Jenna Dewan shares photo of her and 2-year-old son Callum at the beach: 'Helicopter parenting'
Jenna Dewan is a self-professed “helicopter parent.”
The Step Up actress, 41, took to Instagram on Wednesday to share several photos of herself and 2-year-old son Callum at the beach. In the pics, Dewan is seen hovering over her little one, for reasons she explained in the caption.
“Actual footage of my helicopter parenting our child who will run directly into the waves no problem,” she joked.
Dewan’s followers loved the inside look at her mom-and-son beach day. One wrote, “Boys are a completely different world!!!!” Another added, “Oh Callum you’re such cutie pie.”
“Helicopter parenting” is a term used to describe parents who hover over their children, often to protect them from any potential safety issues, stressors or mistakes. (Dewan, clearly, is using the term in jest to make sure her son doesn’t sprint off into the ocean.)
Charlotte Reznick, a Brentwood, Calif.-based child and adolescent psychologist and the author of The Power of Your Child's Imagination, recently told Yahoo Life that there are downsides of such a parenting strategy.
"Although most kids I see love it when their parents do things for them and fight having to do much for themselves," she noted, "if parents do everything for their child, kids miss out on learning simple tasks like doing laundry, making beds, cooking meals, knowing how to get out of jams or choosing friends and jobs wisely because they never had a chance to learn from their own mistakes."
As for Dewan, she recently spoke to Yahoo Life about how she is learning to establish boundaries with her children. She shares Callum with her partner Steve Kazee, and also is mom to 9-year-old daughter Everly with her ex-husband Channing Tatum.
“The thing I continually work on is maintaining boundaries because I am an extremely loving, soft by nature person and mother,” the Supergirl alum explained. “And so it's hard for me to hold boundaries, and I have to learn it and I've gotten a lot better about it. They know how to work me and they're so adorable and so cute and I want to give them what they want and I want to give more cuddles and more books and more all constantly — but then I'd be in there 'til midnight. My kids have taught me that boundaries make them feel safer and create more ease and harmony in our house, but it's something that I continually work on with them, for sure. And [at this age], it's even more necessary to have that sort of kindness, compassion and loving boundaries.”
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