<p>I did a quick glance at this thread and I have just one comment - you are more likely to step back from being a helicopter mom as your child ages and your relationship with him/her changes than you are to abandon CC if you are here very much! I no longer think of myself as a helicopter parent, although I probably was as kids were completing high school. However, I started lurking here in early 2002 and posting in 2005 and have no plans to give it up anytime soon! CC is a great place to observe a variety of people from afar and it is definitely addictive (as several threads in the past have discussed). Your child may complain about helicopter parenting, but many do appreciate the interest even if though don’t want to let you in on that secret very often!</p>
<p>Some kids don’t need helicoptering. Some kids need it for certain periods of their life, but not all the time. Some kids need it 24/7. I have one of each kind, and so now I try not to judge what other parents decide to do, or not do, for their kids. I also think there’s a difference between a parent who has carefully observed and assessed their child’s readiness to handle tasks and drawn an informed conclusion of what help is required from mom, versus the mother who meddles and micromanages simply because s/he wants to or needs to (in a psychologically unhealthy way). </p>
<p>I will also say that when I meet parents of high-achieving kids, it seems to me that the majority are pretty involved in their children’s lives. The world is complicated and competitive and I think my kids have had to deal with more difficult life situations than I ever had to at their age. A parent’s guidance can be invaluable in preventing a minor issue from developing into a major headache or heartache with enduring consequences.</p>
<p>My goal for much of what I did during the college search process was to streamline and lower the stress level of DD. I always asked what she wanted me to do or not to do and I think it worked out quite well. With five APs, a trip to Japan fall mid-semester, a two-hour round trip commute to school, a varsity sport, among other things her senior year, DD needed an assistant.</p>
<p>In most things, I am not a helicopter Dad; both my boys have had activities that I specifically stayed out of because they need their own space and need to have other adult role models/authority figures.</p>
<p>However, college decisions involve tens of thousands of MY dollars. I have a vested interest in the outcome. In addition, it is so much more complicated and strategically demanding that when I did it (I barely studied for the SAT, took it once, applied to one state flagship and one OOS LAC.) I don’t think that many 17 year olds have the managerial problem solving skills to optimally navigate college admissions as it currently exists. So I am a big time obsessive Huey regarding college prep and search, and I make not apologies about it. If S2 wants me out of the picture, I will write him a check for 4 years of expenses at the local State U and be done with it (and maybe go buy myself a Porsche Boxster with money I just saved.)</p>
<p>But once that is handled, I am happy to go back to my non-helicopter ways.</p>
<p>I’ve been a public elementary school teacher for many years. With few exceptions my high achieving students have very involved parents. They volunteer in the classroom, both parents frequently attend conferences and school functions, and they take a keen interest in advocating for and monitoring their child’s progress. Another common thread is that they look for the extras… competitions, enrichment programs, clubs, incentive programs.</p>
<p>Now the “helicopter moms” are frankly obnoxious. If an e-mail is sent, it becomes an on-going exchange. They present their needs and wants as demands. They make excuses or insinuations about other students and their families to justify the behavior/performance of their student. Ultimately, they are overbearing… I remember one mother who always requested permission to come videotape her son’s presentations. Another mother seemed to magically appear at lunchtime to sit and eat with her child.</p>
<p>My philosophy is “Do as little as you need to do.” That is different for each child. My own children each require a different level of “collaboration” on my part.</p>
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<p>TheGFG has posted another insightful comment! The problem is that the term “helicopter parent” is now so popular, and some people are so meddling, that the term is sometimes used to describe anyone who is involved with his or her child’s largest, most far-reaching and most expensive decision so far!</p>
<p>I just heard of an incident which demonstrates another reason that parents may be more involved than in the past: schools and the government (DYFS) are quick to assign blame for accidents and charge parents with abuse or negligence. For example, it has been quite hot this week in our region. A senior high school boy went to his summer cross country practice and ended up passing out. He was taken to the hospital, and now his parents are in trouble with DYFS for having let him practice in that heat, and for getting too dehydrated. They are labeling it “abuse.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the same day but in a different town, I had texted my D at the office telling her that when she runs right after work, she should go to the YMCA and use the treadmill rather than run outside. However, she ignored me and instead went running with some friends outside. Now, should I have gone to her place of employment to ensure she complied with my request? No, I don’t think so. But what if it had been her that had collapsed? Then it would have been me who would have had to spend hours with child services, and me who was blamed by the authorities for not properly supervising my child! I could tell other stories involving ridiculous school officials and the like who are quick to look for and report any signs of parental neglect. One such example was when I allowed my 12 year old to walk 4 blocks home from school at 4 PM after a club meeting. Apparently, that was negligent because there were no crossing guards on duty. Now, we live in an ordinary suburb which I don’t consider either dangerous or heavy in car traffic.</p>
