How To Become A Helicopter Parent In 10 Easy Steps

Warning: Satire approaching, please do not actually follow these steps.

Do you want to become a helicopter parent? Have your lovelies by your side and in your home for the rest of your life because they are unable to function in society? I have created an easy-to-follow list to make sure your children will rely on you … FOREVER.

Step 1: Don’t allow your children to do anything by themselves, ever. Get off your butt and keep tying those shoes, Mama! Why do they need to learn how to pour their own milk? Or even find their own employment? You are going to be doing it for them, always.

Step 2: Insert yourself into their lives at any, and I mean ANY, opportunity. Involve yourself in all social interactions and take control when things don’t go your (I mean your kids’) way. And when they go to college and get a B on a test? You call that professor right up on the phone and offer inappropriate things to get that kid an A. That’s not weird or stalkerish at all.

Step 3: Give them everything they want, always. Nothing is enough for your darlings. They are the fruit of your precious womb and it’s very important that they experience all of the physical joys of this world. Just ask Veruca Salt.

Step 4: Believe that your children should never fail. What does failure teach you? Nothing! Only success teaches you how to be more successful. So, if it appears that your child will fail at something – cleaning their room, writing a high school essay, or even forming a relationship – just do it for them! They will really appreciate you texting their boyfriend behind their back to get things back on track for them.

Step 5: Teeter on the brink of being delusional. This really helps when you are still wiping your 10-year-old’s butt.

Step 6: View parents who make their children do things for themselves as “mean.” Your kids are only kids once, right? Well, not your kids. They will be kids forever so that you can bask in the glory of feeling needed. Feeling needed is the best thing ever.

Step 7: Create a sorority of like-minded moms. They will support you when the rest of the “cruel” world wants to make your baby “be a working member of society.”

Step 8: Feel crushing guilt if your child’s world is not perfect. The creature that you birthed through your golden tube of life should never have a moment of discomfort, be it with discipline or normal life challenges or loneliness. *shudder*

Step 9: Interact with your child constantly. They must have constant stimulation and flash cards if they are to become the next scary kid living in their mom’s basement playing video games.

Step 10: And finally, invest in something. Because you will need the extra cash when your child, at age 35, has to enroll in a Failure To Launch survivalist camp. This is a real thing.

There you are! How to be a helicopter mom in 10 easy steps. You too, can make sure that you are on speed-dial at your child’s first job at age 40.