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The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

111 points by Ibethewalrus 8y ago

jimhefferon 8y ago
I teach in a college. Many's the time I've been waiting to get into a classroom because the folks in there are wrapping up an exam, and students come out, instantly produce the phone, and I hear, "Hi mom, I did OK on the quiz, I think ..." That's too much.
- donovanh 8y ago
  What's wrong with that?
  - NeutronStar 8y ago
    If your first instinct is to call your mom to discuss your feelings then... ugh..
  - hamandcheese 8y ago
    On its own, not much. But increasingly parents are involving themselves in their college freshman’s education, going to bat for them when they “unfairly” score low, etc.
  - solidr53 8y ago
    There is nothing wrong with that!
- emptyfile 8y ago
  You really picked the most normal example possible.
- Angostura 8y ago
  I'm in the EU so can't read the article, but that doesn't feel like over-parenting. My daughter might do that, but she's a pretty independent lass, at age 14 currently wandering around central London or Camden market somewhere as part of her summer holidays - not sure where.
  - ginko 8y ago
    >I'm in the EU so can't read the article https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=628042168 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=628042168 The article ID in the link can be used in the text only site.
- scarecrowbob 8y ago
  I taught at a university for a couple of years. TBH, that feels normal-ish. I have plenty of folks including my parents with whom, depending on how often we've been communicating lately, I will share trivia. If you think that is bad, wait until you have to speak with some 20-year-old's mom who is thinking that her kiddo should be getting an A for C-level work and you have to get litigious about supporting your grades. I had to write a policy into my syllabus saying that I won't (and, IIRC, legally was not permitted) to talk with other folks than the student about grades and assessments.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  I don't see anything wrong with a kid (or even an adult) having a strong relationship with their parents. I had a flatmate who talked with her mom every night. Literally every night. For hours. She was just close with her family. It wasn't like she was at school or anything, we were both grown adults with working lives.
  - fatnoah 8y ago
    My wife calls her parents every day for a few minutes. I talk to my mom once every couple weeks or an hour or two. Two sides of the same coin.
- billbrown 8y ago
  This is the peril of anecdotes. You took a momentary observation and wrote a whole narrative surrounding it. How do you know that this is a parental tether? Maybe she had spoken to her mother the night before and expressed some worry about that particular quiz. The call you heard was just a follow up and she is otherwise fully independent. (I catch myself doing this frequently: that couple's marriage is in trouble—they're not even talking over dinner, that driver is on his phone scrolling through Facebook probably, etc. Those stories may be true but there's perfectly reasonable alternatives that would look exactly the same.)
- linuxftw 8y ago
  I think this is a symptom that today's children don't have the same type of bond with their peers as previous generations. Yesteryear, kids would have discussed classwork with their friends and classmates. All socialization has been removed from classrooms, outside of 'group activities.' The only people they know how to talk to are their parents.
  - mikec3010 8y ago
    > The only people they know how to talk to are their parents. I believe it. This gets brought up often here, but when you drive through residential neighborhoods you don't see kids playing or travelling to their friend's houses anymore. Either people are having way fewer kids or they aren't allowed to do things autonomously anymore. This undoubtedly correlates with rising obesity. But instead of blaming lack of play, they blame junk food. I recently drove past a middle school (12-14 yo) and shuddered at the sight of each child walking straight from the door to their parents car, one at a time, like prisoners. When that car pulled away the next car stopped at the same spot before the next child was dismissed. Just a few years prior, all kids were released simultaneously. I think this is eroding our society.
    - linuxftw 8y ago
      No, it's sadly a complete lack of kid autonomy around me. Kids aren't afforded any independence around here until mid-teens (15+). I think walking more than a few doors down is absolutely out of the question for most kids these days. More and more kids are driven to school each day. The school bus was another socialization place for kids that is gone.
    - gowld 8y ago
      The great thing about science by gut feel is you can choose which contradictions you like. In a fitness thread, it's "abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym". But in a parenting thread it's "fat is burned in the street, not the diet"
      - mikec3010 8y ago
- pnathan 8y ago
  Ah, come on, that's a bit rich. Seems reasonable (& healthy even...) to be chatting with mom about an exam coming up, then give her a ring when it's over. Sure, if mom is still supervising, then that's a bit awkward...
- jpindar 8y ago
  That seems strange to me. When I was in school (many years ago) I think I called home maybe once a week, and I don't remember talking about schoolwork much.
tehabe 8y ago
Recently I watched a report by the US correspondent of the German public television. She spoke with parents who got into trouble because they let their children play near the house. A mom who put surveillance software on their children's phone. Parents who look on video feeds from the day care centres. I found this shocking and also dangerous in the long run, people are getting used to surveillance might also accept it by the state.
- ajross 8y ago
  FWIW: A "look at those crazy americans!" color story by a foreign journalist may, y'know, not be the most authoritative source for this kind of thing. Obviously those products exist (and probably do in Germany too) and I'm sure that parent who got in trouble was a real incident. Nonetheless those of us actually raising children in this country don't actually do that stuff. Chill.
  - vonzeppelin 8y ago
    > Nonetheless those of us actually raising children in this country don't actually do that stuff. Chill. Except the ones that are?
    - dfee 8y ago
      I mean there are also serial killers. That might not adequately describe the population at large.
  - onemoresoop 8y ago
    You may not do this but it is a trend nonetheless and we should try to understand it, discuss it...
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      ...and kill it, before it grows out of control.
