<p>Was Mom the student? ;)</p>
<p>"> And presumably those who are paying for expensive colleges can</p>
<p>A lot of those paying for expensive colleges can’t. Really. See the thread on the misery of cosigning parents.</p>
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<h2>Going into massive debt = more invested."</h2>
<p>BCEagle, you are conflating two different problems. One is with the parent, the other (potentially) with the child. IMO parents who overextend themselves–either by taking on college debt that in turn leads to other financial hardships, or through cosigned loans that come back to bite them later–are not mature or responsible enough to tell their kids what to do. And in any case, if they truly CAN’T afford the education they have committed to paying for their kids, there’s still no guarantee that hovering over them and micromanaging their lives will lead to a different outcome than if they hadn’t been so involved. Is there evidence that external pressure from parents leads to better job prospects for their kids after college? I’d be surprised.</p>
<p>We had a Mommy show up for graduate school orientation. Do any of you guys truly think that’s appropriate? </p>
<p>Good God NO! I cant imagine that. Not under ANY circumstances.</p>
<p>What if the potential grad student is 15 or 16 (or even younger)? </p>
<p>It does happen!</p>
<p>mpm - you didn’t make the orientation at the grad school for son? You are too laidback. :p</p>
<p>Mine was 10000 miles away when I started. So it worked out fine.</p>
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<p>Well, Mrs. Turbo did have a baby in the middle of the semester in grad school and did have to take a makeup exam a couple weeks later… But she did not have Grandma Turbo call and ask for the makeup exam :)</p>
<p>Seriously, tho, so much in life is learned the hard way that it’s pointless to even argue on the value of helicopter parenting. Think of helicopter parenting as the ‘study guide’ or ‘review test’ offered by a helpful professor. Even if money is no object, there are lots of things to be learned the hard way and lots that don’t need to be. Thus, the value of ‘hover heuristics’ is mostly monetary / convenience based and not done for deeper, influential reasons.</p>
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<p>This is a rather bizarre piece of logic.</p>
<p>A person can certainly be bad at one thing and very good at another.</p>
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<p>There are no guarantees in life. One can give correct or incorrect
advice. But someone with experience may be quite a bit better than
someone without it.</p>
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<p>External pressure on who?</p>
<p>cobrat, I would hope that the parent/adult child relationship is fundamentally different from the scholarship-grantor/grantee one.</p>
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<p>Have your kids ever lied to you?</p>
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<p>There was a very high-performing student here that essentially drank himself to death. Do you think that a parent more closely following that student might have resulted in a better outcome? There were parents here screaming at him to stop (from what I’ve heard). Good school performance doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems. It could be drinking, drugs, gambling that are picked up in college.</p>
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<p>I suppose that depends on how well you know and trust your kid that may have been exposed to a lot of outside influences.</p>
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<p>But both are examples of a helicopter parent. So sometimes they are good and sometimes they are bad? Or everyone can pick and choose?</p>
<p>BC, that’s not an example of a helicopter parent. Saving someone from themselves or others (physically) is part of being a decent human being IMO.</p>
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<p>How would you know if you weren’t in frequent contact?</p>
<p>The parents here just want to drop them off and then see them the following spring - the kids should be able to handle everything on their own?</p>
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<p>One thing about being an adult and in need of a large financial loan/grant…the other individual adult being asked is under no legal or moral obligation to oblige.</p>
<p>Moreover, if said individual adult does provide the large financial loan/grant…they are perfectly within their rights to demand certain conditions are met provided they aren’t illegal…and to cut it off if those conditions aren’t being met. </p>
<p>Not too different from how the “real world” works when a large loan/grant is being requested from another party.</p>
<p>Keeping an eye on how our investment in our child’s college education is turning out is not the same as wanting to control the college experience. My daughter is free to choose the classes she wants to take, belong to the clubs or teams she would like to participate in, room with whomever and wherever she wishes, so long as no major problems arise. I don’t call her or snoop on her; I let her call me.</p>
<p>BUT, she’s there to get a good education that will allow her to be self-supporting. We want her to be happy and enjoy herself too, but that is not the primary goal. Furthermore, we’ve allowed her to attend a more expensive school than she might have, which was a sacrifice for us. That doesn’t mean we’re being fiscally irresponsible or going into crippling debt. It does mean that we are forgoing some things we need and want. When we spend money on her plane tickets back and forth to college several times a year, that means we don’t have that money to take a vacation ourselves, and so on. We are willing to spend our resources for her benefit so long as our child is taking advantage of the opportunity afforded. If she were to decide to stop going to class and stop doing her schoolwork for whatever reason, then we’d make her come home. If she were to decide to spend her days getting drunk or high, we’d make her come home.</p>
<p>the two school presidents sound arrogant and probably need to look in the mirror before preaching the way the do!</p>
<p>I want my daughter to grow into a productive blah blah blah all the cliches adult and I am not sure if I would be classified as a helicopter parent. Maybe in some ways. But I don’t call/text her everyday and I never hovered over her homework assignments (unless she asked for help.) I never was allowed to read any of her essays - one day I bribed her with shopping if she would let me read just one paper from AP english! While she was in high school I emailed 2 of her teachers one time -and one was just to thank her for something really sweet she had done for my daughter. Have never spoke to her principal etc… And when the other cheerleader moms would get up in arms about their daughters I pretty much ignored them and whatever drama they were causing that week.</p>
<p>But if a college thinks I am going to drop my daughter off and just walk away they are very mistaken. My daughter has a chronic medical condition and I will be checking on her medications/sending them to her when she needs more and taking her to appointments at her specialist. I guess if that make me a helicopter parent oh well.</p>
<p>I recently heard an expression I hadn’t heard before, " we give them roots and we give them wings." Thirty odd years ago, my parents dropped me off at college (400 miles from home) and came back for graduation. They got my grades in the mail and I came home on breaks but I found my way home and moved myself in after that. I was the youngest of 4 so they had been through it before.
When we move our ds into college this week , we’ll return for parent’s weekend and expect a call on Sunday nights but he’s be mortified if we ‘smothered’ him. We let him and his room mate drive up to orientation by themselves 200 miles away. He said about half the incoming Freshman had their parents with them, half not. We tried to give him roots and we’ll try to give him his wings. …And I’ll hold my breath and pray, remembering how I was at that age…</p>
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<p>Actually knew some undergrad classmates who were around that age while in their upperclass years. One undergrad classmate GRADUATED from my LAC with honors at 17 a couple of years before I did. From what his father once told me…with the exception of discounted tuition due to a near-full ride scholarship…he has been completely independent since he started college as a late adolescent/early teen. </p>
<p>Sounded like his parents were really hands-off and treated him much like most adults treat adult children. Doubt they checked on his grades…and considering his academic performance…wasn’t a real need. </p>
<p>Heck, when I first met him…he had such an air of maturity and gravitas about him that it was hard to believe how young he was until became close buddies and he showed me ID revealing his actual age. </p>
<p>He’s now a tenure-track Prof at a well-known university.</p>
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<p>“Ever” is a very long time. I trust my adult D to be up front with me. If your children can’t be trusted, then yes, you probably need to continue to treat them as children. </p>
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<p>I don’t know the details, and without the details, that’s an unanswerable question. </p>
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<p>Or at any point after college. At what point do you turn off the rotor?</p>