TALES OF HELICOPTER PARENTS

BuzzFeed asked teachers for tales of helicopter parenting – the parents who just can’t let their kids figure things out for themselves. Some of the responses:
– “On the first day of kindergarten, we had the parents give hugs and then leave. One mom was found peeking in the windows, the assistant principal had to ask her to leave. We thought she had left, but we saw the bushes start moving at recess. She hadn’t left.”
– “I coach high school swimming at an all-boys school. This one boy told me he couldn’t make it to swim practice. I asked why, and he said, ‘I already took my shower for the day, and my mom doesn’t want me getting dirty again.'”
– “I teach preschool. At recess, we encourage the children to practice getting their coats and boots on. One mother would hide in the cubby area and yell at me about how her son couldn’t dress himself and how we needed to do it for him.”
– “I used to teach at a Catholic school. I am a big Harry Potter fan, so I had a few posters up in my middle school classroom. A parent told me that Harry Potter is demonic and that she believed reading aloud the spells from the books would summon demons.”
– “We had a student whose mom made him wear pull-ups until second grade. His mom would come up to the school and change his pull-up every day at lunch. The poor kid was visibly embarrassed every time.”
– “This very smart 15-year-old girl got over 90% on every test or assignment that year, but her father always came to my class demanding that I explain my grading and show him why she didn’t get 100%. He’d even ask to see other students’ work to compare, which I obviously never let him do.”
– “I’ve been teaching preschool for 13 years and once had a mom who would ‘study’ the following week’s lesson plans with her 2-year-old daughter over the weekend, then make her recite it all to us on Monday morning.”
– “I worked at a school with a first grader whose parents would pick him up every day for lunch, then bring him back for recess and watch him play.”
– “I teach college. “A student’s mom slept in her car on the university grounds for the first week he was there in case ‘he needed her.'”
– “I know a lady who took a job as a lunch lady at her kids’ school so she could keep an eye on them. She took breaks when it was her kids’ lunchtime and would drive to McDonald’s so they had a ‘good’ lunch instead of the ‘pig slop’ she had to serve in the cafeteria.”
* PHONE TOPIC: Do you have any tales of helicopter parenting? Are you one? Why?