<p>I agree with the poster who said your darned if you do and your darned if you don’t. </p>
<p>And the schools (at least the elementary/middle/high/schools) have played their own part in this. My own Mom was considered an “involved parent” (a good thing), because she attended PTA meetings and helped at the class holiday party once a year. Now the schools are forever asking parents to help in the classroom, library and school office, monitor lunchroom, teach after school enrichment, run umpteen fundraisers, plan and organize school assemblies, and the list goes on. The schools demand that parents give time, energy & money but if you ask a question you are labeled “helicopter parent”.</p>
<p>MommaJ said: “A THREE DAY parent orientation? Good grief! Sounds like helicopter training school to me. No parent needs to know that much about a child’s college.”</p>
<p>To carry forward what compmomsaid . . . when I was a first time parent I went to the parents’ orientation and did it AS IT WAS LAID OUT BY THE SCHOOL. MommaJ’s position - that a three day parent orientation is overly long - is a good point but it has NOTHING to do with being a helicopter parent. Seems more than a bit off to blame individuals who are going along with the school’s program.</p>
<p>There is value there for a longer orientation, too. As a first time college parent I WAS curious - for my own edificiation - about how colleges worked these days, how financial aid works, how bills were to be paid, the insurance choices and a myriad of other things that have changed in the last 30 years. It also helped correct misconceptions about college these days that I had carried over from my own education, I met a few other parents who were invaluable in helping me recalibrate my college knowledge to the 2000s . . . and I enjoyed swimming in the OSU pool.</p>
<p>P.S.The BEST part of orientation at Ohio State was the first morning, when the new frosh - sittting in the front 12 or rows of the auditorium, with parents directed to he back - were all told to stand up and leave - while parents were told to stay put for more of their orientation. You could hear the tension-filled intakes of breath as parents realized that their DDes and DSes were LEAVING THE ROOM and that the next time parents would see their kids would be the FOLLOWING AFTERNOON at class selection time. Cell phones clicked open and you could see frantically texting parents obviously trying to get in touch with their kids. That was most amusing.</p>
<p>Come to think of it, the label may be new, but not the behavior. I remember certain parents from my own elementary & junior high who were always manipulating things.</p>
<p>first-time college parent here. and i will be HAPPILY and eagerly attending the 2-or-3-day parent orientation. i want to know as much as i can about the place my son will be spending the next four years of his life, and i expect to learn a lot!</p>
<p>kei-o-lei: about your earlier post about parent’s need v. child’s need…to quote the late, great bob marley: “every need got an ego to feed.”</p>
<p>JHS: It sounds like you live in a challenging community in which deviation from the community ethos is not tolerated. I think it would find it intimidating.</p>
<p>I agree with compmom about the judgmentalness. On the same day I was often criticized by differing people as not protective enough and as too protective.</p>
<p>I <em>am</em> neurotic, and my parents had very little to do with my upbringing. As my mom says, “I no longer had parents when I was eight.” I learned they weren’t interested and did everything for myself. My neurosis expresses itself in <em>extreme</em> fears about safety – like wanted me or H to drive kids on very rainy nights in our very hilly town when leaves were all over the streets and accidents frequently occurred. Other parents seemed content to have seniors and juniors drive around their fourteen year olds on such nights. I wasn’t. Too scared.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I couldn’t have cared less what movies they saw, etc. etc. If they could get themselves into the movie, they could see it as far as I was concerned.</p>
<p>I was roundly tongue lashed by two married child psychiatrists for allowed kids to watch movies about the Holocaust when they were little. The docs forbade their kids anything upsetting. Said their kids got nightmares and couldn’t handle it. Fair enough. But mine didn’t, and they were interested. I also felt that some kids had to live through this stuff. Mine could certainly watch movies about it if they wanted. My D also watched L & O Special Victims Unit way before I wanted her to (sleezy sex stuff) but she liked the legal issues and I didn’t interfere. Can’t see any negative results.</p>
<p>I was way to neurotic to leave them with baby sitters. Friends were extremely critical of that.</p>
<p>But. S went off to Rome when he was 14 on a school trip and wandered the city alone with just one friend. D went to NYC for dance class once a week even earlier.</p>
<p>As for grades, no I never ever intervened. Did try to encourage the kids to speak up for themselves on occasion.</p>
<p>So, I don’t know if I’m a helicopter parent. I know that friends who desperately wanted me to leave my kids with sitters and go out with them on Sat. night were mighty annoyed with me. H thought I was crazy to not let kids ride around with juniors and seniors.</p>
<p>I guess we all stretch ourselves as much as we can.</p>
<p>The fluid definition of “helicopter parenting” reminds me of the old George Carlin bit about drivers. There are two kinds: idiots and maniacs. The idiots are the ones who drive slower than you do, and the maniacs are the ones who drive faster.</p>
<p>Helicopter parents are the ones who do more for their child than you do for yours.</p>
<p>At one point in college if my mom didn’t hear from me for a few weeks running she’d send me emails in which the subject line was “Are you dead?” And I would know that I should probably call her.</p>
<p>Now she just follows me on twitter and knows that if I’m posting, I’m fine. :p</p>
<p>frazzled1 said: “Helicopter parents are the ones who do more for their child than you do for yours.”</p>
