Overparenting?

Parents Forum
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<p><a href=“http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6620793/[/url]”>http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6620793/&lt;/a&gt;
Overparenting</p>

<p>“You can spot them in the grocery store. They’re the moms with the shopping cart cover that’s supposed to protect babies from lurking germs. You can see them on the playground hovering over their toddlers, negotiating toy disputes for their 7-year-olds. They’re in high school, phoning teachers if their children bring home anything other than A’s. They’re even at college -– intervening with professors, setting up their children’s dorm rooms and bank accounts and keeping in near-constant contact with their kids via cell phone and instant messaging.”</p>

<p>Yikes. OK, we set up his dorm room, or rather we helped him move in, and his checking about and we talk weekly by cellphone and IM. Are we doomed? ;)</p>

<p>I think part of this might be a different phenomenon which my wife describes thus: with your first child you start out sterilzing everything your angel comes in contact with. By the third, you’re wearily picking the pacifier off the ground, wiping it off on your shirt and sticking it back into the kid’s mouth.</p>

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<p>I was there by 6 months from when I brought my first home and this was a kid who didn’t even weigh 4 lbs at two months when I brought her home from the hospital.
First I was sterilizing everything, then I went to “blowing” the germs off!</p>

<p>When she is away at college I rarely talk to her by phone as we don’t have cellphones and she is rarely in her room. If I did get her in her room, say on Sunday morning while I was waiting for her sisters soccer game to begin, it was because she was asleep.
I would email her on average every week but it would actually work out to be 4 or 5 emails back and forth and then nothing for a while. After a few mails sent at 3am, I tried not to notice what time she was responding.
We didn’t help her with her accounts or her dorm room either, but I just chalked that up to we are "bad " parents. :wink:
I am happy however that she seems to be able to take her vitamins and drink water without me nagging at her, but her cousin who is the same age, still apparently needs to call her mom every night, and this shocks me, that as a senior she isn’t more involved in campus activities and friends to “forget” to call .</p>

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<p>I see many of such parents, and have seen them over a 23 year period. Some of the kids turn out just great. THey learn to deal with their parents. As long as those parents are polite and do not step over the lines where they hurt others, that is their business. If that is how they want to spend their time and money, and that is their parenting style, it is their right. I have more of a problem with these psychologists, educators, etc who are paid to deal with such people complaining about them. </p>

<p>They use examples in very inflammatory ways that bother me as well. When we lived in Chicago, it was a big deal to get our son into one of the top 3 nursery schools for many reasons other than prestige. It was much easier to car pool since a number of kids in the area went to those schools, and we knew many families associated with those schools, we had a relationship with one particular school through H’s work that gave us 50% off of the tuition, and they were clearly the outstanding schools in the area. Having looked at the options, they were by far and away the best choices for the money for us. No great surprise everyone wanted to put his kid in one of those schools.</p>

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<p>Yikes, I did not think that example of the college part was a good example of “over the top parenting” and if so, I am doomed like you, Strick. </p>

<p>We did move our child into her college dorm room. And I did go shopping with her before she left for one day, mostly cause it was fun to do together but the main purchases centered on linens and that was her birthday gift so she picked it out and we went together. We did help set stuff up with her in the room for a few hours. We did not plan to help her open a checking account and she was going to do it in a few days after arriving. However, there was a room set up in the campus center with all the bank reps there to make it easier for everyone on move in day and so we did go with her as she set up her account, as did just about every kid we saw there. </p>

<p>I do not call my D at school. She happens to WANT to call every 2-3 days with updates to share about what she has been doing and it is always upbeat and not like she is having us solve any “problems” for her. It is more like staying in touch. She likes to share about her happenings and frankly, I enjoy hearing from her and she often asks to talk to her sister and hear what is going on with her and with us. We do not IM but I think she IMs her sister (she set it up so I can’t see her on my buddy list, but that is fine with me). She occasionally emails if something comes up that she needs to tell us but usually the meaty sharing is via phone when she feels like calling. She also has made grandparents on both sides extremely delighted by calling them often to share about her life. </p>

