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Kami Walker has a lot to get done every morning before sending her children off to school — including responding to her mother’s check-in texts, which arrive like clockwork, amid the peak A.M. rush in her Long Island household.
It’s always something — lately, grandma’s chief concern has been making sure her beloved grandbabies, Lulu, 12, and Nico, 14, are bundled up tightly enough against the frigid winter cold.
Some busy moms might get annoyed by the idea of a helicopter grandparent. Walker, herself a self-described helicopter mom, doesn’t mind at all. In fact, she told The Post, the more the merrier.
“When I think about helicopter parenting, I consider it to be just one part of my and my mom’s style of attachment parenting,” said Walker, who lives in Port Washington with her husband and two kids. “You have to hover in your children’s lives at an appropriate level for them to be successful and for them to feel nurtured.”
In fact, it’s not just the odd text about snow boots connecting Walker to her mother, who lives in Upper Manhattan — the two work together, even if mom mostly works remotely, to juggle parenting responsibilities.
“[She’s] up on all my kids’ school projects, she asks what the pediatrician says after every appointment, and she buys all of my son’s clothes — but this doesn’t bother me,” said Walker, a business owner who provides online support for families hosting au pairs.
“We’re always very collaborative, and nobody is stepping on anyone’s toes,” she insisted.
The all-hands-on-deck parenting approach is having a moment right now in households across America — a trend recently spotlighted by a funny, viral video shared on social media by actor and “momfluencer” Selah Victor, who humorously calls her mom out for overstepping her bounds with her three grandsons.
Peter Shankman, a single dad living in Hell’s Kitchen, would never tell his own, very involved mother Nancy she’s out of line — on the contrary, the entrepreneur told The Post he’s extremely grateful for their close relationship with daughter Jessa, 12, encouraged by the fact that his folks live just five blocks away. But the dynamic can still be funny sometimes, he admitted.
“When Jessa was 3 or 4, I would bring her over to my parents’ apartment, they would open the door, they would take her and close the door on me,” he recounted with a laugh. “It was like I was delivering Chinese. I know they love me, but I’ll get these texts that aren’t ‘Good morning, how are you?’ but ‘Make sure Jessa wears a hat.’
“‘OK, mom, I’ll wear one, too,’” Peter said he’d jokingly respond.
For Nancy, the key is respecting boundaries, she said — she’s very involved in her granddaughter’s life, she admitted, but added that she works hard to avoid hovering.
“When Jessa was born, she was my whole world, and she’s always first in my mind,” Nancy told The Post. “At the same time, Peter and I are very close; we really do confer on everything, but I let Peter lead. That’s the most important thing. He’s the father.”
All hands on deck
Rachel Fredman, an Upper West Side divorcee and mom of a 17-year-old boy and a 13-year-old daughter, is another NYC single mom who loves the help she gets from her own parents.
“Given that I don’t have a partner, I welcome the fact that my mom always offers advice and suggestions about my parenting strategies,” said Rachel Fredman, a divorced mom who lives with her son, 17, and daughter, 13, on the Upper West Side. “I’m lucky that my parents live close by on Long Island and that they’re the ‘get your hands dirty’ type of grandparents. Nothing is too much when it comes to my kids.”
For Fredman, director of marketing for a digital health research company, keeping in constant contact with her parents — her mom especially — is essential.
“I talk to her 10 times a day, sometimes more,” she told The Post. “I’d say both she and my dad ‘helicopter’ in a very positive way.”
Some grandparents’ “help” — welcome as it may be — needs a little updating for the modern era, said expecting mom Alex Mione of Los Angeles. She’s already got a 2½-year-old daughter, and said that her mother’s well-meaning attempts at giving advice during both pregnancies have been taken with a grain of salt at times.
“The sound machines, the flat-on-the-back, no blanket, swaddle situation was a bit of an adjustment for my mom to comprehend,” Mione, an account supervisor at a public relations agency, told The Post. “My mom will send me Instagram Reels where some doctor says that sound machines are dangerous, she calls my daughter’s sleep sack a straitjacket. And now that we’re entering potty training, my mom is, like, ‘Are you sure you need to be that strict?’”
Hover, don’t smother
It’s when grandparents veer into this kind of territory that Dale Atkins, a licensed psychologist in New York City, gets concerned.
“It’s much better for grandparents to acknowledge that they’re not up on how parents are approaching potty training or sleep training instead of criticizing how they’re doing these things,” Atkins, author of “The Turquoise Butterfly,” a new children’s book about the bond between grandparents and grandchildren, told The Post. “I always encourage grandparents to take the time to read up on these things so you can have a much more constructive conversation.”
Ultimately, Atkins says grandparents should skip the micromanaging and, instead, do their best to support the choices the parents are making.
“The term ‘helicopter grandparent’ rightly has a negative connotation,” she said, calling out common pitfalls like “having the last word,” or getting “overly involved in decisions about school, activities, homework or their grandkids’ health.”
“If you’re waiting for your kid to have a kid because you want a second chance to raise a child, that’s not what it’s all about,” Atkins explained. “It’s about how many hands on deck can embrace the child in the way the child needs to be embraced.
“To grandparents, I say this: It’s important to know your place when you’re building the village — so don’t screw it up.”
According to Lexi Montée Busch, whose children are 1 and 4 years old, there’s nothing her parents could do wrong when it comes to her kids.
Busch, vice president of marketing and communications at Happiest Baby, a baby products company owned by her mom and dad, Nina and Harvey Karp, has spent the last year living as a “party of six,” including her husband and the Karps, after the LA fires took both their homes.
“It has been wonderful to have an extra set of hands — and a child development expert right down the hall,” Busch told The Post, referring to her father, a pediatrician and author of the newborn help book “The Happiest Baby on the Block.”
The way Busch sees it, if you’re not a helicopter grandparent, do you really even care enough?
“A lot of my friends feel like their parents are useless — they come over to visit and play, but they’re not caregivers,” Busch said. “My parents are the opposite. They know what to do and how to do it.”
Take a recent instance when Busch’s 4-year-old daughter, Lola, was caught in an innocent lie about how many pieces of chocolate she ate. Her father was right there in the room — and ready to spring into his child-development training and handle the situation.
“My dad was there to coach me, and it was wonderful for me to observe him and learn from him in that moment. As parents, we want the best for our children, and our greatest goal is that we don’t want to mess things up,” she said.
“If I can have these two human beings help me, then I’ve hit the lottery.”
