According to urbandictionary.com, a helicopter parent is
– a parent who hovers and flaps his wings while the kid lives in his shadow.
– an over protective parent who does not want their child to face any difficulty without their parent’s help.
Many helicopter parents share with their children the fairy tale “Briar Rose” aka “Sleeping Beauty” without understanding its warnings against over-involved parenting or its teaching that children grow through making mistakes.
As the Brothers Grimm tell the tale: When Princess Rose is born, her parents hold a feast, intending to invite 13 wise women to bless the baby. But the parents have only 12 sets of good dishes, so invite only 12 wise women. The uninvited guest comes anyway, armed with a curse: “The King’s daughter shall in her fifteenth year prick herself with a spindle, and fall down dead.” Another wise woman softens the curse from death to 100 years of deep sleep.
Rose’s royal parents remove every spindle from the kingdom. But at age 15 Rose encounters an elderly woman spinning and, out of curiosity, she touches the spindle. Rose and the entire royal court fall into a deep sleep. A briar of thorny roses grows around the castle. Many young princes, aware of the legendary sleeping princes, try to cut through the briar, but all die. One young courageous prince from a foreign land, disregarding all warnings of danger, attemptshis entry on the very day the curse expires. He walks in and awakens the Princess Rose with a kiss. They marry and “lived contented to the end of their days.”
Through the lens of Depth Psychology, the warnings hidden in this story come to light.
Edward C. Whitmont explains Jung’s view that “suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness.” Everyone develops painful knots of emotional energy called “complexes,” in response to outer events or to inner possibilities stirring in the unconscious.
Sometimes painful material is gathered in the “shadow,” parts of the personality repressed for the sake of an ego ideal. A person sees their shadow only through “projection,” seeing their own repressed qualities in others.
Personal growth, called “individuation,” occurs when a person deliberately untangles a complex, transforms the painful material, and integrates it positively into the psyche.
Speaking of one type of deliberate journey, a rite of passage, Victor Turner speaks of the vulnerability of new initiates. They are “betwixt and between,” dependent on the guidance of the wise initiators.
In “Briar Rose,” the king and queen are new parents. Their baby daughter’s welcoming ceremony is a rite of passage for them, as well as for their daughter. But they do not trust the initiators. Wanting to appear flawless, they are able to receive only 12 of 13 gifts of wisdom. Through their parenting, they pass their loss on to their daughter, seeing it as a curse so powerful it threatens to negate her many blessings.
The king and queen do not recognize that the curse began with them; they choose not to reckon with the force delivering the curse. Instead, seeing the threat everywhere around them, they micromanage Rose’s environment.
Absolute control is not possible, and Rose meets the dreaded challenge. But Rose’s many blessings give her strength. She withdraws for a long period of introspective adolescent dreaming, during which her parents and their household are unable to act on her. When she is ready, she wakes to her own initiation into adulthood, choosing her own path: marriage to a young man from a family that did not nurture his fear.
She is vulnerable to a new unknown, but moving through life’s journeys leaves her contented.
Parents, take note: your kids will flourish when you let them grow.
— Image: latesttattoodesigns.yzi.me. Written in response to an assignment created by Melissa Klay of Pacifica Graduate Institute.
