Helicopter Gunship Parent

A helicopter parent who, to promote their child, will proactively neutralize a person perceived to hinder their own child's advancement.

The effective target of a helicopter gunship parent is a child with more talent and better performance than their own, in a activity with limited opportunities or resources. By a range of overt and covert aggressive methods, the helicopter gunship parent will remove the other child's competition, or the third party who has control over allocation of opportunities and resources, from the activity.

Characteristic outcomes of helicopter gunship parent activity are unwarranted advancement of their own child, other more talented children and their parents/teachers/organisers declining to participate or contribute to the activity, and degraded performance of the activity due to loss of talent. The benefitting child may also suffer reputational damage due to their helicopter gunship parent's activity, even if the child is unaware of the activity or an unwilling beneficiary in the activity.

Common situations of helicopter gunship parent action are sport team selection and role allocation, school drama involvement, academic or sport prizes and scholarships, and school leadership roles.

How can Adam's kids be in such high-level teams but be so doggedly mediocre and continually hold back the team performance? He is a helicopter gunship parent; over the years, he made all the better players walk away from the sport.

Tony's second-rate son got that top academic prize only because Tony is a helicopter gunship parent. I don't know how he did it but he got the award panel to quit then he got himself and his friends on it. The prize and the school is a bad joke.