moved away.

32

I have one child who was born without a fear gene. She thinks everything is more fun if it is done upside down and backwards, without a net. She was a very tiny child who cried buckets of tears when she couldn’t go on the roller coaster at Disneyland - and she was a week shy of 3 years old (she went on the ‘baby’ roller coaster and you were supposed to be 3, but she was determined). The ride operator kept warning me that she was too small, she need to be 5, but she gave him that ‘back off Mister’ look and rode it about 20 times in a row. The second she was tall enough to ride The Tower of Doom (a drop ride at 6 Flags) she was in line. As I was standing at the bottom, I overheard several people gasp “OMG, who would ever let that tiny girl get on this ride?!!” My first thought was “how do I sneak away so they don’t know it is me?”

So for her, I had to keep the helicopter warmed up and ready to rescue. Helmets were required by me for anything with wheels.

33

^^
Because each child can be soooo different, adjustments in parenting styles can be needed. A parent with a child who is less-likely to try something “upside down, backwards, and without a net,” will sometimes wonder why another parent has to “hover” more.

A friend had a “quiet little girl” born 6 days before my son. My friend couldn’t understand why I pushed back the meds she had placed easily within reach in her home…I also did that with her knives. Her sweet little D would never have touched them. I knew that my curious george son would find the bottles fascinating and the knives would likely have become playing swords.

but…then she had a 2nd child who was more like my son…lol…whoops, a quick change in her parenting style.

34

@mom2collegekids,
Lol, that sounds like my best friend and me. She came to my house with her toddler son, who is 3 weeks older than my D. She gasped and said, “How do you keep crystal picture frames on your coffee table?!” I said, “I told her not to touch them.” She couldn’t believe that was all it took.

35

Lol, when we moved in, our house had child-protection latches on all of the cabinets and drawers (earthquake country). I eventually had to teach D15 how to open them so she could help herself to a plastic cup, plate, bowl, snack, etc. D18 figured it out all on his own: I would find him helping himself to all sorts of snacks at all times of day.

36

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“I told her not to touch them.” She couldn’t believe that was all it took.


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for some personalities, that would be all that it would take.

37

We had no rules. We played hard and got hurt often. We took dangerous chances and luckily survived them all. It was the best upbringing anyone could ever dream to have.

It included nails in the head, trees falling on us, sticking a knife into a hand so blood shot up to the ceiling, almost drowning in a flooded creek, getting hit by a car, almost getting hit by a car running across the parkway, falling of the roof, getting hit in the head during a rock fight, putting an arm through the glass door( twice), shooting each other with BB guns, hitchhiking to NY City( as well as almost everywhere else), climbing various water towers. And there were numerous interaction( non-criminal) with the police.

I will not go into our car experiences.

38

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We had no rules. We played hard and got hurt often. We took dangerous chances and luckily survived them all. It was the best upbringing anyone could ever dream to have.

It included nails in the head, trees falling on us, sticking a knife into a hand so blood shot up to the ceiling, almost drowning in a flooded creek, getting hit by a car, almost getting hit by a car running across the parkway, falling of the roof, getting hit in the head during a rock fight, putting an arm through the glass door( twice), shooting each other with BB guns, hitchhiking to NY City( as well as almost everywhere else), climbing various water towers. And there were numerous interaction( non-criminal) with the police.

I will not go into our car experiences.
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You would likely say differently if one of your siblings had lost their lives with that upbringing. And, did you raise your kids that way?

Seriously, what you’re describing is along the lines of what H’s family experienced…H was hit by a car, he fell out of a car twice, they often played with cherry bombs and worse, climbed water towers, played with BB guns, jumped onto moving trains, jumped off moving trains, hitchhiked across the country several times, lit the front lawn on fire with gasoline, drank white paint thinking it was milk, and other outrageous things. They literally had no adult supervision … no one knew where they were, what they were doing, who they were hanging out with, etc. Even after H was hit by a car (running after an ice cream truck), H’s mom didn’t become more diligent.

It’s easy to make light of these things when everyone survived.

however, I know of a few extreme-free-range families who weren’t so graced. In hindsight, I doubt they have the same “wouldn’t have it any other way” conclusion.

39

I was a free range kid while growing up. But I think my child was not. That is the reason why I think going far away for college is the best thing that has ever happened to him. He finally had some free range.

He is pretty much free ranged now. We hear from him very infrequently (maybe 2 times a month, each time only a brief call. No news is a good news. Now, my wife mostly paid attention to her plant and I paid attention to our retirement issues.

This reminds me of this: When I taught my child to ride his bike (in his first grade?), he had never fell down even once before he learned it. I was always running after his bike, ready to hold his bike if he showed any sign of falling.

40

I have plenty of scars from my parents’ free range parenting. I’m ok with that. Yes, luckily no one died but I know kids who have died even from the most “careful” families.

Personally, I’m not quite sure why the KIDS in your H’s family, m2ck, didn’t learn after getting hurt the first time.

After I fell off a home made go-kart (got some nice scars on my arms from that), I started being the only rider so that I could hang on to the wheel. I have a good friend who got hit by a car while running after her dog… she afterwards learned not to run into the street.

I’m not saying that extreme free-range parenting is the answer. Even I believe in limits (mostly because I don’t trust OTHER people). But, at a certain point you’d think that kids would stop being self-destructive. JMO