By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, TAIWAN — Based in Taiwan, I nevertheless receive a lot of newsletters and news tips in my email inbox from around the world, and a few months ago, I got a very interesting newsletter missive from Rabbi David Wolpe at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.
The rabbi was writing about various methods of parenting in North America, and he began by talking about so-called “helicopter parenting,” what Rabbi Wolpe explained as ”the practice of parental hovering to monitor children’s every movement.”
He went on to note that some colleges and universities complain that when students matriculate, they often appear lost — ”they do not know how to budget their time, handle disappointment, cook their own meals, and even laundry defeats them,” as the rabbi wrote.
In a personal aside, he added: “A few times while teaching at UCLA, some fathers and mothers accompanied students to meetings, to my astonishment. Years ago it would have been unspeakably humiliating to arrive at a professor’s office with one’s mother. So for parents I have a new metaphor to aspire to — ‘helium parenting’.”
And that is when the new term struck me as a very good coinage: helium parenting. Curious to know more about the term, I emailed Rabbi Wolpe and he was kind enough to reply. When I told him that I thought his new term was very creative and useful, and that I wanted to submit it as a new word at UrbanDictionary.com, an online dictionary that often accepts new terms coined by people all over the world. He said he would be glad to see my do that. So I did, and now the new term “helium parenting” is part of the online dictionary.
When I asked Rabbi Wolpe the other day why he coined the term and wrote about it in his weekly newsletter, he told the San Diego Jewish World: “In order to react against ‘helicopter parenting,’ I felt the need of a metaphor to describe parenting that is responsible, loving but not cloying or overly controlling — hence, ‘helium parenting’.”
In the newsletter, the rabbi had expanded on the balloon idea: “We should hold on to our children as a child holds a balloon. Let them rise, float on their own, but have a grasp on the string so that they do not float away to unknown parts. The time will come when we need to release the balloon but in the meantime instead of hovering from above, we should be lightly holding from below. Think of it as parental string theory. Remember, we are not trying to create ‘good
kids,’ but competent, kind adults. Helicopters are big, expensive, cumbersome and dangerous. Balloons are colorful, joyous, and free.”
So now, thanks to Rabbi Wolpe’s caring new coinage, the Urban Dictionary, which is based in Mountain View, California, defines “helium parenting” this way: “A method of parenting which is similar to the way a child holds a balloon, in which parents allow their children to rise like a helium-filled balloon and float on their own, while at the same time making sure that their growing sons and daughters have a strong grasp on the string so that they do not float away to unknown parts.”
And to give the term a quiet little push with a sample quote of some daily conversation, the dictionary gives this example: “My parents were good to me, and they raised me with helium parenting ideas. They gave me a lot of freedom when I was a child, but they were always there for me, too. I loved being a balloon, and yet I was glad they
made sure I was holding on to the string.”
Helium parenting? Does it ring a bell in your neck of the woods, too?
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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com