Hover Plants (Not parents)

Do you have helicopter parents/guardians?

*Note I was sick when I wrote this. Sorry if it is incoherent.

The hot air on my ears, the constant breathing behind me, the occasional “Whatcha doing”; these are the characteristics of a hover. We all have someone, whether it is family or a friend, who loves to hover. It could be your little sibling, or even your overprotective older sibling, but most of the time it’s your parents.

When we are younger it’s our parent’s job to hover over their kids. They don’t want 2 year old little son to find the bleach under the sink. They are programmed to keep watch over you. However, as you grow older some parents don’t want to let go. They continue to treat you like little kids who need constant protection, they lurk in the background constantly checking your activities and making sure that you are alright. They micro-manage every single thing in your life, they tell you exactly what to do 100% of the time and leave you with no freedom or privacy. As a teenager this can be quite annoying. Teenagers need a certain amount of privacy, give them too much and they will do whatever they heck they want, give them too little and they are going to hate you the rest of your life.

I would like to characterize our development to adulthood as a seed growing into a tree. When you are born you become a seed planted in the ground. It is your parent’s job to nurture the seed and allow it to grow.  Let’s imagine that teenage years are the most vulnerable years of the plant; when the plant is sprouting and is easy to destroy by accident. When a tree first begins to sprout often times gardeners will tie the young sprout to a straight stick. The stick is meant to help guide the tree to grow straight upward, however if you remove the stick too soon the tree will begin to grow sideways and it will inhibit it’s potential. If you remove the stick too late then you also damage the plant as it will grow short and stay the same height. Parents are the stick in this analogy. They have the option to allow you to grow sideways and do whatever you want. Or they can be the hovering micro-managing parents who leave the stick there and inhibit the trees growth. Personally I think my parents are just a little bit on the hovering side. They do give me responsibilities but they also monitor my time spent on the computer and tell me to spend more time on my homework and less time playing games.

Parents aren’t the only people who are allowed to hover. I know that one of my favorite pastimes as a younger kid was to bother my older siblings. The best times were when they were on Facebook. I would often stick my head close to their shoulder, enough so that I could read what was on the screen, but not enough that they could see me in their peripheral vison. After about a minute or so they would notice my breathing and yell at me. They said that they were talking about “older kid” stuff, stuff that I wasn’t allowed to see. I learned to breathe more through my nose and breathe out very softly, I became quite good at hovering. I didn’t know how annoying it was to my two older sisters. All I knew at the time was that it was really fun. I soon became the “older kid” and it was my sister’s turn to hover. It realized how annoying it was when your siblings are trying to snoop in your business. Sibling hovering is different that parents hovering. Parents do it to protect you and to try to help you. While siblings just do it for the fun of bothering their older siblings and getting attention from them.