<p>hahahahaha</p>
<p>so those stories I hear from my college administrator friends about overbearing parent behaviors are just projections of their own parenting styles . . . nice!</p>
<p>true stories, these: so it’s OK for a parent to call and argue for a grade change? OK for a parent to call and make an appointment for the parent to select courses for her kid (no kid medical or psych issues, BTW); OK for a parent to call and ask the RA to speak with her kid’s roommate about a living together issue (without the kid talking to the RA first)</p>
<p>there IS such a thing as helicopter parenting, and it’s an ugly and disheartening thing to experience first hand</p>
<p>those parents I gave examples of were doing the kid’s work for them, not helping the kids to learn how to do it themselves</p>
<p>… um … I don’t know if you’re directing your questions at me, Kei-o-lei? Hope not - I’m not really an expert on helicopter parenting. I don’t think it’s okay that parents have so imposed on your college administrator friends, and therefore my answer would be “no” to the above questions about situations that have so disheartened them, and you. </p>
<p>I am a bit tired of the phrase “helicopter parenting,” though, and of its status as a handy-dandy issue for some folks to trot out whenever there isn’t something more immediate to angst over. I am not saying you are doing this, but certain talking heads and other pundits enjoy making points with their fanbases when they do. And I do think that the definition of “helicopter parenting” is somewhat fluid, as can be seen in the responses here, and reflective of one’s own viewpoint.</p>
<p>No offense intended, though. Puzzled by your response.</p>
<p>So does this make me a helicopter parent? I was looking over the courses that my soon to be college student registered for. (these were the classes his advisor told him to take). He had my son sign up for the wrong accounting class which would have messed up his sequence. My son make the call to change it, but it would have been a huge mistake if I hadn’t looked over the form. For now I will keep my rotors whirling!</p>
<p>Speaking as someone who has to be constantly piloting the giant military-sized helicopter for my Aspie son, I have do ■■■ moments from time to time, and I wish I were free of day-to-day issues with him. But then I give myself a metaphorical kick in the butt, because there are many whose lives are worse than mine.</p>
<p>Umm…maybe. However, as long as I am writing the $42,000 check I will look at what classes he is registering for. If it was on someone else’s dime, then I would have let it be.</p>
<p>I am going to let your second sentence slide.</p>
<p>I agree Kajon. Advisors don’t always know what they are doing. A student last fall in a (difficult) calculus-based Physics I course came to me (the TA) after the second assignment and said she had no idea what she was doing. After some discussion with her, I discovered she had been told by her advisor that it would be fine to enroll in the physics course even though she had never taken any calculus, was not then enrolled in calculus, and had just transferred from a cc as an accounting major. </p>
<p>I advised her to drop asap, even though it then messed up her full-time status. Sometimes students don’t know what they are supposed to be doing - that’s why they have ADVISORS, rocket.</p>
<p>My first roommate in college didn’t know how to do her laundry. I offered to help her since it was her first time away from home and maybe she never had to do it before. So I was surprised to come back to our dorm one day after class and see her mom there, sorting her clothes! Fortunately this only happened twice and she got the hang of it after that and did laundry independently from there on in. </p>
<p>I suppose it really varies from family to family - some parents believe it is their personal responsibility to do as much as they can for their child, whereas others try to raise their kids to be independent. Personally I’m glad my parents fell into the latter category. </p>
<p>My mom taught me basic life skills: balancing a checkbook, doing laundry, cooking simple but healthy meals, etc in my teens. Before she died I was the one taking care of her, not the other way around. I don’t think most helicopter parents stop to imagine what might happen if they can no longer taken care of their child: would that young “adult” even be capable of caring for him or herself? I guess people try to think about less morbid things generally. I think micromanaging to the point where it cripples that child’s personal growth is crossing the line and becoming a “helicopter parent”.</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with being a helicopter parent. Those dissenting should just leave their kids at their college when they are seven or eight. That will teach them independence.</p>
<p>“One of my kids suffers from a chronic illness that required a lot of intense monitoring and interaction while growing up. People seem surprised that she is now at college, on her own, and not living at home. I have heard that I was often judged because of the behaviors this illness required, and because I never had any opportunities to explain appropriately. I have learned that the best course of action is to do what we know our individual kids need, and just live with whatever gossip or judgement may follow.”</p>
<p>compmom, my story exactly with my oldest son. People see you as hovering when they don’t know the whole story. I was much closer to my son and way more involved than I would have been if not for his situation. He counted on me a lot more than typical kids his age. This is not the same thing as what the article talks about.
Compmom, the end result is that your child and my child are better for it. Consider yourself a good mother.</p>
I was under the impression - maybe I’m completely wrong here - that “helicopter parent” by definition was a negative term? This is the Wiki definition of the term:
That would be the opposite extreme of helicopter parenting. I think the majority of parents over the past 250,000 years or so have found a reasonable in-between! :)</p>