Time Magazine Says Step Back Helicopter Parents.

From the Community…

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  Posted by carol Wed Nov 25, 2009 8:06am PST

  this is a great article...I have to confess to being a reformed parent...and I notice the more I back off the less whine my daughter(14)has gotten when I say no I wont bring you something.....

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  Posted by cindy Wed Nov 25, 2009 8:11am PST

  I think there is two extremes in America, because you still have the parents that aren't present, or can't be like a single mom that has to work two jobs and the kids end up raising themselves and having babies early. Sometimes those kids to end up ok. Then you have the extreme overparent-ers that are the room moms at school and that are in charge of every party and micro manage their children. Sometimes those kids turn out ok too. You gotta find balance and trust your kids, to an extent. Kids are still kids and need guidance and if they don't feel like you care about their school stuff, then they will feel like why should they care? Their not important to you.

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  Posted by starfedra Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:22am PST

  I have seen them, my daughter is 4 years old and I can hear the other parents talking to each other at meetings, oh, she is doing this and she is doing that, just comparing and throwing on your face how smart their kids are but I am very proud of my daughter and I help her develop at her own pace, she goes to pre-k which she loves and I just want to make her happy, I don't need to push her to learn to name all of the presidents in our history to know she is brilliant, I just want a happy, well adjusted child.

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  Posted by Wed Nov 25, 2009 12:44pm PST

  As a director of pre-college programs at an artsy college, I am so glad this article is out. I am bombarded by parents making choices for their child. It is a scary thing to see. This summer I had a girl have anxiety attacks about sleeping in the dorm and would cry on the phone to her mother. She was about to enter her senior year of high school, planning on applying to our college but could barely be away from her mother. I had a conference and the father confessed that they were the typical helicopter parents. In that meeting, I think the parents realized that their child had amazing grades but socially probably wouldn't be able to handle college.

  I hope parents will give their child the space to grow, to let them know its OK to be nervous about change. This will not only prepare them for the social aspects of college but also prepare them for life

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  Posted by cindy Wed Nov 25, 2009 1:13pm PST

  My husband is a police officer at a college in Columbus and he tells me these crazy stories of parents calling him about parking tickets or whatever their adult "child" did and try to talk them out of it. My husband tells them, "they are adults not children, we are teaching them about the real world". It is amazing how some parents are. And kids too! They get mad about something and call home crying to their parents and you want to tell them to grow up!

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  Posted by M G H Fri Nov 27, 2009 10:03am PST

  Thank God I'm childfree, I'd hate to be under the microscope of these helicopter parents who think they are doing their kids a favor.

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  Posted by chipnelvis Sun Nov 29, 2009 8:54am PST

  It's craziness. This may seem backwards but it's this type of people why i started homeschooling. The schools buy into this just as much as parents. When my son was in fist grade he had a hard time sitting through six hours of boring school work aimed at raising the schools test scores. The school pulled him out of regular class and put him in an "intervention" class. They said he was "behind" because he couldn't read books like Charlottes Web, and he seemed distracted some of the time. Well duh, you start treating little kids like mini adults and expect them to be able to handle advanced concepts with little or no hands on learning, what do they expect.

  Now that I homeschool my son is allowed to make big mistakes, he researches on his own, I don't just sit him down and try to make him learn through endless hours of lecture. I make him figure things out on his own. The funny thing is that many of my homeschooling peers feel the same way. It's insane the way parents grapple for homeroom mom then send our 20 emails a day recounting everything that happened everyday. No peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, nothing that may contain eggs, nothing that may contain wheat, no dodge ball or red rover. Parents need to calm down and back off. Back off each other not just their kids!

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  Posted by kenyons Sun Nov 29, 2009 11:00am PST

  Isn't a little funny that there are slow parenting classes? I thought the idea was to get away from the over scheduling and time commitments. Are parents so afraid to fail at backing off that they need a class to tell them how to do it?

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