Going where the helicopters cannot follow

It must have been a slow news week or else Time, Inc. has laid off the people in charge of ferreting out real issues.  The November 30th Time Magazine cover trumpets the dangers of “over parenting,” aka “helicopter parenting.”

This anxious parenting bit is nothing new.  When our sons were in the Montessori School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the mid-80s, I thought we were in the epicenter of that kind of behavior—“Yes, I know that those are the school rules, but this is our child . . . .”

We see over-parenting in Scouting, but in this organization we have one big advantage over schools and other places who suffer from the parental obsessives:  we take the Scouts where their helicopters cannot follow:  out in the wilderness.
As with most kinds of annoying human behavior, the further that one gets away from roads, the less of it one sees.  Many helicoptering parents will not avail themselves of the rugged life, so during those weeks when the Troop is at camp or off on a wilderness trek, their son(s) have a chance to experience freedom.

The stereotypical over-parent offender is female, but in Scouting we tend to see the male variety.  Exhibit A is the dad who wants to go on every single camping trip and summer camp with Junior and who attempts to turn every Scouting outing into Father and Son’s Excellent Adventure.  In the worse cases, father and son stay in the same tent, and the son misses out on the full experience of sharing a tent with someone his own age.

I always advise parents of new Scouts not to go with them to the first summer camp of their son’s Scouting career.  The Scout needs to accomplish three things there:  bond with the troop, get and keep his act together for a week, and learn to solve his own problems.

That last one is critical.  Some kids solve problems by seeking out an adult, presenting the problem, and standing back waiting for it to be solved.  When Scouting is done right, the boy is gently encouraged to solve his own challenges and, better yet, to anticipate situations and deal with them before they become problems.