Helicopter parents

Does anyone find it strange that institutions which profit from the decisions of children are asking parents who now pay up to 50% of their own retirement savings PER CHILD for college to back off and let someone who maybe just turned 17 make decisions which will affect such a substantial windfall?

It would be one thing if the schools were taking some responsiblity for the benefit of the students but they do not. In fact they specifically ask that they are not held accountable for the students behavior or the results of that behavior or the environments on their campus. There does not exist the sense of adult responsibility towards the growth and development of a child that one would expect from an educational institution. Culturally adults no longer care for other people’s children. Even at 22 kids are not fully developed emotionally or intellectually and continue to need responsible guidance while making their own decisions.

We now have extraordinary alcohol, drug abuse, and other damaging activity as a ‘right of passage’ as part of the college experience, with considerable personal and financial cost to the student and their families for ‘learning mistakes’. Colleges are not charities and they are not your advocates. They are just trying to bully parents to relieve the pressure they must feel to justify up to $160,000 payment in 4 years.

What successful people have found is that you have to be your own advocate and that of your child. We should not be taking any advice from a group which is selling us overpriced services while insulting us and asking us to put a less interested party in charge of our children.

There is a tremendous manipulation going on of parents during the college ‘purchase’ period. It is much like buying a car where they want you to make emotional decisions and not practical one. Most parents these days see this and are very involved. We also see that the bar is very low for most college employees.

Although this year’s admission is one of the largest college classes in history, the tide is turning and colleges will have to provide the experience we would like for our children and maybe for ourselves. Do not expect less. Teach the same to your children.

Parent of college age child, at 4:25 pm EDT on September 23, 2008

It Works

My wife and daughter spoke at least twice a day every day. Subsequently, our daughter completed her baccalaureate program within four years and earned her MBA within a year and a half. The daily dialogue helped her negotiate the little pitfalls and matriculation gaps that were overlooked by academic advisors, generated by occasional bureaucratic anomalies, and/or had been created by benign clerical errors. Less than a tenth of a percent of the cellphone time was expended on homework. Neither party complained about the calls. Their practice made matriculation a successful team effort. University student support services cannot cover all aspects of motivation and assistance. Helicopter parents help bridge the gaps and mend the wounds that are encounted in college.

Taylor A. Cisco, Jr., Program Compliance Officer at City Colleges of Chicago — District Office, at 11:30 am EDT on March 15, 2007

Granted that parents can sometimes be a big help. They can also cause more stress and anxiety in their child with unrealistic expectations. Additionally, students are not gaining coping skills when mommy calls my office instead of the student because the student is shy or (fill in the excuse).

Admin, at 3:35 pm EDT on March 15, 2007

Will you hover on the honeymoon?

I thank god daily that my parents left me alone in college. It was hard as hell, I had to pay for every penny myself, and it took me 6 years to afford it, but I cared a lot more about that education than almost any other student there. I also got a lot more out of it and grew up a lot faster. And, for those wondering, I’m not talking about the good old days — I graduated 6 years ago.

Would I be this harsh with my kids? No. I’d pay tuition for them and send them the occasional care package. I’d listen if they wanted to give a call and ask for advice. I’d give them a choice about coming home over breaks or not. But, in the end, the choice is up to them. College is not an extension of high school. It is the beginning of adulthood, and students deserve to be treated accordingly. You do them a disservice otherwise.

ANT, at 6:00 pm EDT on March 15, 2007

There’s a distinction to make: parents who are like friends to their college-age children and parents who seem to see college as an extension of high school. While i talk to my mother multiple times a day, it’s to discuss the news, to relate a funny bumper sticker one of us just saw, or just to shoot the breeze. My freshman roommate’s mother, however, dictated what classes her daughter should take; i can clearly remember hearing her argue with her mom one semester because she didn’t want to take third-semester calculus but her mother insisted. The only financial help i get from my mother is a twenty-dollar bill in the mail periodically, and the only academic help from her is proofreading on papers, because no one seems to understand punctuation rules these days. The emotional help i get, however, in having someone so supporting and who knows me so well is priceless. My mother destresses me, very much unlike the meddling helicopter parents this article seems to describe!

hannah, at 5:00 am EDT on March 16, 2007

Friendly To Pissed Off In Just One Day!

Since the appearance of this article yesterday, I have become very self-conscious about my four-or five-times-a-day cell phone communication with my son (see earlier post).

Our first communication of the day is at 7 a.m. when he is driving ten miles to campus and he calls me. [It is noteworthy that he and I are probably in the 99th percentile, world-wide, in proficiency of using Google to get information.]

So our conversation began with his telling me that Tiger Woods is at the top of the leader board today at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. Then he told me that Tiger has been at the top of the leader board at the end of the first day 23 times in his professional career. In those tournaments he has finished in the top ten 19 times, the top five 17 times, and has won 13 times. Needless to say, I was already at the API web site and told him play was currently suspended (rain). My son shot back, “And when he’s in the lead on day one and the second round is suspended by rain and its the second day of the NCAA’s March Madness Basketball Tournament, Tiger has won every time.” We laughed hysterically at that witticism.

Then our conversation went to a discussion of why Google’s search engine doesn’t use “regular expressions,” he gave me some helpful hints about logging onto Linux, and I told him I heard (on the Michael Feldman Show) that the C.I.A.’s search engine only accepts one word in quotation marks. If true, WOW!

By then he was at his office at the Hotline of the Computer Aided Engineering Network ...

http://www.engin.umich.edu/caen/campcaen/slideshow.html

and that was the end of our first conversation of the day.

So what? My first post in response to this news report was friendly. But now I’m pissed off. We Americans are often so anal retentive it’s a wonder we’re capable of sustaining the world’s highest manufacturing and assembly production rates. I mean it’s difficult to crank out widgets when you’re sitting there in the lotus position contemplating your naval.

Soccer Moms, NASCAR Dads, Latchkey Kids, Jesus Freaks, Helicopter Parents ... cut me some slack. My God, you’d think a population as self-absorbed as ours would at least be able to solve its problems ... but we’re so inept at that it’s mind boggling.

The best we can hope for our kids (well, almost the best) is to guide them to a point where they know right from wrong, good from bad, up from down ... and then turn them loose, all the while being there as a last (or first) resort when they run into something that THEY’D like assistance with. And if that doesn’t happen (on the average) by the time they’re old enough to get a driver’s license ... well shame on us.

And by the way hannah, you’re okay. If you’re ever in need of a grandfather, just give me a call. [Oh yes, the next time you use “destresses,” put a hyphen in there. That threw me off completely.]

RWH, at 9:30 am EDT on March 16, 2007