<p>So parents have to go overboard sometimes to appear concerned in order to avoid criticism from the real helicopter parents, like the ones who called the school about my son walking home by himself! Yikes.</p>
<p>My then 12 year old walked 3 miles home from his middle school occasionally - sometimes because the bus was delayed sometimes just for the fun of it. Thank goodness no one reported me for being a bad parent. I don’t understand why the coach isn’t getting the blame for the cross country practice incident.</p>
<p>^ I’m sure the coach will be blamed as well. My guess is he’s retained an attny (if he’s smart). Every student at the practice will be questioned to determine if the coach pushed them, if they were reminded to drink water, if they were pulled for extra drills for any reason… ANYthing at all that could indicate blame.</p>
<p>I hope the young man is feeling better.</p>
<p>I think “helicopter” parent is a misnomer. Helicopters hover - if they interfere with the object over which they hover, they crash and burn. We need another term for those who pick fights with teachers, take on every battle for their kids, write their essays, etc. They are not hovering, they are attached.</p>
<p>Pardon the pedantry, but there is a lot of conflation of terms here that is obscuring what the word “helicopter parent” means and why it is - mostly - a bad thing for the parents AND child.</p>
<p>First, being obsessively involved in CC and accumulating fine grained information about SATs, financial aid, and the subtle differences between different colleges is NOT helicopter parenting. It’s just what it is: being obsessive. The fact that I have a spreadsheet with each possible SAT score and the number of students - not the percentile - who achieved each score does not make me overly involved in my kids’ lives . . . because helicoptering depends on the kinds of actions you take with your kids.</p>
<p>Being an involved parent is NOT being a helicopter parent; knowing where your kids are at night; monitoring their mental heal; attending parent conferences; advocating for their kids’ best interests is honorable and responsible parenting. One poster earlier said that “helicoptering works best as a collaboration;” by definition, if you are truly collaborating you are NOT a helicopter parent. Wifely and kid worked in December on college essays in a way that the kid appreciated, as a helpful editor, not as a writer. That was not helicoptering. Even being more involved in one kid’s life and less so in another’s does not earn you that epithet; some kids need more help than others, and to not recognize that is a mistake.</p>
<p>But there IS such as thing as being too involved, too controlling and too invasive. The Urban Dictionary defines it as the “parent who hovers and flaps his wings while the kid lives in his shadow. Particularly prevalent at high-priced colleges, where parents feel obliged (or entitled) to intervene on issues down to the candlepower of the lightbulbs.” </p>
<p>It’s not the parent that goes to the orientations; it’s the parent who crashes student-only orientation events. They are the reason why an administrator friend at a local college now trains orientation students whose sole job it is to separate clingy parents from their children. </p>
<p>Or the parents who when they get the first call about roommate problems do not tell their kid to talk to their RA and instead call the Dean on behalf of their child. As one poster said, they are the type who “present their needs and wants as demands, make excuses or insinuations about other students and their families to justify the behavior/performance of their student” and are ultimately “overbearing.” They are the kinds of parents who do not help their kids practice and learn autonomy and independence, but instead prolong their children’s dependence on parents for things that the kids ought to be doing on their own.</p>
<p>So for most of you that are involved or obsessed, proudly wear those labels . . . but please let’s reserve the phrase “helicopter parent” as the dysfunctional epithet that it truly is. There IS such a thing , and it is not good.</p>
<p>GFG: “A senior high school boy went to his summer cross country practice and ended up passing out. He was taken to the hospital, and now his parents are in trouble with DYFS for having let him practice in that heat, and for getting too dehydrated.”</p>
<p>It was 105 on Tuesday here. My son’s cross country coach had the kids all meet at a wooded park and run at 7 p.m. DH and I walked one of the trails. No one passed out. The kids are doing the same run tonight.</p>
<p>DD, also a CC runner, was very prone to passing out. She passed out at an invitational run by Johns Hopkins University (she did finish the race). I am sure happy DSS didn’t come after us.</p>
<p>I got in the habit of staying near the finish line at DD’s high school races. I caught more than one wobbler crossing the finish. It’s a tough sport in this region in the fall heat.</p>
<p>I am trying to decrease the amount of “helicoptering” that I do as my children age and develop the skills they need to negotiate in an adult world. For example, my college-bound D has her first nanny job this summer and is having trouble getting paid on time. I am staying out of it. I consider it a learning situation. If she is too shy, or nervous, to stand up for herself - then she doesn’t get paid. </p>
<p>On the other hand, my S just finished his freshman year in HS and I had to communicate with a particular teacher this past semester about a wrong grade on a report card (teacher left the 9 off of the 90!) He just doesn’t have the skills yet - but we’re working on them. We do a lot of role-playing and hypothetical “what ifs” so that he can learn assertiveness. I assume that by the time he graduates he can take over the reins of his life himself.</p>
<p>Kei-o-Lei: I agree that there is probably some conflation of terms, and certainly being involved and responsible parents is a good thing. Perhaps that even constitutes a harmless kind of helicoptering. The reason for the confusion surrounding the term is probably because when people think of a helicopter, the essential quality that comes to mind is the ability to hover, albeit in a loud and blustery way. But I, at least, don’t necessarily think of an Apache attacking and/or crashing and burning–which is the bad kind.</p>