<p>If that is overly involved, I’m guilty. </p>

<p>Susan</p>

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<p>I"ve spoken to more than one parent at my kid’s school who’s thinking of taking their child out, because “the day is too long. I’m not able to spend enough time with my child”… My son’s only 11 but the last thing he wants to do is spend extra time with me…and I’m glad he feels that way. I want him to be with his peers. We see each other every night and do family things on the weekends… I think the mothers need to find something else to do besides dote. (p.s. “take their child out” means out of the private school with a longer commute as opposed to a local public school)</p>

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<p>I have a hard time believing that frequent contact is over-parenting unless the substance of the conversations are all about “Have you washed clothes recently? What are you eating? Are you keeping your room clean? Have you paid your bills?” etc. The key is to keep the contact short and to refrain from trying to channel decisions your child may be making at college (unless it’s life-threatening or will cost you big bucks, of course). </p>

<p>I often send my D small snippets from the newspaper–an article about someone she knows, a cartoon, anything that doesn’t require lots of reading (the article won’t get read). Kids like to get mail when they are far from home. And if that makes me a bad parent, then so be it!</p>

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<p>PS…I just read the quote closer and it mentions “intervening with professors”…now THAT I don’t do.</p>

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<p>The offenders of “overparenting” that are taking away from other are the parents who step on everyone else to give their kid “everything”. Those kind of people do get on my nerves, and deserve a sharp remark and reminder. I have seen them in every walk of life and everywhere. The coach, the scout leader, the religion teacher who unfairly gives his kids advantages, the mother who pushes everyone else rudely away to get for her kid and feels that hers need more consideration when they truly do not. You all probably know who I mean.</p>

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<p>Strick:</p>

<p>It’s interesting that the new guilt trip laid on parents is overparenting. When I was in grad school, there was a very poignant pop song called Cat’s Cradle whose refrain was “I want to be like you, dad, I want to be like you” and whose message was that the father was always absent. By the time the father was old, it was the turn of the child never to visit, because he’d grown up to be like his dad. So, we go from neglectful parenting to overparenting in one generation…</p>

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<p>“PS…I just read the quote closer and it mentions “intervening with professors”…now THAT I don’t do.”</p>

<p>We won’t either. Well, we have told him he needed to go talk to a couple about certain things, but that’s different, right?</p>

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<p>Jamimom:</p>

<p>With us it was not so much the cleanliness issue as the picture-taking. We seemed to want to record every hour of our first-born but were far more lackadaisical about #2. It did not help that #2 looked so much like #1 that the photos could have been recycled.</p>

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<p>I feel bad for the kids whose parents are so afraid that they will be uncomfortable for 5 minutes that they are determined to do as much as they possible can to streamline life for them.
One of my little nieces is 6 and with every sniffle she gets taken to the emergency room, with every expression of distress her mother jumps. How is this preparing kids for life? Life is messy, sweaty, bloody, painful but you get as much out of it as you put into it. Not what someone else puts into it, what YOU put into it. No one else is gonna wrap these kids in cotton when their mommies and daddies aren’t around, and life will hit them in the face.</p>

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<p>Emeraldkity4 I wholeheartedly agree…I"ve seen it in my extended family as well and a comeuppance does happen to these kids because they have no idea how to fend for themselves…or live independently without that constant comfort and guidance!</p>

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<p>Harry Chapin, who attended Cornell … and like many famous Cornellies did NOT finish</p>

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<p>When I worked for my college, I used to get phone calls… maybe once or twice every other week… from parent’s calling and asking questions for their kids… And I just remember thinking… Why isn’t your kid calling… i’m sure he/she could explain the problem much better than you can… (no offense parents. :wink: )… I remember one woman calling and saying that her son’s computer was broke, and that she really needs it fixed so he can write his papers… I asked her what was wrong with it… what it was doing… and all she could tell me was, that it was broke and that he couldn’t write his papers… I kindly explained to her that there are computers in the computer labs that he can use to write his paper, and that in order for us to fix his problems, we needed to know what they were… so she was like Oh okay, well i will have him call you then… and then like one day later we got a call from this kid and he said something about how his computer had been running weird but some guy in his dorm helped him and now it’s working fine… It just kind of reminds me of the intervening thing mentioned above.</p>