  - tehabe 8y ago
christofosho 8y ago
As a teacher of ages 4 up until 14, I think parents and people in general need to be concious toward what constitutes "over" parenting. Too often we as teachers see students that are behaving poorly, or having more trouble in school, because they do not have enough help or consistency at home. Parents reading articles like this might take them too literally and step too far from their child's life. Parenting should be a balance. You should know, as a parent, what is happening with your child's schooling, and be there to help. But you should not micromanage the child. Parent involvement leads to more academic confidence and success[1], and more behavioural[2] success. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020099/ [2] https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/sm6/McCormick_2013_parent_involvement.pdf https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/sm6/McCormi...
- burfog 8y ago
  There is a slightly different way to interpret that. Some students, despite being in your classroom, are really being homeschooled. For example, my wife and I both got extra assignments from our parents. The parents aren't just helping. The parents are teaching. You aren't trusted to teach. Other students have parents that trust you to teach. Your job is to teach, and these parents expect you to do it. In theory, they are correct.
  - fosco 8y ago
    I find this perspective interesting and I think this discussion needs to be taken further as I think it is unclear on both sides what the final expectations are to be upon completion of class/grade. that being said, I am concerned that some parents expect that teachers are also doing the 'parenting' side of things which may be unrealistic. I think that in most public schools (the one I went to) some parenting needs to be executed by teachers otherwise a small handful of kids could derail any teaching getting done in the first place.
    - ergothus 8y ago
      The "teachers shouldn't parent; parents stopped parenting" lesson is one I've heard from more than a few. What if teachers ALWAYS "parented", and as societies grow more tolerant and diverse this obviously doesn't scale (parents disagree with teachers on what should be taught). Thus we decide on this image of teachers giving knowledge and means of learning, while parents give morals and social structures. But has this image every existed in practice? How do we know it is even achievable? A child is learning from EVERYTHING. Is it truly reasonable to expect that teachers aren't "parenting"? Even if they expressly attempt to focus on intellectual pursuits only, that is just showing a different set of parenting lessons (potentially about lack of accountability, or the division of social mores from everything else). Likewise, if the teachers have turned to this absent form of parenting, are we correct in assuming that other parents aren't doing their "jobs"? (After all, it's never MY kid that isn't getting parenting, it's everyone else's). I don't have solutions or suggestions, but I want to raise the idea that maybe it's not "who" is or is not parenting, because everyone is, all the time, even if trying NOT to "parent". If so, then simply trying harder to ensuring parenting only happens from parents, and DOES happen from them, is doomed to failure, incompatible with the operating of developing minds?
jknoepfler 8y ago
I'd expect NPR to not use the word "crisis" in this context. There no obvious juncture, no imminent, looming problem that demands decisive action. There's just yet another op-ed pop-psyche piece about kids failing to learn "how to adult." I'm not surprised by the existence of the article, it's as inevitable as my curmudgeonly response. I'm surprised NPR stooped to publishing it.
- tcfunk 8y ago
  Yeah I was also thinking the term crisis was a bit of a stretch here. 'Over-Parenting Crisis' is in quotes, however, so I'm wondering if they've taken that title from one of the books?
- ams6110 8y ago
  NPR is not immune to dramatizing the news. They need listeners (or eyeballs) too.
thorell 8y ago
I think a lot of parents don't know how to effectively parent and make up for that with enthusiasm. Too much involvement, not enough parenting. I am guilty of this.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  Which leads to the question of how one teaches general parenting skill.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    We simply don't live together enough to observe other parents enough to get the right information. We only see surfaces nowadays.
    - charlchi 8y ago
      I mean it's obvious that the vast majority of people, parents and their children, are spending too much time in front of a computer, TV or phone screen. I'm 20 now, growing up I barely had any contact with my father besides maybe an hour around the dinner table a day. That's when we actually sat around a dinner table. For the vast majority of my early childhood and teens we never did.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - citizenkeen 8y ago
    My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. My dad's always saying "There's no book on parenting." My response if always "Screw you, yes there is. But you went to business school." You can pay someone to fix your injuries, or broken pipes, but you can't pay someone to raise your kids. When my son was born, I went into it with the knowledge of three highly rated books on Amazon I had picked at random. My wife went into it with years of experience dealing with difficult kids. She worked at a feeding clinic at a research institute, helping parents figure out how to get their kids to eat their vegetables. I'm so grateful. My 2 year old helps fold laundry, says please and thank you, and knows to put away his toys before bath time. I don't know what I'd do if I hadn't married this woman. I don't know where I would have gotten the skills I have now.
tarr11 8y ago
I'm not convinced this is a real problem. The term helicopter parenting was first used in 1990 [0] New Yorker article on same topic from 2008 [1] Articles and posts like this are chock-full of anecdotes and head-nodding, but short on studies or other data to even correlate against. Seems like this "crisis" has been happening for a long time. Is there a longitudinal study on children who have been "helicopter parented?" vs those who were raised "free-range"? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/11/17/the-child-trap https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/11/17/the-child-trap
- deleted 8y ago
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finaliteration 8y ago
