time to power down the helicopter?

[fauve]

Thank you Elizabethh.

Kudos to you for knowing when to advocate, and when to rev down.

[Hanna]

I work at a graduate school. Nothing in the article surprised me whatsoever.

So what if the guy at Stanford Business School has a secretary? He's a big shot. When you're a big shot, you can have a secretary too. But if 99% of the applicants are able to handle the application process without a secretary/mom getting involved, then the 1% who can't handle their own affairs look like idiots in front of the admissions staff. That's very bad strategy.

It happens with employers, too. Speaking for myself, I wouldn't hire a babysitter whose mom called me to discuss salary, much less an executive.

There's an appropriate level of involvement, of course. When I work with clients applying to college, my client is the family, not just the student. I talk to my parents before I make any major (and plenty of minor) decisions. But in graduate school and the business world, the parent needs to be behind the scenes.

['rentof2]

Kei-o-lei, who gets to decide it's porn? If I'm watching Last Tango in Paris it may be porn to one person and not to the other.

Same with the helocopter cliche.

By the way, I've spent a fair amount of time on the computer helping both my kids figure out their courses for next term. I wouldn't call an advisor because they haven't proven to be very useful. A lot of the time parents make much better advisors because, like missypie said, they have a vested interest in the student's wellbeing and in their own financial contribution.

My kids go to their advisors when they need to get something signed-off on, and that's about it.

[LongPrime]

Mom's do close-end, intense, local support in helicopters.

Dad's do high altitude strategic support, overseeing the big picture in drones and B52's. Sometimes in F18 fastburners.

[menloparkmom]

"Mom's do close-end, intense, local support in helicopters.

Dad's do high altitude strategic support, overseeing the big picture in drones and B52's. Sometimes in F18 fastburners. "

LOL! I just love the visual picture this explanation elicits!

[poetgrl]

Yes Longprime, it's true. D calls me for one thing and H for entirely other things. Niether seems more important, just different. He gets the good news faster. How does that happen.

[BCEagle91]

> So what if the guy at Stanford Business School has a secretary? He's a big shot.
> When you're a big shot, you can have a secretary too.

There was a story recently about a college student that wanted to hire a fulltime or near fulltime personal assistant. Could we afford that? Yeah, we could. There are students that are big shots via their families.

> But if 99% of the applicants are able to handle the application process without
> a secretary/mom getting involved, then the 1% who can't handle their own affairs
> look like idiots in front of the admissions staff.

How do you know that 99% of applicants handle the application process without help?

> That's very bad strategy.

Just mask appearances.

> It happens with employers, too. Speaking for myself, I wouldn't hire a babysitter
> whose mom called me to discuss salary, much less an executive.

We're getting into strawman territory here.

> There's an appropriate level of involvement, of course. When I work with
> clients applying to college, my client is the family, not just the student. I talk
> to my parents before I make any major (and plenty of minor) decisions. But in
> graduate school and the business world, the parent needs to be behind the
> scenes.

Or provide that appearance.

[Kei-o-lei]

'rentof2 said: "Kei-o-lei, who gets to decide it's porn? If I'm watching Last Tango in Paris it may be porn to one person and not to the other. Same with the helocopter cliche."

Yep, one person's "gosh I'm just helping my child" may look to another like swooping in, but . . .

move away from the edge you used as an example to something else, say "Deep Throat": there IS such a thing as porn and there IS such as thing as helicopter parenting

or ask folks who work at colleges if there are any examples of egregious entitled parental meddling, and they will fill your cup; a friend works at a small private 4 year and they hire students for orientation to separate the parents so that the kids can be oriented without mom and dad sitting next to them

Kei

[shawbridge]

I will want to be there as advisors to my kids and am at the moment, especially for my son, as he does have special needs as well as special gifts. I will also use my connections to help them learn about the opportunities that exist in the world. . I would not be surprised to be asked by my son (and maybe later by my daughter) to think through strategy for applying to grad school and to edit a grad school essay. I think my son will consult with me on choice of major and even choice of courses, but he'll decide. Both kids ask me to edit drafts of papers. I'm happy to help. I don't expect to do their work for them, although my daughter sometimes is hoping for the extra level of help, which I try not to provide. If advising and editing and guiding are helicoptering, I'm OK with that.

I don't think I'm ADD. I recall my parents helping in high school, but don't recall drawing on my parents at all in college. So, the transition was not a big problem.

