“One of the best things about Charlie is he doesn’t hover.”
That’s what Bella Swan in Twilight told herself to control her anxiety after she reluctantly moved in with her dad at Forks, leaving her mom behind. This single quote of Bella Swan proves how kids and teens resist helicopter or hover parents’ control in their lives.
It is normal for you to worry about your children. But the line between normal state of apprehensiveness and hovering behavior tends to blur more often when parents tend to be overtly anxious about their offspring.
Are You a Hover Mom – Take This Quiz
Do you consider you a sane parent or a controlling hover parent? Ask you following questions –
- Will you leave your child with the babysitter?
- Who you want to be at your kids’ soccer game?
- Will you accompany your kid when he/she wants to go for a play date?
- Will you let him play on the next day after your kid falls and bruises her/his knee?
- What will you do when your kid rides a bike for the first time?
So, are you or not? It is good if you answered these questions in ‘No’, however, if most of your answers were ‘Yes’, then you might be pushing the barrier hard and end up ruining connection between you and your offspring.
What’s So Putting off about Hover Mom?
Excessive apprehensiveness drive you paranoid and spoil comfort level between you and your offspring. Remember, your overly monitoring behavior will only proliferate as your kids will grow thus making them feel being spied round the clock. Consequently, your kids will build up resistance and distance from spying or helicopter parents. From my experience, I would suggest you to stop fueling your helicopter parenting tendency because I often ignore my dad’s calls and hide things (especially issues, trivial or vital). Be careful of negative impacts of hovering parenting and make use of these tech tools to foster sane and healthy terms with your kids. These parenting apps help parents track and control kids’ activities without having them to feel being spied.
Start with baby monitor apps
Apps like Baby Monitor HD, iCam – Webcam Video Streaming and other baby monitoring apps will let you see your children and bet alert when you have left your child at home under the supervision of a caregiver. These apps are available from both iTunes and Android Market for download. These apps use camera and are enabled with audio and video output to allow parents keeping tab on baby’s movements. Baby monitoring apps include other significant features like loud decibel alerts, password-protected audio and video, infrared night mode etc.
Kids’ locating apps
The Alarm.com, SecuraFone, Family Tracker, Find My Kids – Footprints apps are great tech parenting apps to keep track of your kids when they are traveling or when they are visiting at neighbors’ block. These apps will inform you who your child is meeting, their locations, raise alarm when they cross a preset distance, and even let you send and receive text messages to draw your child’s attention about his/her safety.
Kids’ safety apps
Well, if you require a bit more tight security apps beyond monitoring and tracking, check out child safety apps like Food Additives 2, Sex Offenders Search, iEmergency ICE Family PRO, and FBI Child ID. These apps are highly useful in extreme situations like if your child goes missing, storing details on medical conditions and hospital, checking on predators and pedophilies etc. Details information on names, addresses and zip code, pictures etc. of sex offenders in any neighborhood are offered with these apps.
Load these apps on your child’s iPhone or Android phone and monitor over their movements from time to time. Thus, you can watch over your kids without taking the blame of a hover mother and ruining relationship with your offspring.