Helicopter parents on here

College Confidential Community
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<p>This whole "my D" and "my S" thing really scares me. Why are parents talking about their kids on an online forum like that? It's almost like having horses in a race; "my D got a 2200" "my S got a 33". </p>

<p>In my opinion, parents, you should stay out of the college process as much as possible, save for financial matters and other such concerns. Sure, communication is vital, but when it comes down to it, it's your kid's moment, not yours. </p>

<p>Threads</a> like these are quite unnerving. Parents intervening in nearly every aspect of high school life? Let your kid be a kid! This **** is insane!</p>

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<p>I’m not sure if it’s worse than parents who don’t care much at all about the admission process, though.</p>

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<p>I’m positive it’s worse. At least in the other scenario the kid’s gonna learn to be self-reliant. This nonstop coddling must be profoundly damaging to some kids.</p>

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<p>If parents are paying the bill, then they have a huge stake in the process. It’s interesting you want parents out of everything but the “financial matters.” If you really want to learn to be self-reliant and not be coddled, then perhaps you should start by paying your own way.</p>

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<p>I didn’t say I wanted parents out of the entire process; I clearly said that communication is vital and necessary for a smooth process. However, parents should just let their kid be independent. All this stuff about controlling your kid’s classes and monitoring activities and rigorous scheduling… it must be very unhealthy for a young mind.</p>

<p>Thank God my parents are helping me with visits and money only. We talk about it, but it’s nowhere near this hovering that parents do on here.</p>

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<p>That’s my point. If they’re putting in the money, then what should they be most concerned with? The money.</p>

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<p>Spoken like a true high schooler!</p>

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<p>I agree with the OP’s main point. Parents should definitely discuss colleges and inspire their children, but not control them the way many posters here appear to be doing.</p>

<p>I had to do all the practical work of the application process myself. I only discussed financials and holistic impressions of the colleges I visited with my parents. This is a much healthier way to make sure students end up somewhere they belong/fit, rather than where their parents want them to go…</p>

<p>My parents might not know the difference between APs and IBs, or SATs and SATIIs, but they will help me get a great education that I choose for myself. That’s enough for me!</p>

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<p>Hear-hear. It’s even worse, though, when you’ve got parents (actually, an entire family) who isn’t on this board or any other, because they know NOTHING about the process except how they got in 40 years ago to study something they didn’t really want to do but “everyone else did it back then, and you should go along with what’s deemed acceptable” – and think you’re selling your soul to the devil or something by applying over the Internet (that gall-durned contraption! Where do you put the toast, Mabel?), when in fact, this is 2011, not 1955, and a lot of schools are now REQUIRING that you apply online, and don’t really offer a paper application anymore! That, and I’m applying to a liberal arts school (Emerson) with an emphasis on creativity, when…</p>

<p>“as we all know, you don’t study English to get a real job, dag nabbit! You go to work, you make 15 cents an hour, and you pay your way through technical school! In my day, we had to walk – 25 miles in the snow, with no shoes, and sometimes no feet – to get to the civil servant’s exam, and you LIKED IT! And then, if you didn’t pass, you worked for Pa in the factory, and you LIKED IT! And Ma would get you a home cooked meal, and it tasted like slop, because it WAS slop, but you LIKED IT! And if you were a girl, and you thought like a girl, and you looked like a girl, you worked like a girl, and typed 800 words per minute for a dime a day to give to your Pa…and you LIKED IT! Unless you thought like a girl, and looked like a girl, but you WEREN’T a girl, in which case you got the livin’ bejeezus beat outta ya…and you LIKED IT! (No, wait, you didn’t, 'cause then you would be a doggone fruitcake, now wouldn’t ya?) And then all them purdy li’l clerks got married, and they had kids, and they went and learned how to cook just like Ma, but it was never like Ma, and their boys all went off to find real jobs, while the girls stayed home and helped their Ma’s…and everyone LIKED IT!”</p>

<p>I might go watch Dead Poets’ Society this weekend. “Carpe Diem.” “O Captain, My Captain.” My whole family must think "silly f–gots, Emerson’s for fairies. Real men don’t go fancy-dancing on Broadway, and real women only cook quiche.</p>

<p>By the way, I consider myself a real woman, and I neither cook…nor like quiche. :wink: I am actually a girl, who’s very empathetic towards the ‘fancy dancing’ Broadway-ites and Glee Club…if I was destined to be a purdy li’l married, family-friendly clerk with a purdy, perky smile, I wouldn’t be going away to college to be a creative professional. I’d get my Master’s at Bates (wink, nudge), and go all “Misery” on my hypothetical hubby, once I graduate in June and give <em>him</em> a slice of the old Cleaver! ;-)</p>

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<p>ok…what?
practicing your stream of consciousness?</p>

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<p>um, kinda. :slight_smile: I do have a (bad) habit of making long posts, and maybe I should know when to cut off, but I kind of wanted to emphasize the ludicrousness of my own helicopter family, and why I really want to “chop” the ties that bind (in more ways than one…figuratively, of course.)</p>

<p>They actually are very backwards about the Internet and are paranoid about me having to apply to schools online, so the whole Ma and Pa Kettle dialogue was a poke at how old-fashioned they are (and really will always be). The “slice of the cleaver” is perhaps a rather graphic feminist statement of how I don’t want to be old-fashioned like June Cleaver or the prototypical 1950s moms (and the Bates thing a very innuendo-ish reference to both Kathy Bates and Norman Bates), and how I’m really very anti-tradition and progressive and all that.</p>

<p>Just to clarify or “unclog” the stream. :-)</p>

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<p>Emerson is really expensive.</p>