It’s a difficult balance to strike and it’s easy to judge parents either way. I’m plenty guilty of being on both sides as a parent. My particular challenge, however, stems from PTSD from childhood abuse and neglect, so I feel even -more- pressure to give my child everything she needs and wants because I don’t want her to feel as alone and unwanted as I did. But I do worry that comes at the price of her independence, which is something else I definitely don’t want to take away from her. The paradoxical thing for me is that much of what I’ve achieved has come about because I was forced to do things on my own and fend for myself. It built a lot of “character” but at the same time I’m not anywhere near happy or content.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  One solution I've seen suggested is to let your kids mess up, but be there ready with empathy. For a kid to know that when they fail, their parent will be there to comfort them and encourage them is huge. Also, you teach them basic safety things, and then name it when they've mastered it; e.g. "You know how to look both ways, you don't need to hold my hand crossing the street anymore." or "You can cook on the stove by yourself now because you know how to be safe around hot things." They are getting independence, but doing so knowing that their parent is concerned about protecting them from dangers they cannot address themselves. With those two things, a child is unlikely to feel neglected or unloved, but can still develop a sense of independence.
- fatnoah 8y ago
  >so I feel even -more- pressure to give my child everything she needs and wants because I don’t want her to feel as alone and unwanted as I did This is a tough one because I think how we parent is super-strongly influenced by our experiences as a child. I think the keys here are to make sure she knows that you love and support her no matter what and that's as much of a given as that the sun will rise in the east AND to support her on doing things for herself. It's one thing if you're there to provide encouragement or a bit of help doing something vs. telling her to get it done and walking away. She'll learn the least from having everything on a whim or you doing everything for her. If the answer is "no" discuss why. Be fair and not capricious. Kids are smart. They know the difference between a parent that doesn't care and a parent that's setting limits.
guard0g 8y ago
What kind of parent does their kid's homework?! Here's an idea. Why not have "how to be a parent" classes taught in high school or college?
- analog31 8y ago
  >>> What kind of parent does their kid's homework?! I did, in a particularly subtle way, until I realized it and stopped. I never physically performed the homework task, but I prodded my kids to get it done. As it turns out, the homework was so easy, that literally the only challenge was motivation. By supplying them with the motivation, I was effectively doing the work. Nowadays, if asked for help, I go into teacher mode, and start asking them questions or providing a gentle nudge towards figuring out something themselves. They know that asking me for help will generally make their task harder, rather than easier. ;-) >>> Here's an idea. Why not have "how to be a parent" classes taught in high school or college? Because we don't know what it consists of.
- ams6110 8y ago
  I will help with homework. Proofread a paper, point out clumsy sentences or poor reasoning. Suggest ways to improve a project. Help work through a math problem or proof, to the extent I can. Demonstrate that the answers can often be found by simply reading the textbook or other study materials. For one of my kids I even employed a math tutor when he was struggling. But actually do homework for them? No.
- aiyodev 8y ago
  Parents who understand what “tracking” is. If you aren’t, you’re setting your child up for failure.
  - war1025 8y ago
    Sounds like a pretty wild rat race you're in.
    - JTbane 8y ago
      The rat race begins before you're even considered an adult! Sad but true.
smelendez 8y ago
> Some schools have an explicit policy against parents doing kids' homework and in favor of kids raising issues and concerns themselves rather than relying on their parents to do so. These schools are part of the solution. I'd love to see these policies tested, e.g., have five high school kids with class scheduling issues attempt to resolve them themselves, and another five have their parents call, and compare how the process goes.
- thomasfedb 8y ago
  High school kids have class scheduling issues that aren't just automatically sorted out by the school? Heck. Not my experience for sure!
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    Turns out a lot of the scheduling software out there was written by people who without formal training or who weren't paying attention in their algorithms course. E.g., one year: Me: requests A and B Friend: requests A and non-honors B hour 4: Me in non-honors B; friend in gym. hour 5 (only hour honors B is offered): Me in A; friend in honros B. Based on a few years of observations, I'm almost certain courses were filled using some variant of this algorithm: for each student s sorted by student number: for each non-filled course c in hour 1..n: if(s wants c and not in c): assign s to c and continue to next hour. for each non-filled course c in hour 1..n: if(s wants c' and not in c' and c is like c'): assign s to c and continue to next hour. because students with lower student numbers tended to get their choices (correlated with when student joined district far better than class status) and courses late in the day were always half empty while courses earlier in the day were always filled to the brim. Things got better each year but never in a way that would suggest someone finally decided to pick up an algorithms textbook. I suspect by now they've purchased something that works or else managed to prove P=NP and the solution is billions of if statements fixing special cases the teachers/students complained loudly enough about...
    - thomasfedb 8y ago
stcredzero 8y ago
Jonathan Haidt thinks an earlier child abduction scare sparked the overly fragile undergrads that started to appear in 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snqXOvnHzcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snqXOvnHzcQ We are raising kids lacking conflict resolution skills who can't discuss and would rather coerce someone who doesn't conform to their ideas.
squozzer 8y ago
I offer the following hypothesis - competition for entry into "the best" colleges, competition for "free money" through scholarships, and competition for "good jobs" after college has driven parents to micromanage their children's school "career." The margins for "error" - i.e. achieving suboptimal grades and cultivating interests outside of "school stuff" - have shrunk since I was a kid. This is, of course, in addition to the need for parents to acquire bragging rights about their children.
- gukov 8y ago
  We gamified our kids.
notadoc 8y ago
