I find this pretty simple. A helicopter parent is somebody who was a little bit more involved in their kid’s life than I was. An uninvolved/absentee parent is somebody who was a little bit less involved than I was.
I thought this was a fantastic article, and the quote above really summarizes it well IMO.
It’s just a shame so many parents fail to see the truth in it.
(Laughing as Hunt edges closer to quantifying helicopter parenting)
I think growing up in the Fifties and Sixties might have been an environment that was a little too relaxed, but getting into the Nineties, it might have already been getting too involved. Sending the kids out to play in the woods with a BB gun and swim at the fishing hole with a rope might have been on one side while hovering over every minute of your child’s activities might be on the other. So, maybe there is a year, a turning point if you will, when the parenting was properly balanced.
1979? 1984?
Or, maybe the 50’s and 60’s really were the perfect time.
I agree with fractalmstr,
which is far more important than getting into xyz.
At my kid’s high school, I know at least one example a teacher had to abandon the curriculum due to parents intervention. In a way it was worse in HS with advanced courses. Everyone signed up for advanced courses since they want to have that most rigorous courses taken checked in college applications. When they begin to struggle, the hell broke loose. Since there are enough kids doing the same, they did have clouts.
Totally agree.
I don’t believe anyone, including the former Dean of Stanford, is interested in telling people how to raise their children. They are getting the results and it’s useful to read what they are experiencing if only to reflect a little. No one is saying all students are like this, just enough students to affect deans, professors and probably other students.
I see in my area, maybe not so much on CC, parents who are afraid to let their students ‘fail’ at anything. These parents swoop in to “rescue” their child from getting a C, not making a travel team, not given a lead position on an EC and not getting a “good enough” summer internship / job. My husband has even tutored a parent (without the child present) in physics. Another parent asked for the child’s password to access the online system during back to school night (parents get a password that allows look-but-don’t-touch access - she wanted to submit homework for her child). It’s not all parents. It’s not most parents. It’s not even many parents. In fact, it’s very few parents but these people exist.
Lastly, helicopter parents can be very nice people. I really like the parent my husband tutored - very nice, smart, funny. No one is saying they are evil or bad or awful people - just that stepping back and letting your child fall down and get back up on his/her own isn’t a bad thing.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s with incredible freedom was just fine. I would have gotten into a better school if my mother was just a little more involved, but I still savor the independence and experiments. A friend, who lived in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, said she was thrilled with her freedom during that time. If she had been a bit older or younger, she would have spent her youth studying. Instead she got to play and explore.
Alas the economy changed. We are all tied to great expectations.
When I drive my kid to practice (all star cheer) over an hour away from home and have to sit and wait (whether it is at the gym or the local coffee shop) for practice to be over because it is impossible to drive home and back in the span of the practice times; when I shell out $$$ to attend multiple cheer competitions out of state; then you betcha “WE” are part of a team, maybe not THE team but definitely a team. My kid is not footing the bill, driving the car, making the hotel reservations etc, If I don’t do my job as a parent then my kid isn’t able to do her job on the floor. It is definitely a WE situation. I may shorten a sentence to “We have a competition this weekend” not “D has a cheer competition this weekend and I will be attending as her chauffer, support team and ATM”. It doesn’t make me a helicopter parent, just a parent that doesn’t parse semantics.
There’s a big difference between saying “we are on the team” and “we are going to practice.” That’s the point the article was trying to make. Kinda like when a couple says “We are pregnant” vs “We are having a baby”. I made the mistake of saying the first version exactly one time.
This “Former Stanford dean” should tell us why she did not do this while she was the Stanford dean.
Yes, I think it is weird when my kids text me multiple times a day with stupid questions and comments. Just now my 10th grader texted “what’s for dinner? Do we have any mozzarella sticks?” and “My regular English teacher is back from maternity leave. She seems cool.” Back in the day those would both have been things that we might have talked about over the dinner table.
But, times they are a-changing and instant communication makes parents accessible 24/7. I blame it all on globalization and modern technology, nobody is self sufficient anymore. Instead of saying that this generation is ruined why not see about changing our own “old fashioned” thinking and see how we can make this “new” way of interacting with the world work?
