Whihc post # is the toddler plug story, trying to find it.
Ah, post 67.
Interesting.
Love the term concierge Mom.Brilliant!
I was not a helicopter Mom but concierge yes to some extent.
However my son did get his drivers license on time and helped with driving errands and occasionally dropping and picking his younger sister up so he learnt some responsibility. He also had to drive himself everywhere if he wanted to do all his ECs,volunteering.He had to with two busy working outside of the home parents.
Post #67, @Lindagaf
BTW, IMO, a concierge parent does things like laundry or other household type stuff. NOT write papers or essays for a kid. That is beyond helicopter parenting. That’s unethical, IMO.
BTW, just wondering if anyone likes my helicopter parent avatar 
^^^^post #67
@khmama I love the term “concierge parent”. Like everything there are extreme cases. For the most part, I see them as supportive parents who want to remove unnecessary obstacles to make things run more smoothly. They follow the child rather than dictate to the child what to do (you have to tell the concierge what you want, not the other way around).
Haha, @jym626 , that is awesome!
I think things are so different now for high school kids. I do like the parenting mantra of “just keep them alive.” I also agree they should do chores, etc…and I totally see why people do value those things. I don’t have any qualms about conciergeing for my kids though. I want them to do the best they can possibly do, without getting stressed out because they haven’t done a chore. So if that means doing their laundry and hardly any weekday chores to enable that to happen, I am fine with that.
When I was in high school, I took AP classes, but the college admissions landscape was totally different. I applied to one college, which I wouldn’t get into nowadays. I have seen now that letting my kid focus on what is important to her has paid off with amazing merit aid offers from colleges. No weekly allowance will ever come close to the tens of thousands she has been offered. I think that her schooling is her chore.
Our youngest just turned 18. I naively used to think that we would be about done if we could keep all three kids alive until they turned 18! But our mental health journey didn’t start until our oldest son was 18 1/2, so you never know! I think our parenting requirements have been the most intense the last five years. “Concierge parenting” takes on a new meaning when you’re trying to help a mentally ill adult navigate life. Should I drive him everywhere? Should we buy him glasses when he sits on his one pair? How often should we invite him to stay with us? Should I talk to his case manager every week? And on and on!
@khmamma, “concierge parent” is a brilliant concept. It’s distinctly different from “helicopter parent,” but it’s something that’s a real issue for many families. Should a parent play this role or avoid it? The question is an important one, as we can see from the thoughtful posts on this thread.
In my opinion, the “concierge” approach isn’t necessarily harmful because kids realize that it’s happening because they are kids. Once they define themselves as adults, their views may change.
Case in point: During my son’s junior year in college, I broke my leg two weeks before his winter break started. I could not drive, and his sister, who was in high school, only had a learner’s permit. My husband had a job an hour’s commute away from home, so his ability to help out was limited. The family was struggling to get necessary things done, especially in terms of transportation and errands.
My son came home from college and immediately turned himself into Errand Man. He spent most of his break driving from place to place for the benefit of others. He was willing to go anywhere and do anything – including giving up his own social plans to get his sister to places where she needed to be. He even offered to drop the course he had planned to take in his college’s three-week winter session so that he could spend an additional three weeks at home helping out. (This turned out to be unnecessary because his sister passed her driver’s test just before he left, but the offer was much appreciated.)
And this was a kid who had never helped out with anything before unless someone forced him into it.
When I expressed my appreciation for his help and asked why he had been so willing to pitch in, he said that at 20, he was an adult, and it’s an adult’s responsibility to get stuff done. So he felt that he should be getting the stuff done that needed to get done. It was that simple.
Even if they’re not learning from our expectations, they may be learning from our example.
@Marian. Your situation reminded me of a story told to me by a friend who is a child psychologist. He had a patient once who had lived on a farm til he was 16. He’d Done chores helping out with heavy field work since age 10. He got up at 5 am and did all these chores without being nagged and without complaint. Then they sold the farm and the dad got a good job in the city with a farm supply company. They had a nice new house but the kid had to move schools. Suddenly his attitude seemed to change. He slept late; had to be nagged repeatedly and complained about his few chores ( mowing the relatively tiny lawn, putting his dishes in the dishwasher). His parents were concerned and took him to the doctor. Was he depressed about the move? ( they did feel guilty about it thus the assumption). As it turned out the psychologist discovered that he was happy and liked the move ( had found a girlfriend, like the bigger schools range of activities). So why the attitude change? While it was hard for him to articulate it came down to this. He’d understood on the farm that not doing his chores could lead to ruin for the family. But in the burbs all that was gonna happen is their lawn wouldn’t look nice! Kids do know when things are important. And when they are not.
IMO the issue as to whether it is “important” in a teenager’s eyes is irrelevant. They think car fumes and perfumes, or nail polish color and itunes are important.
@jym626, of course that is true in some instances. Young people place a lot of importance on some things that adults find trivial.
But in the cases @maya54 and I cited, the young people’s judgment of whether something was important was accurate.
