Helicopter Parenting: According to Wikipedia “is a colloquial, late 20th and early 21st-century term for a parent who pays extremely close attention to their child’s or children’s experiences and problems.” It is a parent who hovers “like a helicopter” over their child and intervenes too much when they see the child struggling vs. giving their child a chance to work things out on their own.

I am starting to feel like a helicopter parent when it comes to Leah. I am not like this with my other two daughters, one older and one younger than her. I give them quite a bit of room actually, to the point that some parents think I give them too much. Let’s just say, I was giving the opportunity to travel around Asia all expenses paid when my oldest was 2.5, and I didn’t even think twice about leaving her for 3 weeks with her grandparents.
Leah is different she has SPD, depression, and anxiety that causes really bad acid reflux. She also has some extreme behaviors that have had Dr.’s list other acronyms ODD, ASD, ADHD but no one wanting to commit to anything except SPD, depression and anxiety with the hopes she will get better as she gets older. Her father and I keep our fingers crossed that this will be true for her.

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Timeouts and other traditional discipline methods have been proven to work with many children, but not all. It took me 3 years & 8 months to come to this conclusion. Unfortunately my middle daughter Leah, was the one to suffer and endure my ignorance on discipline.

My wake up call was when we first filled out a BASC-2 form and the results came back stating my 3 year old daughter was Clinically Depressed with High Anxiety, and a recommendation for therapy.

I came to the realization that she was depressed because of me. I was constantly putting her in time outs, telling her that what she was doing was wrong, and telling her how bad she was. I am ashamed to admit this, but on occasion she was spanked, fingers flicked, etc… The above “traditional discipline” methods were being used all the time at home. We were at a complete loss on what to do with her. Nothing worked, adding to our frustrations and tension in the house. It was essentially a downward spiral that I knew we needed to get out of. I sought out help from professionals going against my pediatricians claims that she is just “active.” In May 2010, I finally became an advocate for my daughter.

One of the things I have learned from the various professionals we have worked with; is that timeouts and traditional discipline  do not and will not work for my daughter. We no longer give her time outs, with the exception of hitting.  Instead we have become detectives at home and have really tried to figure out what she is trying to tell us when she does the things she does. …continue reading