Related: > The research found, on average, children were playing outside for just over four hours a week https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/27/children-spend-only-half-the-time-playing-outside-as-their-parents-did https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/27/children...
laurieg 8y ago
As someone considering starting a family, I have literally no idea what parenting is anymore. When I was younger I was pretty much left to my own devices, sent off to play with my brother and then packed off to school when old enough. My parents were too busy working, cooking and cleaning to do much fancy extra curricular stuff. I do wonder now what I should be doing to prepare for parenthood. I feel that perhaps it's not the sort of thing that can be distilled down into an easy to read 200 page paperback.
- cheez 8y ago
  If you think you were raised well, then by all means reproduce it. If not, fix what's broken. Don't overcompensate for perceived weaknesses in your upbringing, be honest. For example, were you fat as a teenager? OK, make sure your kids have good eating habits. Notice this is not: put them in crossfit, feed them only vegetables.
- war1025 8y ago
  Be present. That's about the sum total of it I think. If you are there, you will pick up on what is and isn't working, and you can work to make it better. Really kids just want someone to love them and teach them how to be a person.
  - smileysteve 8y ago
    I think that the books and article argue how present you should be. Which is where the above question comes from. Kids need to fall, need to be able to solve things without parents nearby to be able to grow and make responsible decisions.
    - war1025 8y ago
      I guess to me "Teach them how to be a person" includes letting them make their own mistakes and giving them the space to develop the ability to make responsible decisions.
      - 8y ago
throwaway0255 8y ago
This topic is always a great opportunity to share stories about what childhood was like just a few decades ago, so I'll share mine. When I was 5-10, a typical day for me was spent alone or with friends outside, from sun up to down, with zero adult supervision. There wouldn't even be an adult who knew where I was going or where I was. They simply gave me the responsibility of returning home before the sun went down, and over those years I always did, mostly because I was hungry. The only exception was one day when I traveled too far, realized too late that the sun was going down, and collapsed from exhaustion trying to get home. My family searched for and found me during twilight. I learned valuable lessons that day. I recently looked up my childhood home on Google Maps to see how far I would go, and I would regularly travel within about a 3-mile radius. The surrounding area was heavily wooded and mostly vacant. I would see a black bear probably once a month. My parents just told me to make noise as I traveled, to keep them scared off of my position. I knew never to play with their cubs. I knew never to run from them. I knew to stand ground and be loud and aggressive if I was ever approached or charged by one. I fell off my bike and skinned my knees probably 40 or 50 times. I have many memories of limping my bike home on foot for a mile while sobbing in pain, and then squeezing my dad's hand as hard as I could while he poured hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol over my bleeding knee. Every time this happened, he would just tell me I was going to heal up fast and get right back on the bike. A common route for me was to ride my bike along the side of the highway a few miles to a corner store so I could buy chips or candy, or visit a waitress my family knew at a local breakfast spot for some free eggs. Nobody ever stopped their car and tried to "rescue" me. The people at the shops knew how I got there, they were not concerned. When I was about 10, my family moved to a rich white suburb outside a major city. Their policy of letting me be independent and go wherever I wanted unsupervised continued, but in this new town I was regularly approached by adults asking if I was lost, strangers asking where my parents were, and adults on golf carts with walkie-talkies reprimanding me and sending me home for no particular reason. I found their concern for my well-being incredibly insulting. I was insulted that they thought I couldn't handle myself, and later I was insulted by the way I realized they were judging my family and my parents. As a result, I was downright rude to a lot of them, and kind of earned a negative reputation. Ended up getting blamed for a lot of vandalism despite never vandalizing anything, and causing problems between my family and other local families, simply by locals assigning blame to me for all kinds of things based purely on my reputation of being out unsupervised a lot and being rude to certain adults. So I got a taste of both worlds just by moving. I don't think the problem of over-parenting is restricted to time and trend. I think it has a strong geographical and cultural component, too. I suspect that if I went back to my hometown, I might still find kids unsupervised, riding their bikes and skinning their knees in the summer. I've also heard from people outside the country that this helicopter parenting thing seems to be largely restricted to the US.
JTbane 8y ago
The eternal debate continues between the "overbearing fascist helicopter parents" and the "free-parenting grossly negligent degenerates". (I have no horse in this race and find these pieces interesting nonetheless)
- mikec3010 8y ago
  Controversy sells/generates clicks. Nobody wants to read a well-reasoned, balanced article when they're jonesing for that next micro-dose of e-dopamine.
geoffreyhale 8y ago
"parents are more focused on keeping their children safe, content and happy in the moment than on parenting for competence"
projektir 8y ago
If you find a behavior you don't like, figure out what's causing it. It's probably not random, parents are probably not just being dumb. Test scores, or minor misbehaviors, or other things, can disproportionately influence someone's future, to extents that are not realistic or human. Children, left to their own devices, will have trouble surviving in a world that runs on rules that don't actually make sense. Parents can sense this, so they try to protect their children, and they play by the rules that they see. There's no advantage to being fair, to doing things the "right" way, because the message has already gotten out that the rules are arbitrary. It's not important what you know, it's important that you pass the test. Or, as they say, "best predictor of future behavior is past behavior" (very horrible sentiment). If you don't want parents being overzealous and a bit crazy about their children, stop making society so damn competitive and inflexible. There are so many pitfalls someone can fall down just by accident, just by being human.

