Helicopter Parenting Correlated With Depression

[SeaConquest]

“Do you think parents at your school would rather their kid be depressed at Yale or happy at University of Arizona?†The colleague quickly replied, “My guess is 75 percent of the parents would rather see their kids depressed at Yale. They figure that the kid can straighten the emotional stuff out in his/her 20’s, but no one can go back and get the Yale undergrad degree.

 

"When parents have tended to do the stuff of life for kids—the waking up, the transporting, the reminding about deadlines and obligations, the bill-paying, the question-asking, the decision-making, the responsibility-taking, the talking to strangers, and the confronting of authorities, kids may be in for quite a shock when parents turn them loose in the world of college or work. They will experience setbacks, which will feel to them like failure. Lurking beneath the problem of whatever thing needs to be handled is the student’s inability to differentiate the self from the parent."

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/07/helicopter_parenting_is_increasingly_correlated_with_college_age_depression.html

[maize]

Very interesting.

One possible confounding factor: anxiety prone parents may be much more likely to play a helicopter role in their kids' lives, in which case the fact that the kids themselves suffer from anxiety may be due to genetics more than anything else.

[Mergath]

Yup, I can see it. It makes me think of a girl I met when visiting my mom last week. There's a family with a seven-year-old girl next door, and at one point she came over to play with dd when her baseball game was canceled. This girl is in eight (!!!) sports. Not because she wants to be, but because her parents think she has to have every minute of every day scheduled. She's a pser, too, so I can't even imagine how busy she is during the school year.

 

At one point I asked her what she likes to do, and she looked at me blankly and said, "I don't know. I don't have time to do things." If dd or I didn't tell her what to do, she instantly flopped onto the couch and said, "I'm bored." 

 

I can easily see how a kid like that after eighteen years of helicopter parenting suddenly dropped into college would be massively depressed. You don't know how to manage your own time or keep yourself busy, and you've never had time to learn about yourself, what you like to do, and how to be happy with your own company. It's a recipe for disaster.

 

And re: the quote from the article, if a kid doesn't have a chance to get into Harvard or Yale without twelve years of parental hovering and pushing, they're probably not going to do well once they get there anyway.

[klmama]

Very interesting.

One possible confounding factor: anxiety prone parents may be much more likely to play a helicopter role in their kids' lives, in which case the fact that the kids themselves suffer from anxiety may be due to genetics more than anything else.

 

Very good point, Maize.  I know several kids with anxiety, and their parents are much more involved in helping run their lives than they are with the non-anxious siblings.  Same parents, some anxious and some not, but the anxious kids seem to require more involvement.

[TranquilMind]

Yup, I can see it. It makes me think of a girl I met when visiting my mom last week. There's a family with a seven-year-old girl next door, and at one point she came over to play with dd when her baseball game was canceled. This girl is in eight (!!!) sports. Not because she wants to be, but because her parents think she has to have every minute of every day scheduled. She's a pser, too, so I can't even imagine how busy she is during the school year.

 

At one point I asked her what she likes to do, and she looked at me blankly and said, "I don't know. I don't have time to do things." If dd or I didn't tell her what to do, she instantly flopped onto the couch and said, "I'm bored." 

 

I can easily see how a kid like that after eighteen years of helicopter parenting suddenly dropped into college would be massively depressed. You don't know how to manage your own time or keep yourself busy, and you've never had time to learn about yourself, what you like to do, and how to be happy with your own company. It's a recipe for disaster.

 

And re: the quote from the article, if a kid doesn't have a chance to get into Harvard or Yale without twelve years of parental hovering and pushing, they're probably not going to do well once they get there anyway.

This!

[EmilyGF]

Yes. 

 

This is actually a huge motivator for me to give my kids freedom. The kids I knew in college who had been given freedom (along with responsibility) were the ones who were the most emotionally even-keeled and able to handle life.

 

Emily

 

ETA: I remember having to carry my bike home one day because my skirt got caught in the chain while I was biking home from school. I was 7. The stakes were low, but it involved problem solving and annoyance. (And a skin knee and some blood.) Later I could deal with real problems because I'd been trained on easy ones. When the first problems you face are in college, the stakes are high and failure is real. In my experience, private colleges at least are trying to lower the stakes, but at some point you must face a real problem and there won't be a college employee to handle it for you.

