Benign neglect vs. helicopter parenting

a friend of mine, Erin, had an interesting entry in her blog last month about "benign neglect." she referred to another blog entry of the same name which you can read here. the writer talks about how we hover over our children too much and that we should let kids be kids. all our hovering squelches children's imagination.

i've had several conversations with parents about this and i've heard the term "helicopter parent" being thrown around. one mother i know says she most definitely is a helicopter mother.

i've been thinking about both of these terms, "benign neglect" and "helicopter parent" quite a lot lately because i've intervened in one of Skye's friendships. yes, i've actually felt like a monster mother because i told the mother of Skye's friend that Skye will no longer go to their house for playdates anymore. to give you some background info, Skye had grown quite fond of this girl who will be named Y and Skye and Y were playing quite a lot at school. of course, that led to playdates. but Y would always resort to mean behaviour when things were not going her way. never at school and rarely at our house, but at her house and whenever her mother was around. and the mother never intervenes or disciplines. i was so exasperated by the mother's lack of intervention and had several talks with her. i discovered the mother expected me to say something to her child! and she expected Skye to say mean things back at Y in the hopes that Y would finally listen. initially, i wanted to let the kids "work things out", but i've also learned that kids at the age of 4 or 5 do not have all the tools yet to work things out by themselves. Skye, for whatever reason, was enamoured with with girl and didn't question the fact that Y was being mean to her. yes, Skye would be hurt, but that didn't stop her wanting to play with Y. in fact, Y's behaviour was creeping into our household. i could see Skye treating Claire and me the way Y treated her. so i finally set some boundaries and have also been busy setting up other playdates for Skye so that she could see there were other kids she could play with who wouldn't be quite so cruel.

benign neglect? most definitely, but in the right context and even more of it further down the road. right now, though, i believe i have to be something of a helicopter parent. if i hadn't intervened, Skye would have mirrored Y's behaviour, believing it to be the way people should behave with one another. it has taken many conversations and much time, but Skye now sees Y's behaviour for what it is.

i'm trying hard to teach our girls how relationships ought to be. God knows i'm not perfect in this area and i've struggled over setting up boundaries with Y and her mother. but we've all learned from this and i hope Skye can be more discerning as she gets older.