This is the time of year when parents face the dreaded “empty nest” syndrome. Sending a child away to college is a traumatic experience, even though many teens lighten the load considerably by becoming so surly and grouchy that some parents secretly, or not so secretly, yearn for the release.
Turns out, however, that many parents aren’t quite ready to let go.
Some colleges complain that they’re crowding campus orientations, meddling in registration and complaining about their children’s housing assignments, roommates and grades.
Branded as “helicopter parents,” they refuse to back off and let their kids learn how to solve their own problems, college officials gripe. They’re still hovering, fixers at the ready.
The University of Vermont hires “parental bouncers”–students trained to divert moms and dads who try to attend programs, including registration, with their kids. Colgate stopped supplying parents with a list of administrators’ phone numbers; now parents get a statement about Colgate’s philosophy of self-reliance.
This is a country built on the notion of self-reliance and the romance of learning the hard way. Parents who refuse to allow their kids to grow up, to make mistakes, to work through their various crises and catastrophes, risk finding their kid boomeranging home after college. They’ll be back on the family couch, doing nothing so taxing as reading the ingredient label on the Cheetos bag. Or worse.
The relatively recent “helicopter” epithet seems well on its way to joining “The Me Generation” and a number of other pejoratives splattered on Baby Boomers. But it’s misguided.
Suffice to say there is parenting in theory and parenting in practice. Those who consult parenting manuals learn early that they don’t cover the tricky terrain of the human heart, and can’t account for the full force of the biological imperatives that alter the normal fun-loving human brain into the ever-alert parental unit. And they don’t tell you that there’s no going back.
Of course parents should guard against overprotective, smothering instincts. But what’s so terrible about a helicopter? It hovers lightly, ready to swoop in for emergencies, fielding a frantic request, say, for a child whose laptop has suddenly expired. Like a hummingbird, the wise helicopter parent alights delicately, and only for so long as absolutely necessary.
The true helicopter parent may realize, guiltily, that the kids, having been sheltered and pampered much of their lives, lack certain survival skills. College officials say that some freshmen lack basic street smarts. They have trouble negotiating for what they need or getting along with others in a tight, shared space. They may not have a clue about how to stay safe: Universities have had to warn students about dangerous moves like propping their doors open at night.
Maybe, some parents will reflect, there was too much time spent shuttling the kids to play dates, dance practices, piano lessons, hockey games, and a staggering array of other activities, rather than allowing the kids more room to explore solo.
But they also know this: There was joy in the unexpected moments. The unguarded and exuberant chattering of a gaggle of preteen girls in the backseat of the car is far more entertaining than most movies.
As a result of all that chauffeuring–part of all that hovering–we suspect many parents also enjoy far closer relationships with their kids than previous generations of parents did. Many of those kids are far more accomplished and sophisticated for it.
And that’s wrong … exactly how?
There are all sorts of parenting styles, and many of them yield the desired result: a child who grows into a self-sufficient, healthy adult. Some kids get there sooner, some later.
Whether to hover or not to hover is an intensely personal decision, dictated in large part by the child’s needs. Some kids seek, and desire, almost constant parental contact. The cell phone is their lifeline, or as it has been described, the world’s longest umbilical cord. Others crave the opposite. They plot the farthest point from home and apply for college there. And really, most kids don’t have much trouble telling intrusive parents when to back off.
In past generations, you loaded the station wagon with your worldly belongings and you unpacked them in the dorm. There was an awkward hug between you and your parents. And then they were gone. If you called once a week, they were happy. Or at least they said so.
You grew up. They grew old. That is still the way of things. If parents today linger a bit, if they dwell in the lengthening shadows, ready to unfurl a ladder from the helicopter in case of emergency, who can blame them?