[dirty ethel rackham]

I walked in to open house one year to find my son's reading group was repeating the exact same material they had successfully completed the year before. I fired up my chopper and found every middle class parent in the school was hovering over the Principal's office complaining about the ncga dumb down. Darn tootin' I keep my chopper ready...these theives will deny children an appropriate education if parents do not hover, while doubling the tax bill as they hire their relatives.

I don't consider that being a helicopter parent.  That is holding the school accountable for delivering upon their mission - to educate the children.  It is not like you were doing something for your kids that they could do themselves.  

 

When I started to read the article, I admit I was pretty defensive. I have considered myself to be somewhat of a helicopter-ish parent and I have two college-age kids who both have suffered from depression.  Cue the guilt.  But, reading these examples, I definitely don't fit their mold.  Once my kids are at college, I coach, I help them advocate for themselves, I problem-solve with them.  But I don't do things for them that they can't do for themselves.  Both of these kids needed to be dragged along into adult-hood.  I had to scaffold, model, coach, push, encourage. It was exhausting and would have been much easier to just do stuff myself.  I guess there are many people who think anyone who does not follow the "toss them in the deep end and they'll learn to swim" model of parenting is a helicopter parent.   I try to pre-teach in shallow water and be there with the life preserver in deep water, not carry them on my back.  

[SeaConquest]

I don't consider that being a helicopter parent.  That is holding the school accountable for delivering upon their mission - to educate the children.  It is not like you were doing something for your kids that they could do themselves.  

 

When I started to read the article, I admit I was pretty defensive. I have considered myself to be somewhat of a helicopter-ish parent and I have two college-age kids who both have suffered from depression.  Cue the guilt.  But, reading these examples, I definitely don't fit their mold.  Once my kids are at college, I coach, I help them advocate for themselves, I problem-solve with them.  But I don't do things for them that they can't do for themselves.  Both of these kids needed to be dragged along into adult-hood.  I had to scaffold, model, coach, push, encourage. It was exhausting and would have been much easier to just do stuff myself.  I guess there are many people who think anyone who does not follow the "toss them in the deep end and they'll learn to swim" model of parenting is a helicopter parent.   I try to pre-teach in shallow water and be there with the life preserver in deep water, not carry them on my back.  

 

Don't feel guilty. My parents were very old school, free-range, pick-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps types, and I still am a wilting flower under stress and suffer from crippling depression. Some of it is certainly environmental, but you also have to deal with the genetic hand you are dealt (tons of mental illness in my extended family). We do the best that we can.

[smudge]

I am not a helicopter parent, but I'm almost forced into it sometimes. For example, the town Easter egg hunt. I want to let my kids run free, but the egg field is so crowded by all the other parents observing thier kids, I don't dare let my kids run free for fear of losing them in the crowd. Another occasion I was at the grocery store (regular store- Not super walmart) with my two girls it was mid afternoon and the store was dead. I think the employees outnumbered the shoppers. Anyway, this lady overhears me tell my 7 & 9 year old that it's ok to run over to the drinking fountain on the opposite side of the store. She begins to lecture me on the dangers of letting my kids out of my sight like that and "don't you know they could be gone in an instant?!" I was speechless. I wasn't exactly in the middle of downtown. Very different from how I grew up, out of the house as long as we were home in time for dinner. 

[EmilyGF]

The key to the article is the list of what helicoptering looks like.

 

1. When we do for our kids what they can already do for themselves;
2. When we do for our kids what they can almost do for themselves; and
3. When our parenting behavior is motivated by our own egos.

A 10-year-old can call a friend to arrange a play time. A 12-year-old can walk to school on their own (goodness, I biked 1.5 mi to school on my own at 6, but that is another thing). These are considered abnormal in our community.

 

A 12-year-old can't advocate for a more appropriate study with the higher levels of school leadership (but can ask for a better Silent Reading book). A 12-year-old might be included in the meeting, however, in order to learn how to better advocate for him/herself in the future.