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<p>My oldest daughter attended an elementary school ( private for “gifted” kids , required testing for admittance) that nevertheless did had a very casual air, more like a co-op, infact volunteer hours were required by parents every year and the fee was high for parents who tried to opt out.
She is now working there, and was surprised to learn that parents are not as present in the classrooms as when she attended. They may have a parent who is a pilot come and discuss flying or I am sure they won’t turn down Bill G. if he wanted to discuss starting a company, but for the most part it seems pretty unusual to have parents at school for anything except fundraising. The reason seems to be that ( unlike when I was involved :wink: ) parents in the classroom are too busy correcting the teacher, making sure that their kid ( metaphorically) gets the biggest slice of pie and generally being more of a hindrance than a help.
This saddens me, I really enjoyed helping and especially since the daughter was on finanacial aid, contributing to the school day. As a big time volunteer in other schools I know how much a difference it makes to kids to have their own parents and even other parents make education a priority . But I can see the schools point as well, parents who you expect to be doing certain things and don’t cause they are checking their cell messages or trying to run the classroom, are a big pita.</p>

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<p>My husband’s brother’s wife, is a big executive at a Major NYC corporation. She put off having kids while she went up the corporate ladder. Finally, in her late 30’s she tried, but couldn’t conceive. Did she adopt a needy child from Columbia, Korea, Russia, China? No, she bought a brand-new white baby from a young girl in Oklahoma. Seems that in Oklahoma, they can get the mother to sign over (irrevocably) her rights to the baby after 72 hours.
Can you imagine if your daughter was in Oklahoma, got in “trouble”, didn’t know where to turn and was suckered in by the “baby brokers” who prey on them.</p>

<p>By the way, this woman once asked me “Well, what do you do for your kids?” because I didn’t want to take them on a weekend trip to the Poconos to go hiking, biking, canoeing, etc. I am not an outdoors person.</p>

<p>My three kids are very successful in their own right (and one is trying to get into Princeton).</p>

<p>Bottom line. After she “bought” the baby, she returned to her big money job in New York city (a long commute), and the husband (who owns his own company and makes big bucks…they probably pull in close to $500,000 a year), drops the baby off at 6:00am at my mother in law’s house (she is 83 years old). My husband’s 55 year old sister, gets down there a little after that to actually be the Nanny. (by the way, the sister has a 16 year old girl with every inch of her face pierced and is on her third high school in three years). The baby is washed and fed and ready to be picked up by the husband at 6:00. He also eats dinner at the mother’s house. The wife gets home from work at about 7:00, puts the already fed and bathed baby to bed.</p>

<p>This sister and sister in law critized me in front of my youngest d because I made her play lacrosse in the spring of her 7th grade year. My daughter turned out loving Lacrosse and now plays it in high school. I belive that no child of mine should go a semester without a sport or academic activity.</p>

<p>My husband think’s I am mean because I still resent this woman critizing me "well, what do you do for your children!). Talk about under-parenting. In reality, while I don’t agree with the way the law is in Oklahoma about these girl’s signing over IRREVOCABLE rights to their child, the poor kid should have at least gone to a family with a Mom who is available at least part of the day.</p>

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<p>Haha Marite. Recycled photos. Made me think of all the letters my dear dad sent from his little weekend house in the country. As the six of us left home, we were added to the salutation and copies were distributed accordingly.</p>

<p>Magnificent descriptions of the weather, each and every one. There are no ‘bad’ days in the country.</p>

<p>After a decade of seemingly recycled reports, we began to tease him and the letters stopped. </p>

<p>btw whatscookin: can’t see the difference between Oklahoma moms giving up their babies and Chinese, Korean, Russian or Columbian moms. In each case, the baby may be “sold”. In each case, there may be the possibility that the mother couldn’t raise the child and decided to give birth rather than abort. I’ve known two such American mothers. They hope and pray their children were adopted into good families.</p>

<p>At least an Oklahoma mother has a better chance of meeting the adult child.</p>

<p>Anyway, have patience with your SIL. My guess is, having been a professional working mother in Manhattan, you SIL will soon grow weary of the lifestyle and move to the suburbs to spend more time with her child.</p>

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<p>whatscooking12345, not only aren’t you mean for resenting this woman, I give you major credit for holding your tongue when she criticised you!</p>

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<p>Thank you. Actually, I held my tounge to her criticism because I was absolutely stunned… but then again, I’ve held my tounge many times over the last 20 years. Only now am I started to vocalize how I resented the “hands in front of the mouth whispering” that I was a victim of, along with a whole laundry list of other things, that I don’t want to bother anyone with.</p>