We are all amateurs here, compared to this woman my husband met last night. I don’t know if parts are exaggerated or not… some of it seems so extreme…
Last night, my husband and I went to a potluck dinner for a club I’m in. A new member showed up, and my husband sat at her table. (I sat at another, and H relayed all of this to me on the drive home.)
As we got in the car, H told me, “I thought you were a helicopter parent until tonight, but you are a total free-range parent compared to this woman at my table.”
So, my H was telling everyone about visiting colleges this summer with our D, etc. This woman, then, started to give advice to my H about when we send D away to college, and relayed everything she and her husband did.
Her own daughter graduated from college with her Bachelor’s degree last spring. She is working with her father, at his company. Her D is also living at home with her parents still.
Her D went to state flagship, and - get this - twice a month, the parents drove two hours from our area to the university, to help D clean her room and do her laundry! They would bring the vacuum cleaner with them. Mom (the woman talking with my husband) did not say if she had a room mate or not.
They told the daughter what to major in, and then the daughter would change the major “behind our backs.” smh H forgot what the D ended up majoring in…
Mom said that in freshman year, they would skype with D every night. For the entire year. They had a set time. Then, in sophomore year, D would fail to skype more and more, and it went down to once a week for the rest of her time in college. Parents did not like that, but accepted it finally.
Dad arranged for D to be hired at his company because D told them she “did not know how to find a job.” So she and her father commute to work every day in the car, and apparently he lectures her during this time, most days, about her future - grad school, where she should live, etc. Mom told my husband that, every morning, she reminds the husbnad not to lecture the D.
D recently told her parents she wants to move out and get her own place. Parents, without D even asking them, found her apartments in the town where she works. That town has high rents and D cannot afford to live there. She told them she wanted to look elsewhere for a cheaper apartment. (This is in a suburban area of Chicago, and the suburbs are close together…) They said No, she can’t move out unless she lives in the town where she works. They also told her she has to buy a car and pay cash for it. Which she cannot afford.
Mom said this is to ensure that D will NOT move out of their home. They want her to live with them at home.
So if she pays cash for a car, and agrees to live in the high-rent area, then they “will let her” move out.
The mother told my husband that, if D does manage to move out, and preferably, to this town, then they will sell their house and move to that town, too.
She said, I know girls here in the US move out after college, but in India, that’s not how we do it.
We know other people from India, or whose parents are from India, and their families/parents don’t seem quite this controlling, so I don’t buy her blaming it on being from India…
Anyway, I knew super-controlling parents like this existed, but have never met or seen one in person before!
I’m glad she wasn’t at my table. I would have had to defend her poor daughter’s position…
