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Comment by PerfectElement | Hacker News Reader

Same here. I cringe when I see the common HN rhetoric that parents now a days are over-protective. Go say that to parents who lost a child and now live in regret.

Kids are unpredictable. I remember being 7 years old and waiting with my mom to cross a busy street. For some reason that today is unknown to me, I decided to just run across the street as soon as the lights turned yellow. I almost got hit and my mom almost had a heart attack. I use this example to keep me alert when I'm with my daughter in a potentially dangerous but seemingly safe environment. You never know what's going on in their little heads.

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Being careful is fine and understandable but over-protective "helicoptor" parenting is bad for the kids: it destroys their self confidence. I know a helicoptor family where their youngest daughter couldn't properly walk down stairs until she was 12. She's already broke more bones than all my kids combined.

That's why our priorities are so backwards. We deprive our kids of the simple adventurousness of childhood, but at the same time we structure our lives in ways where speeding auto traffic is functionally unavoidable. That's like locking the liquor cabinet but not the cabinet where you keep the rat poison. Or like filing down the sharp edges on a hand grenade.

Children need to live in an environment where they can have adventures make mistakes and get hurt. Even badly injured. But not killed.

Cars kill.

Absolutely agree. And I admit that I display a bit of helicoptor myself when moving cars are within a distance reachable by my youngest.

Safety around cars has nothing to do with helicopter parenting.

I don't believe this story, unless this child has some sort of medical frailty.

Your post complains that helicopter parenting causes broken bones, meanwhile other anti-helicoptering activists argue that breaking bones is a necessary part of healthy development, that helicoptering prevents.

I'm having trouble seeing your argument for all the straw people. I don't care what you believe, I watched her walk down my steps one step at a time, both feet stable on that step before taking the next one. Why? Because her whole life she's hearing "NO! BE CAREFUL! STEPS ARE DANGEROUS!" so of course she's terrified and has no confidence that she can do it.

>meanwhile other anti-helicoptering activists argue that breaking bones is a necessary part of healthy development

Who says that? The fact is, the broken bones came, in her case, from the fact that she has no experience or confidence in things kids her age are able to do but ends up playing with other children (often younger!) who can. My kids already had their falls and scrapes when they were younger and closer to the ground. Now they know how to swing on a swing, roller blade, etc., without getting terrified and falling over. They also know better how to fall to minimize damage because they have experience with it.

Look, over-protection is simply bad [1]. That's why it's called over-protection. If you're doing it, you're harming your children and you need to stop.

[1] http://www.brainy-child.com/articles/negative-consequences-h...

In my experience some parents pick certain things to be over-protective about, or catering too much to their kids. A good friend of mine introduced me to this family with a couple kids that were still not able to tie their own shoes, the youngest was 12 years old. Another friend of mine (well his wife) won't let their daughter do basically anything outside without a helmet and other pads, even jump roping. People probably think she's special needs.

I still force him to hold my hand when we're anywhere near cars, and I worry when I can't hear him. But I also look the other way when I know his step-brother is playing a little too rough with him. And I let him bang hammers in the garage when I'm working in there. I guess I'm trying to find a balance, but I'm sure I make some mistakes.

I'm guessing that their argument is "it is likely that child has underlying medical problems that caused the movement issues and made it easier to break her bones".

No the child is perfectly healthy. Their argument is "see! I look away for a second and look what happens!"

The normal anti-helicopter line is that a certain degree of early childhood risk, which naturally involves some degree of minor harm and rare things like broken bones, results in children better able to manage routine hazards and less harm over the long run.

Some age over 12 is well into the age where anti-helicoptering advocated would be likely to expect the harms of early helicoptering to have manifested, so the description in GP does not, to me, seem at all inconsistent with the common anti-helicoptering argument.

You know them and I don't, but there's often a good but hidden reason for odd behavior. Maybe their youngest daughter is so, so, so clumsy on a daily basis that they constantly need to tell her to be careful. Maybe she's so clumsy she's constantly falling and breaking bones performing typical childhood activities.

The father's mother is exactly the same (i.e. helicoptor) so there could have been some trauma but it's probably multiple generations in the past.

Just be sure you have a realistic sense of the risks.

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/LeadingCauses.html

The primary risks to children are traffic, drowning, and as a teen and preteen suicide.

This gives you and your kids a pretty small number of things to be scared of, and consequently a small number of important safety lessons to impart.

A little girl cycled of the pavement a while ago, just as I was passing, good brakes and no traffic from the other side. Very close call and I have not yet gotten over it yet, nightmares and daily thoughts about it. I am pretty sure her mom also remembers it vividly. Kids can be totally unpredictable like that and how it all ends is hugely dependent on circumstance.

You're a good person; listen to your subconscious! You can't change the unpredictability of kids, but you ~can stop driving, and model good non-driving behavior for your kids and the other people around you.

How come you think I can stop driving? If I stop driving I can kiss the business I built up over the last 10 years goodbye, there is absolutely no way that I can work without the level of mobility and reliability that a vehicle affords.

I have on occasion experimented with public transport in the country where I live and it simply does not work at a reliability level that I can trust not to result in regular embarassment due to inability to be where I need to be when I agreed to be there. This is a pretty bad state of affairs but I did not create that state of affairs and the day that this is fixed I will be more than happy to stop driving.

As it is, between email and driving I do not know which I hate more and as soon as I shut down my business and can retire I will be happy to get rid of both.

Please do not make assumptions about other peoples lives.

I’m not sure what you’re envisioning, but unless you live around reliable public transit (which is a tiny percentage of the geographic US) you can’t avoid driving, or at least carpooling.

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