111 points by Ibethewalrus 8y ago

I teach in a college. Many's the time I've been waiting to get into a classroom because the folks in there are wrapping up an exam, and students come out, instantly produce the phone, and I hear, "Hi mom, I did OK on the quiz, I think ..." That's too much.

donovanh 8y ago
What's wrong with that?
- NeutronStar 8y ago
  If your first instinct is to call your mom to discuss your feelings then... ugh..
- hamandcheese 8y ago
  On its own, not much. But increasingly parents are involving themselves in their college freshman’s education, going to bat for them when they “unfairly” score low, etc.
- solidr53 8y ago
  There is nothing wrong with that!
emptyfile 8y ago
You really picked the most normal example possible.
Angostura 8y ago
I'm in the EU so can't read the article, but that doesn't feel like over-parenting. My daughter might do that, but she's a pretty independent lass, at age 14 currently wandering around central London or Camden market somewhere as part of her summer holidays - not sure where.
- ginko 8y ago
  >I'm in the EU so can't read the article https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=628042168 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=628042168 The article ID in the link can be used in the text only site.
scarecrowbob 8y ago
I taught at a university for a couple of years. TBH, that feels normal-ish. I have plenty of folks including my parents with whom, depending on how often we've been communicating lately, I will share trivia. If you think that is bad, wait until you have to speak with some 20-year-old's mom who is thinking that her kiddo should be getting an A for C-level work and you have to get litigious about supporting your grades. I had to write a policy into my syllabus saying that I won't (and, IIRC, legally was not permitted) to talk with other folks than the student about grades and assessments.
dragontamer 8y ago
I don't see anything wrong with a kid (or even an adult) having a strong relationship with their parents. I had a flatmate who talked with her mom every night. Literally every night. For hours. She was just close with her family. It wasn't like she was at school or anything, we were both grown adults with working lives.
- fatnoah 8y ago
  My wife calls her parents every day for a few minutes. I talk to my mom once every couple weeks or an hour or two. Two sides of the same coin.
billbrown 8y ago
This is the peril of anecdotes. You took a momentary observation and wrote a whole narrative surrounding it. How do you know that this is a parental tether? Maybe she had spoken to her mother the night before and expressed some worry about that particular quiz. The call you heard was just a follow up and she is otherwise fully independent. (I catch myself doing this frequently: that couple's marriage is in trouble—they're not even talking over dinner, that driver is on his phone scrolling through Facebook probably, etc. Those stories may be true but there's perfectly reasonable alternatives that would look exactly the same.)
linuxftw 8y ago
I think this is a symptom that today's children don't have the same type of bond with their peers as previous generations. Yesteryear, kids would have discussed classwork with their friends and classmates. All socialization has been removed from classrooms, outside of 'group activities.' The only people they know how to talk to are their parents.
- mikec3010 8y ago
  > The only people they know how to talk to are their parents. I believe it. This gets brought up often here, but when you drive through residential neighborhoods you don't see kids playing or travelling to their friend's houses anymore. Either people are having way fewer kids or they aren't allowed to do things autonomously anymore. This undoubtedly correlates with rising obesity. But instead of blaming lack of play, they blame junk food. I recently drove past a middle school (12-14 yo) and shuddered at the sight of each child walking straight from the door to their parents car, one at a time, like prisoners. When that car pulled away the next car stopped at the same spot before the next child was dismissed. Just a few years prior, all kids were released simultaneously. I think this is eroding our society.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    No, it's sadly a complete lack of kid autonomy around me. Kids aren't afforded any independence around here until mid-teens (15+). I think walking more than a few doors down is absolutely out of the question for most kids these days. More and more kids are driven to school each day. The school bus was another socialization place for kids that is gone.
  - gowld 8y ago
    The great thing about science by gut feel is you can choose which contradictions you like. In a fitness thread, it's "abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym". But in a parenting thread it's "fat is burned in the street, not the diet"
    - mikec3010 8y ago
pnathan 8y ago
Ah, come on, that's a bit rich. Seems reasonable (& healthy even...) to be chatting with mom about an exam coming up, then give her a ring when it's over. Sure, if mom is still supervising, then that's a bit awkward...
jpindar 8y ago
That seems strange to me. When I was in school (many years ago) I think I called home maybe once a week, and I don't remember talking about schoolwork much.

tehabe 8y ago

Recently I watched a report by the US correspondent of the German public television. She spoke with parents who got into trouble because they let their children play near the house. A mom who put surveillance software on their children's phone. Parents who look on video feeds from the day care centres. I found this shocking and also dangerous in the long run, people are getting used to surveillance might also accept it by the state.

