Helicopter Parenting

I was reading an article about the annual Easter Egg hunt in Colorado Springs being canceled this year because of the behavior of the parents last year. Apparently the bull horn used to start the hunt broke and the public address system was not loud enough. When some tots started gathering eggs before others some parents jumped the barricades (a string) grabbing all the eggs they could so that their children would not end up empty handed. “They couldn’t resist getting over the rope to help their kids,” said Ron Alsop, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of “The Trophy Kids Grow Up,” which examines the “millennial children” generation. “That’s the perfect metaphor for millennial children. They (parents) can’t stay out of their children’s lives. They don’t give their children enough chances to learn from hard knocks, mistakes.” This is a perfect example of "Helicopter Parents", hovering over every aspect of their kids life so little Johnny or Mary doesn't fail, even at an Easter Egg Hunt. This is the first time I've heard the term, helicopter parents and I love it. Being a big movie fan all I can see is The parent wearing a Calvary hat scooping up Easter eggs saying "I love the smell of PAAS in the morning. It smells like victory" as the helicopters blaring Wagner fly overhead.
The blame for this behavior is being put on parents of the 1980's who put "Baby on Board" signs in their cars. Denis Leary asks in the Ford truck ads about kids getting a trophy for just showing up. This was something that I had to deal with as a parent and a coach of my kids sports teams. "We never got trophies for just being on a team" I would say, "We needed to win". Thinking back this was not always true. I did receive  a trophy for football each year I played Pop Warner (one year we were 0-8 ), baseball was different, only the winning team got a trophy. I have been involved with my kids lives but you would have to ask them if I was hovering over them, I would say no but that's only my opinion. What ever I did or didn't do, I think they turned out pretty good. Now my oldest is going to have to find out for himself in August. As your children grow up and start to have their own children all the lessons that you tried to teach will finally sink in and your kids will have an Aaaha moment. Hopefully the aaaha will be followed by the statement, Dad was right.