Have you ever asked yourself, “are you doing too much for your child?” Mostly, mommies don’t; but it’s important to admit that we don’t have to solve all of their problems. No wonder it’s not easy to avoid their well-being but it might not be that crucial all the time – we need to let our children do mistakes and learn their lessons. Parents can never teach kids from their own experiences alone. Yes, keeping an eye is very important and you could do this very well with parental controls for smartphones. So you could avoid being a helipad parent and safeguard them at the same time.
So are you over-doing it?
It’s true that teens can’t make it in the world all alone, but what IS important is to understand the difference between coaching and actually doing it for your kid yourself all the time! There could be many possibilities: they could become over dependent, lazy, extensively conscious, confused and abusive, too. Irritated and annoyed teens could be very aggressive and abusive towards the moms so we have to be very careful here!
Instead of being a helicopter parent, we should appreciate their abilities to solve their problems on their own. You could use the parental control apps to keep tabs on all their activities and let them try things on their own. It’s like monitoring them from a distance and giving your children a free hand.
How to stop being a helipad parent?
There are many mommies who says that they can’t help fretting over their teens when they leave home or when they interact with the strangers online. There are a lot of others reasons, too but it’s not a healthy approach, so I’m going to share some expert tips, so that you could overcome these fears.
Tip 1: Coach them the life skills
Instead of doing everything, you should coach them how they can protect themselves and what is acceptable and responsible social and online behavior. Once you get satisfied that they can look after themselves, you will be capable of leaving them on their own.
Tip 2: Monitor them digitally
It’s a smart option, if you can’t help thinking and worrying about the teens you can go for parental controls for smartphones.
These apps can let you keep an eye on their location, their online behavior, and all their smartphone activities including the call logs, apps/games and contacts. For the GPS tracking, contact Watchlisting and app blocking the most suitable app is FamilyTime, and you can download it from iTunes and Google play as its compatible with all versions of iPhones, Android and Kindle.
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Tip 3: Stay in touch 24/7
To keep in touch with your kids, you can use some advanced apps like, I’ve mentioned, FamilyTime, because it can let the teens send you PickMeUp alert and SOS (Panic) alerts any time. So if you are worried that they can’t deal with any dangerous situations, then download the app and keep in touch with them all the time.
Smart parenting – avoid the stress & let teens enjoy!
Aren’t these smart parental apps a great way to lay your mommy worries to rest? A lot of parents are opting for the digital parental controls because if everything is going mobile; so should your parenting styles! With the use of parental apps like FamilyTime, you can know for a fact that your children are all safe out there and can reach out to you in the hour of need!
It is hard to know what is a good balance, and each family and child is different. I’m not a parent, but think I’d tend to be a real helicopter, not that I would want to. Growing up we had a lot of freedom to make decisions, and I can’t fathom my parents being so close and opining and intervening, etc. Some kids seem to be better off, but parents need to realize if they become adults and don’t know how to exercise good judgment, it can make their life harder rather than better.
I agree to an extent Rosie. Sometimes it is best to let them have the freedom to make their own decisions to see what they will do, but when those decisions are horrible and detrimental to them then I firmly believe parents need to step in and take control again. If that means going over the household rules, the family code of conduct, whatever it may be – parents need to guide them and teach them the tools that they need to make good decisions when they aren’t there. Because as much as we would love to be able to be with them every minute of the day to protect them – that’s just not realistic.
I agree with all of that!