My kids had some chores that they did or didn’t do, and if they didn’t do them, I did. One was supposed to empty the dishwasher. If I did it, I would dump the silverware into the drawer without sorting it. Passive aggressive on my part because she hated a messy silverware drawer. I’d hear her sorting it and smile to myself.
The one job I could never get anyone to do was bring in the recycling bins. 20 yards! That’s all they had to do was bring the bins from the end of the driveway to the door. No matter how many times I asked, it never got done. I’d come home on Friday night and there the bins would be, sitting 20 yards from where they sound be. Damn kids.
@Lindagaf - you should also trademark the term “average excellent,” I absolutely love that phrase!!
I’ve sort of resented the term “helicopter parent” for quite a while. To me, it implies that the parent is out of control and cannot see their child as anything other than a special snowflake. I think that relatively few parents would actually fall into the “helicopter parent” category. Similarly, I think few parents are actually full fledged “tiger parents.”
From what I’ve seen so far, most CC parents are rational people who have realized that our kids are going to need much more guidance, assistance, and flexibility than we got as kids. I, like others, only applied to one college when I was 17, got in, and THEN told my parents about it. I was even able to put myself through this directional state college…the tuition was a whopping $300 a semester. These days, kids with the GPA and test scores that I had wouldn’t be able to get into my alma mater (impacted major), and they certainly wouldn’t be able to put themselves through college with a minimum wage job like I did. The landscape is so much different for college bound kids now.
So, yes, I guess I think of myself as more of a “concierge.” I’m a calm, professional person. I’m available at the front desk for any questions or directions you may need. It’s my “job” to know the current college scene inside and out, just like a concierge can tell you about every amenity available during your stay. I help can make arrangements for you to get to your destination. And no, you don’t have to make your bed here, but I’m not the hotel maid, so don’t expect me to do that for you.
The “new” college admissions landscape is a vast, complex, expensive - and a bit scary - scene now, and any child who can navigate that landscape successfully without a “concierge” has my utmost respect. The 17 year old me would not have been able to do that.
So, I reckon that I AM a concierge parent, and the more I think about it, I’m totally okay with it. Thank you everyone for your feedback!
“The one job I could never get anyone to do was bring in the recycling bins. 20 yards! That’s all they had to do was bring the bins from the end of the driveway to the door. No matter how many times I asked, it never got done. I’d come home on Friday night and there the bins would be, sitting 20 yards from where they sound be. Damn kids.”
Another story this time from the psychologist Anthony Wolf about the maturing kid. It was his son’s job to bring in the trash bins and every week, like for you, the trash bins would be sitting at the end of the driveway and would only be brought in after heavy duty nagging. This went on for years like from age 8 to 18. Then one day his son’s senior year Wolf comes home and the bins aren’t there and he thought " like anybody would in my situation ’ oh my God somebody stole our trash bins!" But no the kid at age 18 had finally brought them in. And when Wolf exclaimed " Wow son you brought in the trash bins" the kid looked at him " like I was an idiot and said “Yeah. It’s. My. Job.” Lol.
@khmamma, I think even more guidance may be needed at the transition from college to job. My son has observed that at his elite LAC, which has provided itself on admitted many students of color and students from a broader socio-economic range, his friends who were from poorer families or were first generation college students ended up with much worse jobs out of college. Some of that is parents’ networks but much more of it may be parents coaching the kids to get internships, etc. in relevant fields during summers and otherwise providing guidance that the lower SES kids are often not getting.
@Marian and @maya54 - Any kid with an ounce of respect for his parent would step up to help an injured parent. And a disrespectful kid would slack they leave the farm and hit the big city. Glad your son is mature and caring, @Marian. And the kid seen by the child psychologist needed to be there. The response is simple rationalization.
For most of us, we have less influence in the way our kids turn out than we think.
That’s not to say that nothing anyone does ever has any influence on any outcome. But less than we like to think.
As the late, great Merle Haggard reminds us - Mama Tried.
This is so true. Some of us faculty members reach out to students to help find internships etc. For many, the default is the summer job at the Jersey shore or babysitting - same as what they did during their high school summers. I had to do a lot of convincing for one of my students who was going to turn down a summer research opportunity. She somehow at the last moment took the research position. It helped her to get into a great grad school, where she is now in her final stages.
What we take for granted as “common sense” is really not, for many of my students (directional university with many low SES students). Reading the posts on this forum has really helped me to help those students who don’t have access to parents’ advice about such things .
I don’t have a lot of connections for my daughter to get internships. She applied for a few but wasn’t selected. She, however, has some connections because she hangs out with my brother and his frIends are connected (or even the big cheese at a company). I was feeling sad for her that she didn’t get the internships and then she said ‘well, you know when we (she and brother, not me) went to Mike’s wedding reception? His neighbor owns a construction company and said I could have a job.’ Well call him! All the connections in the world won’t help if you don’t follow up.
To clarify post # 95- the kids’ response (not your responses!) about not doing chores in the new home because it wasn’t important was rationalization. A kid should do what he is asked to do . Whether he thinks it’s important or not is irrelevant.
As for connections- if ya got 'em, use 'em!