ajross 8y ago
FWIW: A "look at those crazy americans!" color story by a foreign journalist may, y'know, not be the most authoritative source for this kind of thing. Obviously those products exist (and probably do in Germany too) and I'm sure that parent who got in trouble was a real incident. Nonetheless those of us actually raising children in this country don't actually do that stuff. Chill.
- vonzeppelin 8y ago
  > Nonetheless those of us actually raising children in this country don't actually do that stuff. Chill. Except the ones that are?
  - dfee 8y ago
    I mean there are also serial killers. That might not adequately describe the population at large.
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  You may not do this but it is a trend nonetheless and we should try to understand it, discuss it...
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    ...and kill it, before it grows out of control.
- tehabe 8y ago

christofosho 8y ago

As a teacher of ages 4 up until 14, I think parents and people in general need to be concious toward what constitutes "over" parenting. Too often we as teachers see students that are behaving poorly, or having more trouble in school, because they do not have enough help or consistency at home. Parents reading articles like this might take them too literally and step too far from their child's life. Parenting should be a balance. You should know, as a parent, what is happening with your child's schooling, and be there to help. But you should not micromanage the child. Parent involvement leads to more academic confidence and success[1], and more behavioural[2] success. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020099/ [2] https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/sm6/McCormick_2013_parent_involvement.pdf https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/sm6/McCormi...

burfog 8y ago
There is a slightly different way to interpret that. Some students, despite being in your classroom, are really being homeschooled. For example, my wife and I both got extra assignments from our parents. The parents aren't just helping. The parents are teaching. You aren't trusted to teach. Other students have parents that trust you to teach. Your job is to teach, and these parents expect you to do it. In theory, they are correct.
- fosco 8y ago
  I find this perspective interesting and I think this discussion needs to be taken further as I think it is unclear on both sides what the final expectations are to be upon completion of class/grade. that being said, I am concerned that some parents expect that teachers are also doing the 'parenting' side of things which may be unrealistic. I think that in most public schools (the one I went to) some parenting needs to be executed by teachers otherwise a small handful of kids could derail any teaching getting done in the first place.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    The "teachers shouldn't parent; parents stopped parenting" lesson is one I've heard from more than a few. What if teachers ALWAYS "parented", and as societies grow more tolerant and diverse this obviously doesn't scale (parents disagree with teachers on what should be taught). Thus we decide on this image of teachers giving knowledge and means of learning, while parents give morals and social structures. But has this image every existed in practice? How do we know it is even achievable? A child is learning from EVERYTHING. Is it truly reasonable to expect that teachers aren't "parenting"? Even if they expressly attempt to focus on intellectual pursuits only, that is just showing a different set of parenting lessons (potentially about lack of accountability, or the division of social mores from everything else). Likewise, if the teachers have turned to this absent form of parenting, are we correct in assuming that other parents aren't doing their "jobs"? (After all, it's never MY kid that isn't getting parenting, it's everyone else's). I don't have solutions or suggestions, but I want to raise the idea that maybe it's not "who" is or is not parenting, because everyone is, all the time, even if trying NOT to "parent". If so, then simply trying harder to ensuring parenting only happens from parents, and DOES happen from them, is doomed to failure, incompatible with the operating of developing minds?

jknoepfler 8y ago

I'd expect NPR to not use the word "crisis" in this context. There no obvious juncture, no imminent, looming problem that demands decisive action. There's just yet another op-ed pop-psyche piece about kids failing to learn "how to adult." I'm not surprised by the existence of the article, it's as inevitable as my curmudgeonly response. I'm surprised NPR stooped to publishing it.

tcfunk 8y ago
Yeah I was also thinking the term crisis was a bit of a stretch here. 'Over-Parenting Crisis' is in quotes, however, so I'm wondering if they've taken that title from one of the books?
ams6110 8y ago
NPR is not immune to dramatizing the news. They need listeners (or eyeballs) too.

thorell 8y ago

I think a lot of parents don't know how to effectively parent and make up for that with enthusiasm. Too much involvement, not enough parenting. I am guilty of this.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago
Which leads to the question of how one teaches general parenting skill.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  We simply don't live together enough to observe other parents enough to get the right information. We only see surfaces nowadays.
  - charlchi 8y ago
    I mean it's obvious that the vast majority of people, parents and their children, are spending too much time in front of a computer, TV or phone screen. I'm 20 now, growing up I barely had any contact with my father besides maybe an hour around the dinner table a day. That's when we actually sat around a dinner table. For the vast majority of my early childhood and teens we never did.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- citizenkeen 8y ago
  My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. My dad's always saying "There's no book on parenting." My response if always "Screw you, yes there is. But you went to business school." You can pay someone to fix your injuries, or broken pipes, but you can't pay someone to raise your kids. When my son was born, I went into it with the knowledge of three highly rated books on Amazon I had picked at random. My wife went into it with years of experience dealing with difficult kids. She worked at a feeding clinic at a research institute, helping parents figure out how to get their kids to eat their vegetables. I'm so grateful. My 2 year old helps fold laundry, says please and thank you, and knows to put away his toys before bath time. I don't know what I'd do if I hadn't married this woman. I don't know where I would have gotten the skills I have now.

tarr11 8y ago

I'm not convinced this is a real problem. The term helicopter parenting was first used in 1990 [0] New Yorker article on same topic from 2008 [1] Articles and posts like this are chock-full of anecdotes and head-nodding, but short on studies or other data to even correlate against. Seems like this "crisis" has been happening for a long time. Is there a longitudinal study on children who have been "helicopter parented?" vs those who were raised "free-range"? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/11/17/the-child-trap https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/11/17/the-child-trap

deleted 8y ago
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finaliteration 8y ago

