Nah, it’s not really hard! What better word than bullying would you use to ask someone to stop name calling or attempting to marginalize another poster’s views?
or how other posters/people think it should be done. One of the most valuable lessons I learned on CC was to never assume that I knew what was on another student’s application or resume, and I think the same applies to parenting. Absent abuse/neglect or truly inappropriate parenting, each of us can’t know why another person parents the way that he does and should just assume that she is doing the best for his or her family.
I make a big distinction between calling other posters names, and applying labels to generic parents who do certain things. I think it could indeed be bullying to call another person a helicopter parent, especially to his face, but it’s hardly bullying for us to say, in a discussion like this, that a parent who wants to come to the job interview with his kid is a helicopter parent.
I have to say that I resent being pushed into giving a serious answer. But I don’t feel bullied.
Hunt, I’m too short to be a bully, But in my NEXT LIFE, I’m going to be a 6’6 tall man, so everyone better watch out then!
Oooh, bullies come in every shape, stripe, and height.
@Much2learn wrote “We had to do this once for a girl in math. I don’t view it as helicoptering because there is no way that the kid could have gotten through to the knuckle heads in charge. To me, helicopter parenting is fighting battles that your kid can or should fight on their own. However, with an issue like proper placement, it is not possible to let them handle that on their own. If you don’t advocate for your own kid, no one in going to”
I’m of two minds about this now. On the one hand, my older one got to be in the highest math, which was where she belonged according to her numbers. On the other hand, the teacher resented the hell out of her being there and really made it unpleasant for her, and somewhat soured her attraction to math.
To this day she still has issues with trigonometry, although she freely admits it’s her own mental block on it (partially stemming from that class, although she won’t say so) and she’s working on making sure it’s not tripping her up in calc and physics now.
So if I had just left well enough alone, she still would have eventually taken as much math as she wants to, and probably been happier doing it. So yeah, I still say it’s an example of helicopter parenting that didn’t end up helping her in the long run.
In terms of math, I learned algebra from some decades-old text book the library was selling for 25 cents in 7th grade (the super-stellar school system where I grew up didn’t teach algebra until HS back when I went).
Smart motivated kids will learn. The key is to nurture that motivation.
I can’t even begin to tell you how over parenting my D1 mid-twenty something is with her cat! Her cat has health insurance!
She has had her 2 or 3 ( can’t remember) old cat to the vet more often than we have had our 13-14 yr old cat., including this week. And her cat is an indoor city cat!
I told her I don’t even want to be around her with human children.
Aaaannnnddd then there’s Alfie Kohn’s opinion - that the the whole helicopter parent thing is an overblown myth:
@motherofdragons "@Much2learn wrote “We had to do this once for a girl in math. I don’t view it as helicoptering because there is no way that the kid could have gotten through to the knuckle heads in charge. To me, helicopter parenting is fighting battles that your kid can or should fight on their own. However, with an issue like proper placement, it is not possible to let them handle that on their own. If you don’t advocate for your own kid, no one in going to”
I’m of two minds about this now. On the one hand, my older one got to be in the highest math, which was where she belonged according to her numbers. On the other hand, the teacher resented the hell out of her being there and really made it unpleasant for her, and somewhat soured her attraction to math.
So if I had just left well enough alone, she still would have eventually taken as much math as she wants to, and probably been happier doing it. So yeah, I still say it’s an example of helicopter parenting that didn’t end up helping her in the long run."
In our case, D2 was in 5th grade. There were 4 criteria to take pre algebra in 6th grade. 1. a 95% average on homework for the year 2. a 95% average on tests for the year 3. a state test score above in the target level and 4. a score of between 10 and 12 out of 12 on a one question extended response question that was included in the state test.
D2 met criteria 1, 2 and 3. However, the teacher kept her out of pre-algebra because she had an 8 or 9 on the criteria that was based on one single question. Furthermore the one question was buried at the end of the state test and would be the question you did not get to finish if you were short on time. D2 wanted to move to pre-algebra, and initially asked the teacher why she was not recommended. The teacher told her that she did no meet the criteria and brushed off. My wife had to attend about 10 different meetings spread out over a couple of months and continue to elevate the issue to get D2 into the proper class. The administrators were not concerned about D2s ability to handle the class, they were just resistant to acknowledging the fact that having a hard criteria that had a sample size of one question demonstrated a lack of judgment on their part. She was ultimately successful, and D2 she has consistently received A’s in math and is now a high school senior an AP calculus. In our district, it was further complicated by the fact that students take pre-algrebra in 6th grade or 8th grade, so she would have lost 2 years of math based on one question.
If dealing with incompetent administrators to stick up for a 5th graders education is helicopter parenting, then we are guilty, but then I will have to change my definition, and also decide that helicopter parenting may be good in some circumstances.
It’s interesting how people talk about parents “overparenting” their children and sometimes it is true. However I believe most of the time for normal, reasonable adults this “excessive parenting” is not parent- but rather child-driven (if not administration-driven ).
I have spent countless hours “overparenting” my S who would be all over the place otherwise and witnessed him learning how to handle continuous homework, keeping track of assignments, mastering learning on his own etc… The number of hours gradually decreased as he got older going down to what most people here describe as “we”-type college admission work. I still occasionally remind him about some types of hw (I am a very bad nagging mom at that ). Now, with my D I never did nearly as much - I didn’t need to and she wouldn’t let me. She is the type who does her own hw, scheduling, forms, decisions and just asks me for confirmation or signature. She is better at keeping track of all the due dates and time issues than I am.
I can see that it’s very easy for a parent of my D-type kid(s) to say to the parents of my S-type kid “How come your kid doesn’t do such-and-such himself?”. Well, he just doesn’t. He is learning, most likely he will start doing his own bookkeeping and time management at some point but he is still not good at it right now and he needs help and he is smart enough to ask for it. Does my involvement count as helicopter-parenting? Probably it does. Does it hurt him? I don’t think so. All kids are different and require different amount of help and attention from their parents.
I like that, @PragmaticMom.
For parents:
Overparenting = Anything they don’t do for their kid.
For administrators:
Overparenting = Anything a parent does that makes work for me, even if the parent is right.
The helicopter label was used against us because we wanted the teacher to do her job. For some inexplicable reason, Spykid’s 4th grade teacher absolutely refused to let him and another kid move up to a higher classroom for math. The 5th grade teacher was eager to have them. He offered to change his math time to match hers. After much prodding by both sets of parents, she reluctantly gave the boys a test that was an end of year 4th grade exam. This was in late September.
They each scored (but missed different questions) a 78%. She claimed that wasn’t a high score to move them forward. We were really puzzled since they had both shown high math acumen since Kindergarten.
A month later we discover that the exam was actually for the end of 5th grade.
@Agentninetynine You can’t stop there. We want to know what happened next!