Hypervigilant helicopter parenting: How to land that bird and reconnect with your kids
“But the world is a scary place. It’s not difficult to get caught up in all the ways your child could be hurt and want to protect them. And if you yourself have ever experienced any of those scary things whether it’s complex childhood trauma or not, then it doesn’t take much to get those helicopter blades spinning.”
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Helicopter parenting is hypervigilance
Last week on the podcast we heard an incredible real world resilience story from Agape Garcia. And towards the end she talked about how her own state of protection and hypervigilance, that helped her survive her childhood, that she needed when she was growing up, affected her relationship with her daughter. How it separated her and kept her emotionally distant. Luckily for them they were able to work through that part of their relationship and build emotional intelligence and even more resilience.
This stood out to me. It hit home because I definitely was a helicopter parent and it wasn’t all that fun.
What I’d like to highlight in today’s episode has to do with how our hypervigilant state of protection prevents us from emotionally connecting and bonding with the people who we are trying to protect. Especially our kids but this also applies to pretty much any relationship.
We’ve talked before on this podcast about the various nervous system states. Colleen Jorgensen described them beautifully in a previous episode as a golden retriever state (social engagement), german shepard state (defensive protection and activation), and the turtle state (freeze, withdrawal and collapse) and then the combination states that show up somewhere between each of those.
So let’s think about where parenthood falls on that scale.
In general parents most parents like to think they’re some combination of the golden retriever and the german shepherd. Protective and alert and loving and engaged. But the world is a scary place. It’s not difficult to get caught up in all the ways your child could be hurt and want to protect them. And if you yourself have ever experienced any of those scary things whether it’s complex childhood trauma or not, then it doesn’t take much to get those helicopter blades spinning.
That’s when we see the mix of the guard dog and the turtle. It’s a state of being on high alert with bullet proof armor. And it’s that armor, that hard shell that keeps us locked in our own protection and prevents connection with others.
It looks from the outside like you don’t feel anything. When in reality feeling emotions like fear is simply too scary as a parent. Parents are supposed to have it all together, to protect and provide. Showing emotions like fear when we never were allowed to do that as children ourselves can feel weak and far too vulnerable.
And as a parent if we are vulnerable who will protect our child? Who will protect us?
The guard dog and turtle mixed parenting might say “no” a lot. They want to keep their kids safe. They worry a lot. They might spend a lot of time at a low angry simmer and the smallest thing can set them off because they think they have to be on top of everything. They might see their child's success or failure as a reflection of their own success or failure. And so they take a lot of things personally.
The guard dog and turtle parent has impossibly high expectations for themselves and often don’t know how to cut themselves or anyone else any slack. Sometimes, not always, can make kids feel like nothing they do is good enough. Hearing that is like a knife to the heart of a parent because it’s completely unintentional.
The guard dog turtle parent is a helicopter parent, it used to be called the tiger mom, (though I think there are also tiger dads out there). But ultimately it’s still a nervous system state. And as a nervous system state it doesn’t have to be permanent. We don't have to stay there.
I don’t believe in all or nothing anymore, although I still have tendencies in that direction. There’s always more than one right way to do things. Parenting included. I just want to say that I have been the guard dog-turtle parent. I spent a lot of time there. And will tell you that it did some damage to my relationships with my kids and I also recognize some of the influence of how I was parented, how my own personal trauma history played a role in how I parented my kids.
The truth is parents are constantly teaching our kids, whether we know it or not. Think about that for a second. If that’s true, what does the guard dog turtle teach? Is that a state that you want for your kids?
I know I made mistakes. I made them because I didn’t know better. But I also believe it’s never too late to become better than you were. And like Maya Angelou said, "when you know better do better.”
My guest last week did that. She used the book “The 5 love languages” as well as some conferences to reconnect with her daughter. To build emotional intelligence so they could have a different, better relationship. I would recommend another resource called “Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenburg.
But the first step to landing that helicopter and coming out of that shell/armor is to recognize it. Self awareness over situational awareness. Step back and look at who you are and where you’ve come from without all the judgment, competition and expectation. You don’t have to stay stuck in who you had to be in your past.
You don’t have to go through big T traumatic events or complex trauma to get caught in the trap of hypervigilance when it comes to raising kids today. That’s what helicopter parenting is.
How we parent is influenced by how we ourselves were parented. Our parenting styles can be an act of rebellion or an act of reinforcement. We do what we know - either what worked for us or what we know really didn’t work for us. But whichever we choose we always think we can do better don’t we? That’s pretty much human.
I think we forget as parents in the moment that our kids will one day be adults and what we want for them isn’t always what they want for themselves. Just like butterflies sometimes they have to turn into goo and struggle their way out of the cocoon in order to fly. It can be hard to watch.
It’s so easy to blame and judge our own parents through our modern lenses. But we weren’t there, not really. We weren’t in their shoes. And who’s to say how our kids will judge us looking back? Will they celebrate our choices or condemn us for all the things we don’t know now?
It’s hard to say.
As parents, maybe it’s more important that we pay a little more attention to our own nervous system state. Learning how to help ourselves shift away from the guard dog turtle and back towards the guard dog/golden retriever. So we can be fully present with our kids in ways that they can understand.
Maybe it’s more important to be real with them. Open and vulnerable. Curious and kind. Reach out to actively communicate, repair our relationships and be an example of strong connection instead of strong protection.
Thanks for joining me this week on The Work IN. If you like what you heard and you want to know a little bit more about how you can shift your nervous system state and maybe take the tiger out of motherhood head over to savagegracecoaching.com where you’ll find free resources, podcast show notes and ways to literally shake off stress with trauma release. Be sure to sign up for my free guide on how to hold space. It gets you on my email list and let’s you be the first to know about my next online course.
Thanks everyone. And remember, stop working out, start working IN.
Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
Savage Grace Coaching is all about bringing resilience and burnout recovery. Especially for overwhelmed entrepreneurs, creators and coaches in the fitness industry.
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