 

I think the key is to ask whether your kid should/could be able to do this for themselves and let that be your guide.

 

For myself, #3 is the one I am most likely to fall into.

[Mrs. A]

I read the title of the thread and immediately thought that depression meant that the parents were the ones more prone to it. :) I can see that side of it too - the more I let myself worry about how my kids are going to turn out the more mentally unstable I become!

[Tree Frog]

The key to the article is the list of what helicoptering looks like.

 

1. When we do for our kids what they can already do for themselves;
2. When we do for our kids what they can almost do for themselves; and
3. When our parenting behavior is motivated by our own egos.

A 10-year-old can call a friend to arrange a play time. A 12-year-old can walk to school on their own (goodness, I biked 1.5 mi to school on my own at 6, but that is another thing). These are considered abnormal in our community.

 

A 12-year-old can't advocate for a more appropriate study with the higher levels of school leadership (but can ask for a better Silent Reading book). A 12-year-old might be included in the meeting, however, in order to learn how to better advocate for him/herself in the future.

 

I think the key is to ask whether your kid should/could be able to do this for themselves and let that be your guide.

 

For myself, #3 is the one I am most likely to fall into.

 

 

My 16 yo dd has a friend whose mother contacts me to see if dd would like to do something with her daughter. I usually tell her to have her 16 yo dd contact my dd. The friend usually doesn't; the mother contacts dd. There's no way I'm going to make "play dates"  for my nearly adult dd!

[Farrar]

The examples in the article were so extreme that I couldn't get a handle on whether or not the average helicopter parent was actually causing depression or just these crazy parents.

[dirty ethel rackham]

The examples in the article were so extreme that I couldn't get a handle on whether or not the average helicopter parent was actually causing depression or just these crazy parents.

I thought the same thing.  That wasn't helicopter parenting ... that was controlling.  

[nobeatenpath]

Count me in as someone who had the opposite of helicopter parenting (to the point of leaving home at 16 and having to get myself in to University, no parental involvement) and still suffering depression and problems. Sure, there could be contributing factors with over-controlling parents, but that is not always 'helicopter parents' -  my father was super controlling without actually doing much for me IYKWIM.

 

As to 'modern day parents don't let their kids do the kind of thing I did as a kid'. I rode my bike to school from age 7. Was nearly hit by a car twice, and a cattle truck once, and that was in a small rural town. I let my son ride in Germany as there is bike infrastructure and he didn't have to go on roads. No way known in anything that he was riding on the roads in the UK or here in Turkey - it is incredibly unsafe. Many of the neighbourhoods we grew up in now have so much more traffic, it would be borderline negligent to just let kids out on their own to deal with it. I am sure there are other examples as well.

 

That said - we are also the kind of parents who let our kid scoot off on his own to find stuff for us in the grocery store (and my son started to refuse to go in  the Ladies toilets with my from age 6 onwards, so it was Mum hangs around outside the Gents and waits for him or no toilet ...) but I think we have lived in places where people were less paranoid about kids being scooped up while you are not looking. But societal pressures play a big part in parenting - we are so different than our peers that we actually get away with alot because everyone 'knows' we are a 'bit weird' so if we let our kid do something others kids don't, or we don't make him do a gajillion activities or whatever, they chalk that up to us being different. Which is kind of sad - I think a lot of 'helicopter parenting' is because we learn parenting behaviours from our peers. And if everyone else is doing it, we feel we have to do it too.

[SKL]

I have a kid who really resists being independent.  If I force her when she's anxious, she'll act like a lost child in need of rescue.  It makes me wonder how she's ever going to get along on her own.  I do have time to work on her, but I wonder.

 

I also have relatives who would never have graduated high school if their parents hadn't physically made them get out of bed, reminded them to wash their underarms, etc.  "Tough love" doesn't work for all kids as there are all kinds of reasons why kids aren't self-motivated or organized.  Depression can be one of them.

 

So I am guessing that some parents who do more for their kids are just parenting the kids they were given.  And the cause-effect is likely blurred.

