From the author: Published on the author’s website A year ago, on August 25, the Merriam-Webster American Dictionary was replenished with a new portion of words. Among them is the “boomerang child,” which means an adult child who has returned to the parental home (mainly due to financial difficulties). The symmetrical concept of “helicopter parent” is applied to a mother or father who takes an excessive part in the children’s lives, trying to eliminate all possible obstacles and difficulties in the way of children, understand and fulfill their desires and protect them from disappointment. Parenting is one of the most difficult tasks in a person’s life. And at the same time, it is one of the most important sources of happy experiences. Most of us would like our child to grow up healthy, mentally and physically strong, smart, and successful. From birth we try to teach him all the best that we ourselves can do. And yet, along with joy, satisfaction and pride, all parents occasionally feel fatigue, uncertainty, irritation, which do not always allow them to act as well as they would like. In Russia, there used to be folk pedagogy (including Soviet), and the whole society it was clear what was considered good education and what was bad. In the process of social restructuring, previous guidelines and traditions of education have collapsed and become devalued; now, instead of them, families sometimes develop rather chaotic or ill-conceived pedagogical approaches. The so-called “helicopter parent” is one of these options, and it can be considered a type of overprotection. It is characterized by the desire of parents to surround the child with increased attention, protect him from possible problems and difficulties, and prevent the child from developing negative experiences - grief, resentment, anger. Sometimes such upbringing is also called greenhouse education and they paint the following picture: a caring mother, squatting, ties the shoelaces of her third-grader son. And this is understandable: what mother’s heart will not tremble when she hears a note of crying in her child’s voice or sees a sour expression on her face when the child is reminded of the need to make the bed, or notices how his back is straining from the school backpack. It is worth noting that in his In extreme cases, such an attitude can have a lot of negative consequences for the child. He can become overly dependent on his parents and turn into that same boomerang child that we mentioned at the beginning of the article. It is very difficult for such a person to soberly assess the specifics of the situation, make responsible decisions and take risks if new circumstances and tasks require this. He has low stress resistance and energy. Such a person is often not ready to face the vicissitudes of an imperfect world and overcome obstacles on the way to his goals. And in this sense, Robert Anthony’s remark is true: “Thank you to those who refused to help me. It was thanks to them that I managed to cope on my own.” Curious in this regard is the altered, painfully familiar fairy tale about a stepmother, daughter and stepdaughter. Once upon a time there lived an old man with his daughter Masha in the same village. He loved her immensely and decided that she needed a mother. The old man got married and brought into the house an old woman, a stepmother, who had her own beloved daughter, Glasha. The old woman, of course, immediately disliked her stepdaughter and decided to kill her. But the stepmother was well-read and knew fairy tales well, so she did it her way. She woke up her daughter Glasha in the morning, forced her to clean, cook, knit and spin. And she told Mashenka to lie on the feather beds more and more, and not to dirty her white hands with hard work. The neighbors could not be surprised: “Oh, how she loves her stepdaughter, cherishes, cherishes, protects.” The girls have grown up. Once a prince was passing through the village, fell in love with the hard-working Glasha and took her as his wife. But Masha was left with nothing; no one wanted to marry a lazy and grumpy girl. Such a protective position of parents, however, also has its positive side. Just as a flower, given favorable conditions, grows.