It’s a difficult balance to strike and it’s easy to judge parents either way. I’m plenty guilty of being on both sides as a parent. My particular challenge, however, stems from PTSD from childhood abuse and neglect, so I feel even -more- pressure to give my child everything she needs and wants because I don’t want her to feel as alone and unwanted as I did. But I do worry that comes at the price of her independence, which is something else I definitely don’t want to take away from her. The paradoxical thing for me is that much of what I’ve achieved has come about because I was forced to do things on my own and fend for myself. It built a lot of “character” but at the same time I’m not anywhere near happy or content.

aidenn0 8y ago
One solution I've seen suggested is to let your kids mess up, but be there ready with empathy. For a kid to know that when they fail, their parent will be there to comfort them and encourage them is huge. Also, you teach them basic safety things, and then name it when they've mastered it; e.g. "You know how to look both ways, you don't need to hold my hand crossing the street anymore." or "You can cook on the stove by yourself now because you know how to be safe around hot things." They are getting independence, but doing so knowing that their parent is concerned about protecting them from dangers they cannot address themselves. With those two things, a child is unlikely to feel neglected or unloved, but can still develop a sense of independence.
fatnoah 8y ago
>so I feel even -more- pressure to give my child everything she needs and wants because I don’t want her to feel as alone and unwanted as I did This is a tough one because I think how we parent is super-strongly influenced by our experiences as a child. I think the keys here are to make sure she knows that you love and support her no matter what and that's as much of a given as that the sun will rise in the east AND to support her on doing things for herself. It's one thing if you're there to provide encouragement or a bit of help doing something vs. telling her to get it done and walking away. She'll learn the least from having everything on a whim or you doing everything for her. If the answer is "no" discuss why. Be fair and not capricious. Kids are smart. They know the difference between a parent that doesn't care and a parent that's setting limits.

guard0g 8y ago

What kind of parent does their kid's homework?! Here's an idea. Why not have "how to be a parent" classes taught in high school or college?

analog31 8y ago
>>> What kind of parent does their kid's homework?! I did, in a particularly subtle way, until I realized it and stopped. I never physically performed the homework task, but I prodded my kids to get it done. As it turns out, the homework was so easy, that literally the only challenge was motivation. By supplying them with the motivation, I was effectively doing the work. Nowadays, if asked for help, I go into teacher mode, and start asking them questions or providing a gentle nudge towards figuring out something themselves. They know that asking me for help will generally make their task harder, rather than easier. ;-) >>> Here's an idea. Why not have "how to be a parent" classes taught in high school or college? Because we don't know what it consists of.
ams6110 8y ago
I will help with homework. Proofread a paper, point out clumsy sentences or poor reasoning. Suggest ways to improve a project. Help work through a math problem or proof, to the extent I can. Demonstrate that the answers can often be found by simply reading the textbook or other study materials. For one of my kids I even employed a math tutor when he was struggling. But actually do homework for them? No.
aiyodev 8y ago
Parents who understand what “tracking” is. If you aren’t, you’re setting your child up for failure.
- war1025 8y ago
  Sounds like a pretty wild rat race you're in.
  - JTbane 8y ago
    The rat race begins before you're even considered an adult! Sad but true.

smelendez 8y ago

> Some schools have an explicit policy against parents doing kids' homework and in favor of kids raising issues and concerns themselves rather than relying on their parents to do so. These schools are part of the solution. I'd love to see these policies tested, e.g., have five high school kids with class scheduling issues attempt to resolve them themselves, and another five have their parents call, and compare how the process goes.

thomasfedb 8y ago
High school kids have class scheduling issues that aren't just automatically sorted out by the school? Heck. Not my experience for sure!
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  Turns out a lot of the scheduling software out there was written by people who without formal training or who weren't paying attention in their algorithms course. E.g., one year: Me: requests A and B Friend: requests A and non-honors B hour 4: Me in non-honors B; friend in gym. hour 5 (only hour honors B is offered): Me in A; friend in honros B. Based on a few years of observations, I'm almost certain courses were filled using some variant of this algorithm: for each student s sorted by student number: for each non-filled course c in hour 1..n: if(s wants c and not in c): assign s to c and continue to next hour. for each non-filled course c in hour 1..n: if(s wants c' and not in c' and c is like c'): assign s to c and continue to next hour. because students with lower student numbers tended to get their choices (correlated with when student joined district far better than class status) and courses late in the day were always half empty while courses earlier in the day were always filled to the brim. Things got better each year but never in a way that would suggest someone finally decided to pick up an algorithms textbook. I suspect by now they've purchased something that works or else managed to prove P=NP and the solution is billions of if statements fixing special cases the teachers/students complained loudly enough about...
  - thomasfedb 8y ago

stcredzero 8y ago

Jonathan Haidt thinks an earlier child abduction scare sparked the overly fragile undergrads that started to appear in 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snqXOvnHzcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snqXOvnHzcQ We are raising kids lacking conflict resolution skills who can't discuss and would rather coerce someone who doesn't conform to their ideas.

squozzer 8y ago

I offer the following hypothesis - competition for entry into "the best" colleges, competition for "free money" through scholarships, and competition for "good jobs" after college has driven parents to micromanage their children's school "career." The margins for "error" - i.e. achieving suboptimal grades and cultivating interests outside of "school stuff" - have shrunk since I was a kid. This is, of course, in addition to the need for parents to acquire bragging rights about their children.

gukov 8y ago
We gamified our kids.