But, I have organized my life to have lots of help, which pertains to earlier posts by marite and mathmom. I have a supportive wife who is much better at the social arena than I am and plans social engagements with my friends and colleagues (as well as hers) and is a great cook. Like the B52 and F18 guy in our lives, I handle strategy and she handles lots of day to day stuff. This does sound like pretty traditional gender roles, but she handles construction and painting and can build stuff on her own -- she has the power tools and I don't. But, she's not a detail person and she's very busy with her own career. For many years, I have hired an executive assistant who does all kinds of things (they tend to love the job for about three years and then need something new). The job description is to take on any task, business or personal, that enables me to do those things that the world things I'm particularly good at and frees me from the many things at which I am not especially good. Reminds me about anniversaries (and orders the flowers), birthdays, makes appointments for me to bring my car in, makes sure I get to meetings on time, schedules my meetings, etc. When I had visiting dignitaries from another country in which we were trying to mediate a dispute come to visit, one terrific assistant found a hotel for the meetings, organized a cocktail reception, found a Harvard tour guide who spoke the visitors' language, etc. My assistants make travel reservations for work (I'm in Europe about once a month and got back from Miami tonight) and for family vacations. [I once hired a man for this position (he was a complete bust), and have hired women of various ages. It is not a condition of getting hired, but I've found that the best people for this job are youngish women, often single mothers, and often pretty. Young because typically if they've worked too long for a big company, they have a way to do things and don't adapt well enough to mine. Single mothers tend to be really good at multi-tasking and being efficient. Not sure why pretty, but I think that they are used to getting their way and to charming people in order to do so; as a result, they can get people whom they deal with only on the phone to bend rules and be helpful.]

I'd hope that my son and daughter array helpful people around them. My son already does (including me). My daughter so far does not, but we'll work on it. She's also much more socially gifted but is ADD and really needs more help than she takes advantage of (help would be there if she wanted).

[starbright]

I don't get some of this thread.

If your child can handle the demands of say an AP HS class, or actually writing their own essay for a college application, or succeeding in a normal college class (ADD or otherwise)-- there is no reason they can't manage filling out forms, self-advocating, sorting out their electives, registering for classes and negotiating with their professors or advisors.

If its your ''financial investment" you are worried about, why are you investing in an expensive college education for a child who can't actually do some secretarial work on their own?

I just see this giant disconnect. Kids might actually like the help. Parents seem to love it. But parents are not needed most of the time and i think they are doing a serious disservice to their kids when they do things for them that the kids can do themselves.

There is a giant difference between being close to your child and maintaining their dependence upon you. I talk to my kids a LOT. They seek out my opinion (though usually do their own thing anyway). We spend a lot of time together. But the minute they could DO things for themselves, they had to (from making their own beds, to setting their own alarm clocks, to booking their own dental appointments, and doing their own laundry).

Having a close and high quality relationship with someone has nothing to do with making and keeping that person dependent upon you.

[shawbridge]

starbright, at the end of the day, our kids will have to learn to manage without us. But, some people are good at the administrative part of life and some not. They will all get better at it as their pre-frontal cortex develops (development doesn't end there until 19 or 20). And some, like the dyslexic or ADD kids I have, have special challenges there. Organizational strength is not necessarily correlated with the kind of intellectual ability that will be developed (and tested) in a high-end college. But, they may not ever do it all on their own -- as I pointed out above, I certainly don't.

[starbright]

i hear what you are saying Shawbridge. I have such a child myself. But I still see the giant disconnect. College isn't just high minded ideas and sharing intellectual thoughts. It's meeting the syllabus guidelines, showing up for your team meeting, finishing and handing in your lab report, studying enough before the exam and so forth. The reality is there is a ton of 'administration' that falls on even the most brilliant minds at even the mot elite colleges.

Bright kids cut out for college- ADD and otherwise- find ways on their own to do these things. While colleges do a pretty good job of accomodating LD and ADD (as they should!), the reality is if your child can't do "administrative" they can't do college on their own either. Fortunately most can if they have to. My comment is not to suggest one's child with ADD can't do extremely well in college, but rather if your child can't get INTO college with hand holding of this kind in the senior year, they will really not be ready for first year of college less than a year later.

[shawbridge]

I want to agree with you because what you say sounds reasonable, but my son would have had real difficulty applying to colleges without administrative help (and some strategic help, although admittedly his situation is unusual). He had an unusual high school experience -- he's extremely bright, extremely dyslexic and had serious health problems -- and was partially homeschooled, didn't take a foreign language. He just didn't look like a typical applicant and it was hard to predict how schools would evaluate him. So, he applied to a larger than normal number of highly selective colleges and got in to a number. He just couldn't have done the administrative work on the college application process.

Now, he's attending one of the highly selective schools. As far as he knows, he has A's in three of his four courses (highest grade in one course thus far) and an A- to A in the remaining course. The grading seems to be on a curve. He's participating in a fairly intensive extra-curricular activity (tournaments most Friday/Saturdays at other schools). So far, he seems to be doing OK so I don't think your statement can be categorically correct.

[elizabethh]

starbright, I have seen enormous growth in my ADD son over the past year, and I expect to see continued growth during his senior year. However, he is still in need of "handholding" some of the time, and I see nothing wrong with that. Interestingly, when H and I have been away from home and he has been more on his own (with my mother watching him - not much help there), he has managed to take care of business quite effectively. Part of the reason why he needs handholding is because of us, there's no doubt...but we've also seen his confidence grow and his skills develop, and we are sure he'll be fine in college without us!

[marite]

I agree that college involves a lot of administrative stuff. Some brilliant students are not particularly good at it. What many posters were reacting to was the idea that if students cannot be self-reliant in college, how are they going to handle the challenges of "real life?" Many of us pointed out that in real life, we depend on others to do a lot of "administrative stuff." These others can be our spouses, our children (especially when it involves new-fangled technology) personal assistants and secretaries, research assistants, accountants, etc... I would not be surprised if some of the profs who complain about helicopter parents have assistants (plural).