[frogger]

I agree you have to parent the child you were given. Just because something worked for you doesn't mean it will work for someone else or even one of your other children. Children are different, circumstances are different, social climate is different especially with the members of this board being from all over the place.   I will say the things mentioned in the article were ahem over the top.

 

I think EmilyGF had some pretty good principals that were easy to adjust by circumstances and child. Principals usually are a better guide than steadfast rules. At 12 years old a child should be able to do X. We all know some 12 year olds act like 18 year olds and some like 8 year olds and we as parents need to adjust accordingly.

[Guest vertenaotne]

 It was exhausting and would have been much easier to just do stuff myself.

[Sneezyone]

The book, which I've been reading off and on for a week now, has many more examples. I bought it because DH and I recently had it out over allowing our 10yo to be home alone for an hr. He freaked. I prevailed. 😉 And she THRIVED. So proud of herself!

[TranquilMind]

Count me in as someone who had the opposite of helicopter parenting (to the point of leaving home at 16 and having to get myself in to University, no parental involvement) and still suffering depression and problems. Sure, there could be contributing factors with over-controlling parents, but that is not always 'helicopter parents' -  my father was super controlling without actually doing much for me IYKWIM.

 

As to 'modern day parents don't let their kids do the kind of thing I did as a kid'. I rode my bike to school from age 7. Was nearly hit by a car twice, and a cattle truck once, and that was in a small rural town. I let my son ride in Germany as there is bike infrastructure and he didn't have to go on roads. No way known in anything that he was riding on the roads in the UK or here in Turkey - it is incredibly unsafe. Many of the neighbourhoods we grew up in now have so much more traffic, it would be borderline negligent to just let kids out on their own to deal with it. I am sure there are other examples as well.

 

That said - we are also the kind of parents who let our kid scoot off on his own to find stuff for us in the grocery store (and my son started to refuse to go in  the Ladies toilets with my from age 6 onwards, so it was Mum hangs around outside the Gents and waits for him or no toilet ...) but I think we have lived in places where people were less paranoid about kids being scooped up while you are not looking. But societal pressures play a big part in parenting - we are so different than our peers that we actually get away with alot because everyone 'knows' we are a 'bit weird' so if we let our kid do something others kids don't, or we don't make him do a gajillion activities or whatever, they chalk that up to us being different. Which is kind of sad - I think a lot of 'helicopter parenting' is because we learn parenting behaviours from our peers. And if everyone else is doing it, we feel we have to do it too.

This is interesting to me. Several have said some variation of what you say in the bolded.

My experience was exactly the opposite. I also had the bootstrapper, free range parents.   I was extremely independent and fairly confident at an early age.  My parents played no role in advising me in my college application, adult choices, anything.  It never even occurred to me to ask.  I'm flummoxed when I hear how involved parents are in the whole college thing today.   They were there if I wanted to talk and otherwise trusted that I would make good decisions and I (mostly) did.  If I made a mistake, I fixed it. That's what you do, they taught me.  If I asked advice, they really essentially told me to trust myself and I'd figure it out. 

 

Sometimes I WISH they had spoken up.  When I only had my mom left, I once went on a date with a much older man who lied about his age. He came to the house to pick me up.   My Mom HAD to know he was a bald-faced liar; I can see the look between them now, but you know, when you are really young, you are stupid enough to think he really likes you because you are "ever so mature" and not because of how you look.    All she said ;later was, "That is the oldest looking (30 something) year old man that I've ever seen."     Queen of understatement, and I regularly laugh now that I'm the age she was, thinking about how cool she was and how well she handled everything.   I would have failed that test!

 

I'm attempting to do the same thing, and slowly stepping back and letting go of my teens.  They have to sink or swim and they have been swimming so far.    I do offer my opinion though, but try to state it diplomatically (and am not always successful!). 

 

I hope I don't later hear that I should have been more involved and didn't give enough advice or help!   I was earlier, but I think you start tight, and loosen up as they grow.  You can't start loose and tighten up on your kids or you will reap rebellion, and you probably shouldn't suddenly toss them in to sink or swim with no acclimation at a certain age (which I have seen).

I don't know.  We all do the best we can, I guess.  My parents did and we did, and I hope my kids see that. 

