So parents what does your principal think of you?
Probably not surprising that principals have names for parents and they aren’t always sugar and spice. Education Weekly did an extensive survey of principals to ask them what they thought. Principals walk a tightrope between staff and families. If they are seen as caving in to families too often by staff, they will have a really tough time of running the school without staff support. On the other hand, if they don’t provide the attention and understanding that families want there will be complaints to the upper reaches of administration. So they must learn to walk the tightrope and avoid the squeeze play.
Based on the survey, principals use about seven different groupings for parents.
There are the “lawnmower” or “snowplow” parents. These are people who are generally unhappy with previous experiences and come in with both guns blazing. They are going to make sure that their child has only positive experiences. They want the child to only experience success and avoid disappointment at all costs. This attitude upsets principals and staff mainly because it does not prepare the child for what life will be as an adult.
The “helicopter” parent wants to watch over every phase of the child’s life. They are a lot like the lawnmower parent except that these parents want to be involved in every minute aspect of the child’s life be it academic or social. School folks worry that the child is not going to be prepared to problem solve on his/her own when life gets complicated as we know it will.
Tiger parents are often associated with Asian parents because of the book written called Tiger Mother. But in fact any ethnic group can produce Tiger parents. These parents have a very authoritarian style and demand high achievement from their children in all aspects of school life- academics, sports, music, or extra-curricular activities. Teachers are concerned that the children will feel like failures because it is virtually impossible for any child to excel in every activity.
The Elephant parent is very nurturing. They want the child to be happy and protected. They place a very high value on encouragement and empathy to the extent that the child seldom experiences failure. One of the most important adult skills is resilience to failure. Learning to pick yourself up after a flop and move on. Kids with Elephant parents don’t get to have the chance to do this very much so they lose a valuable adult skill.
Jellyfish parents are just that, jellyfish. They have few rules or regulations for their kids whether it is because they believe kids should not be required to follow rules or because they do not want to exert the effort to teach those rules. Often these children are overindulged and do not learn that life will have rules that they will need to follow.
Dolphin parents are the good guys. They are firm but flexible. They strive for balance in rule enforcement and they do have expectations for appropriate behavior. They nurture creativity and independence in their children. These youngsters are learning lessons that will best prepare them for adulthood.
The Free-Range parent is quick to say that their goal is to allow their children to become independent and self-reliant so they have few rules and expect their kids to learn from experience. The problem with this parenting style is that younger children don’t have the experience or the cognitive maturity to make these kinds of decisions.
While it is nice to be able to categorize families/parents, it is seldom accurate that a family is exclusively one type of another. One of the things that occurred to me is that we could probably use these same categories to sort principals in terms of how they respond to monitoring and mentoring teachers.
Might be interesting to do a survey to find out how parents categorize school staff.
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