Perhaps it depends on the district. In ours, parents are allowed to over-ride a teacher’s recommendation for an AP or honors class, but the kid cannot change to a lower section until after the first marking period and has to live with the grade given in the higher class for that semester. If kids complained the work was too hard, and they were recommended for the class, they could move down if there was space available. They district also looks at AP tests results and would not water down the curriculum to the point where most kids were not getting passing grades (and hopefully 4s) on the AP tests. Students and parents would complain about curriculum that did not leave them well prepared for college.
In our local HS there were all kinds of rules such as not being able to switch a child out of a class because of the assigned teacher, not being allowed to drop an AP class ( signed an agreement on that one), etc.
The problem was that the school made the rules and then frequently allowed exceptions for “certain” students or " certain" parents.
I find it amazing that some parents have allegedly figured out a way to spare their children any disappointment or failure. Pray tell us how they did something so miraculous!
And if you mean that mom and dad marched in to the school and demanded their little darling make the very team that just cut him or her, then who’s the idiot AD or coach who caved in to that manipulation? Shouldn’t that person share the blame then?
(For the record, not one of my children ever required any disciplinary action in school, and were model students. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think some rules have gotten ridiculous. And also for the record, I never tried to fix any of their failures or disappointments. I don’t even know how that is possible to do.
Excellent @BoolaHi. I’d add: helping them build the platform from which they can pursue goals or dreams. That does mean inserting ourselves into some decisions and choices. A young kid doesn’t always have foresight. (Eg, we insisted they learn critical thinking and to write well.) It doesn’t mean long term coddling. One of my repeat expressions was, figure.it.out.
Imo, the real problem helicopter parents can’t separate themselves and their own dreams, wants, or insecurities, from their children’s lives. That’s a badly mixed message to be sending your kids. But ordinary “team work?” Of course. Go ahead and read your kid’s paper and have a discussion. Feel free to root for her at a game.
But, btw, ChangLa is right, imo: often, these folks write books to make money, not out of genuine concern to save society. They present themselves as experts and rely on their tale telling to garner attention. Formula.
What you describe isn’t helicopter parenting or tiger parenting; rather, it is what I like to call Donkey Parenting, in which you are heavily involved in your kids’ activities, but in a way that enables them to do what interests them. This kind of parenting actually takes more time than the sort that involves occasionally swooping in to save the day.
I am hoping that the authors of "Paying for the Party* (Elizabeth Armstrong, Laura Hamilton) will write more books, and clarify their observations wrt “helicoptering.” It was their observation that parental support was important in helping students recognize and overcome obstacles, both in college and after.
I can’t tell you how they did this. All I can say is that I witnessed these actions (the mom asking for access to submit her son’s homework) or the parent told me what they did (convince the coach to give her child a leadership position - albeit a minor one). I haven’t a clue what these parents say to get these results. Of course, whoever relents under parental pressure “shares the blame” but just saying that doesn’t really resolve anything. I suspect often the parent gets what s/he wants because the administration/coach/teacher just wants that person out of their office.
I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s and we kids knew there were parents doing this, all those years ago. Sometimes, it was just obnoxious. Other times, the parent really was aiming for fair opportunity.
I have to laugh. I also belong to a couple of site on which publishers give away books in a lottery to get the books reviewed. One of those currently on offer is “The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting.” From the write-up, it is challenging books like that of the Stanford dean.
While friends who are veteran Profs teaching for decades reported increasing frequency of this phenomenon in the last decade and half, the phenomenon itself isn’t new.
One Ivy Prof who taught for 2 decades by the early '00s recounted experiencing well-off undergrad threatening to sue because they didn’t get As complete with parent hired lawyers sitting with the students in the Prof/department head/dean’s offices. This would mean the students involved spanned the generational range from late boomers to GenXers…and not only tail end ones like yours truly. Only thing was this elite U was able to laugh off these threats due to their access to one of the largest endowments in the world, access to armies of topflight lawyers, etc.
There were also what we’d consider helicoptered kids back when I was in college in the mid-late '90s. Only thing was it seemed there were far fewer such kids/families and the prevailing perceptions tended to be much more overwhelmingly against such parental practices. Over the last decade and half, it seems this phenomenon has not only become more frequent, but also helicoptering has seemingly gained more support or at least some support across US society…including reportedly some workplaces.