notadoc 8y ago

Related: > The research found, on average, children were playing outside for just over four hours a week https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/27/children-spend-only-half-the-time-playing-outside-as-their-parents-did https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/27/children...

laurieg 8y ago

As someone considering starting a family, I have literally no idea what parenting is anymore. When I was younger I was pretty much left to my own devices, sent off to play with my brother and then packed off to school when old enough. My parents were too busy working, cooking and cleaning to do much fancy extra curricular stuff. I do wonder now what I should be doing to prepare for parenthood. I feel that perhaps it's not the sort of thing that can be distilled down into an easy to read 200 page paperback.

cheez 8y ago
If you think you were raised well, then by all means reproduce it. If not, fix what's broken. Don't overcompensate for perceived weaknesses in your upbringing, be honest. For example, were you fat as a teenager? OK, make sure your kids have good eating habits. Notice this is not: put them in crossfit, feed them only vegetables.
war1025 8y ago
Be present. That's about the sum total of it I think. If you are there, you will pick up on what is and isn't working, and you can work to make it better. Really kids just want someone to love them and teach them how to be a person.
- smileysteve 8y ago
  I think that the books and article argue how present you should be. Which is where the above question comes from. Kids need to fall, need to be able to solve things without parents nearby to be able to grow and make responsible decisions.
  - war1025 8y ago
    I guess to me "Teach them how to be a person" includes letting them make their own mistakes and giving them the space to develop the ability to make responsible decisions.
    - 8y ago

throwaway0255 8y ago

This topic is always a great opportunity to share stories about what childhood was like just a few decades ago, so I'll share mine. When I was 5-10, a typical day for me was spent alone or with friends outside, from sun up to down, with zero adult supervision. There wouldn't even be an adult who knew where I was going or where I was. They simply gave me the responsibility of returning home before the sun went down, and over those years I always did, mostly because I was hungry. The only exception was one day when I traveled too far, realized too late that the sun was going down, and collapsed from exhaustion trying to get home. My family searched for and found me during twilight. I learned valuable lessons that day. I recently looked up my childhood home on Google Maps to see how far I would go, and I would regularly travel within about a 3-mile radius. The surrounding area was heavily wooded and mostly vacant. I would see a black bear probably once a month. My parents just told me to make noise as I traveled, to keep them scared off of my position. I knew never to play with their cubs. I knew never to run from them. I knew to stand ground and be loud and aggressive if I was ever approached or charged by one. I fell off my bike and skinned my knees probably 40 or 50 times. I have many memories of limping my bike home on foot for a mile while sobbing in pain, and then squeezing my dad's hand as hard as I could while he poured hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol over my bleeding knee. Every time this happened, he would just tell me I was going to heal up fast and get right back on the bike. A common route for me was to ride my bike along the side of the highway a few miles to a corner store so I could buy chips or candy, or visit a waitress my family knew at a local breakfast spot for some free eggs. Nobody ever stopped their car and tried to "rescue" me. The people at the shops knew how I got there, they were not concerned. When I was about 10, my family moved to a rich white suburb outside a major city. Their policy of letting me be independent and go wherever I wanted unsupervised continued, but in this new town I was regularly approached by adults asking if I was lost, strangers asking where my parents were, and adults on golf carts with walkie-talkies reprimanding me and sending me home for no particular reason. I found their concern for my well-being incredibly insulting. I was insulted that they thought I couldn't handle myself, and later I was insulted by the way I realized they were judging my family and my parents. As a result, I was downright rude to a lot of them, and kind of earned a negative reputation. Ended up getting blamed for a lot of vandalism despite never vandalizing anything, and causing problems between my family and other local families, simply by locals assigning blame to me for all kinds of things based purely on my reputation of being out unsupervised a lot and being rude to certain adults. So I got a taste of both worlds just by moving. I don't think the problem of over-parenting is restricted to time and trend. I think it has a strong geographical and cultural component, too. I suspect that if I went back to my hometown, I might still find kids unsupervised, riding their bikes and skinning their knees in the summer. I've also heard from people outside the country that this helicopter parenting thing seems to be largely restricted to the US.

JTbane 8y ago

The eternal debate continues between the "overbearing fascist helicopter parents" and the "free-parenting grossly negligent degenerates". (I have no horse in this race and find these pieces interesting nonetheless)

mikec3010 8y ago
Controversy sells/generates clicks. Nobody wants to read a well-reasoned, balanced article when they're jonesing for that next micro-dose of e-dopamine.

geoffreyhale 8y ago

"parents are more focused on keeping their children safe, content and happy in the moment than on parenting for competence"

projektir 8y ago

If you find a behavior you don't like, figure out what's causing it. It's probably not random, parents are probably not just being dumb. Test scores, or minor misbehaviors, or other things, can disproportionately influence someone's future, to extents that are not realistic or human. Children, left to their own devices, will have trouble surviving in a world that runs on rules that don't actually make sense. Parents can sense this, so they try to protect their children, and they play by the rules that they see. There's no advantage to being fair, to doing things the "right" way, because the message has already gotten out that the rules are arbitrary. It's not important what you know, it's important that you pass the test. Or, as they say, "best predictor of future behavior is past behavior" (very horrible sentiment). If you don't want parents being overzealous and a bit crazy about their children, stop making society so damn competitive and inflexible. There are so many pitfalls someone can fall down just by accident, just by being human.