<p>So my point is that you can be a responsible parent in leading your “horse” to water, but where it gets dicey is evaluating when you should actually force the horse to drink. Where that line should be drawn is not clearly laid out to parents and people obviously disagree on it. Should the parent of the x-c runner have stayed around at practice and shoved the water bottle in her son’s face and yelled at him to drink? I think that would have been perceived as a little strange if the kid were high school age. As for the coach, he definitely should have reminded the kids to keep drinking as well as the precautions mentioned above, but I don’t know that I would have expected him to have carefully watched and monitored the kid’s water intake in exact numbers of ounces. </p>
<p>When my D was having issues with passing out, I actually did sort of make her drink, and that was considered overbearing by her coaches and teammates. But I was worried about her health and even though we had pretty much ruled out dehydration as the cause, I was sick of people insinuating that her collapsing was due to dehydratiion and therefore was a result of her or my carelessness in preparation to race.</p>
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<p>Yes, but Facebook has some checks and balances for the information–the owner of FB page chooses who he does/doesn’t allow to see the page, they can “unFriend” people who turn out to be untrustworthy, and they themselves can remove information they previously posted. I think they can even remove other people’s comments. And, of course, the biggest difference is that even if the a kid foolishly posts too much personal information, it was still their decision and their mistake.</p>
<p>Now, if you post something on a message board like this, there is absolutely no way you can prevent anyone from reading it. There’s no selectivity. And there’s no way to remove anything you’ve posted, if you miss the “edit window.” Most forum moderators will not remove posts upon request, except in extreme circumstances.</p>
<p>Message boards can give the illusion of being a small roomful of friends, because people do make friends and it is a community . . . but really it’s more like a stage set up with three walls and an auditorium full of strangers out there in the seats. Maybe the people “out there” will never be able to identify the kid by name or by sight, but an aspect of the kid is still exposed to the entire world. So I can understand some kids not wanting their personal information put up here.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I agree there’s a big difference between “helicoptering” and “being involved.” Kei-o-lei’s definition of “helicoptering” is spot on.</p>
<p>A very difficult part of being a parent is learning when it is appropriate to let kids fall flat on their face, and letting them pick themselves back up all by themselves.</p>
<p>Different parents have different ideas about when this is appropriate. </p>
<p>Helicopter parents are those parents who think it is never approriate to let them fall flat on their face; thus, they hover in case their kid is about to fall and swoop in to make sure their kid is always propped up.</p>
<p>I’ve quoted from this book <em>The Blessing of a Skinned Knee</em> before here, but I’ll quote this paragraph</p>
<p>“For twenty years now, I have watched as well-meaning dedicated parents become ever more deeply enmeshed in their children’s lives. Now matter how busy these parents are, the child’s problems remain a central preoccupation. Instead of enjoying their time with their children, they’re busy fretting and fixing…Little Kayla is overtaxed, so her mom is off to the library to do research for the Hopi Indian social studies project while Kayla is at her dance class. Zack’s dad is hiring a softball tutor so Zack will feel more secure about playing on the teams the boys form at recess. These are the same parents who refuse to let their children walk to the corner alone or don’t permit their children to hand in a homework assignment without a parental edit.”</p>
<p>That last clause really struck home with me, because when my youngest son was in the third or fourth grade, I would ask to ‘check’ his math homework and then ask him to correct his mistakes before he handed it in. He had a bad habit of moving quickly through his work and making sloppy mistakes and I wanted to make sure he learned how to slow down and look over his work again. </p>
<p>He really hated this oversight, and then one day he said to me that when I make him do the corrections, it isn’t his work anymore. My jaw dropped–couldn’t say he was wrong–and then never looked over another assignment, paper, anything–he’s a rising sophomore in high school now. He comes to me very occasionally with a question, but that’s it. </p>
<p>He’s never really gotten out of the habit of making sloppy mistakes. If I was more instrusive, I’m sure that his GPA would be better. The grades won’t get him into an elite institution of higher education, but at least he ‘owns’ his grades.</p>
<p>So for us, ‘helicoptering’ would be doing that edit of homework before it is handed in. I do know that others don’t find that to be helicoptering. But you have to ask yourself why you are doing that final look-over: how much of it is the result of anxiety over GPA and then not getting into that ‘dream college’? When do you let them simply work on their own, without that edit, and then possibly letting them get that ‘less than A’ grade for the year as a learning experience?</p>
<p>The GFG’s got skills - see post # 62, para. 2. I’d like to have that on a tee-shirt.
thump . . . thump . . .thump.</p>
<p>Just spoke on the phone with a good friend, who was lamenting the shame she had just experienced in the orthodontist’s office. Her middle school son’s personal hygiene leaves a lot to be desired. She is on top of him constantly to bathe with soap, brush his teethe, use deodorant, etc. She has actually had to tackle him when the situation gets really smelly and disgusting and haul him into the shower. Obviously, he’s way too old and now much too tall and heavy for this sort of mommy intervention to be desirable or appropriate. Yet it has been necessary. And yes, my friend also solicited the help of a psychologist for her son–to no avail. </p>
<p>Not withstanding her parental diligence, when the kid developed serious tooth rot under his braces, who do you think the orthodontist blamed?</p>
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<p>Yes, exactly!</p>