[TranquilMind]

My 16 yo dd has a friend whose mother contacts me to see if dd would like to do something with her daughter. I usually tell her to have her 16 yo dd contact my dd. The friend usually doesn't; the mother contacts dd. There's no way I'm going to make "play dates"  for my nearly adult dd!

Yeah, that's weird, but probably not that uncommon for home schoolers.

 

Thinking of how competent home schooling parents tend to me and how children just think we can do anything, I just remembered a funny thing that happened when my daughter was a bit younger, maybe 14.  One day she said to me, "Mom, I think I would like to try being a model.  Can you sign me up for that?"

 

Ha ha.  Sure, dear...let me just sign you up at a modeling agency.  ;)

[maize]

Yeah, that's weird, but probably not that uncommon for home schoolers.

 

Thinking of how competent home schooling parents tend to me and how children just think we can do anything, I just remembered a funny thing that happened when my daughter was a bit younger, maybe 14.  One day she said to me, "Mom, I think I would like to try being a model.  Can you sign me up for that?"

 

Ha ha.  Sure, dear...let me just sign you up at a modeling agency.  ;)

 

If I had a child who said this I might sign them up for a modeling class. I've heard that such classes can be great for teaching kids how to present themselves with confidence and poise.

[TranquilMind]

If I had a child who said this I might sign them up for a modeling class. I've heard that such classes can be great for teaching kids how to present themselves with confidence and poise.

I actually worked at one of those modeling schools and  taught classes, back in the dark ages.

 

She didn't mean that though,, and I'm sorry I was unclear.  She meant to sign her up with a professional agency, like Wilhelmina or Ford Modeling agency (in which about 0.000001% are accepted).  ;0

[Bluegoat]

I live in a university town and have a few friends who are university profs, and the one thing they have all said is that they find the kids that are coming in have no ability to cope or manage stress of difficulty, and are much more prone to anxiety and depression than their students used to be.  It's pronounced enough that they find it seriously worrying.  They find that many of them have basic problems with the work - things like not being able to read a passage and contextualize it to see what information is important - but also they are very stressed out just by their daily lives.

 

I've spoken about it in more detail to one of my friends, and his feeling was that there were a few problems behind it.  Many are ill-prepared academically, but also many have few skills for actually taking care of themselves and are overwhelmed.  He finds they are peer dependent to an extraordinary degree but often lack skills at living in community or forming friendships.  And they don't really have much sense of what they think is actually important in life or has meaning - what they have is at a pretty immature level that doesn't go far when there are difficulties.

 

I also wonder if we haven't taught many of them to cultivate a kind of emotional fragility.  I was reading an article the other day about kids reading classic works in a liberal arts program wanting "trigger warnings" for what are generally considered pretty standard subjects - the rape of Persephone for example.  This particular school had also had a controversial talk given on campus and students demanded a "safe space' be created where they could work through their feelings about such things - a room with crayons, play-dough, and videos of puppies.  If numbers of students are really requiring such things to be involved with normal adult discussions, there is something seriously wrong with what we have taught them about how to deal with subjects that make them uncomfortable.

[SKL]

Anyone have any thoughts about whether scouts, 4H, or similar programs can help address these issues?

I truly believe bringing up my kids to be able to care for themselves by college age (17.5 in their case) is one of my biggest responsibilities.  At the same time, I am not sure I'm doing it right.

[SKL]

I also wonder if some of this phenomenon is a different population of young people attending college (or, living at college).

[Bluegoat]

I also wonder if some of this phenomenon is a different population of young people attending college (or, living at college).

 

My impression is actually that the kids who are coming from families that are what you might call working class are often better at coping. 

 

As far as how to cultivate it, I think the main thing is giving them real freedom and responsibility.  It isn't really learning to use the washing machine or whatever that is so hard, it is not having learned to have some confidence in yourself and to persevere against real adversity (or to do it when you don't have confidence), or never having failed and carried on, or never having had to make significant decisions.

 

I'd bet banning kids and teens from having cell phones might go a long way.  I got into all kinds of spots i had to figure out for myself because there was no other option - like getting on the wrong bus and ending up in completely the wrong place, and having to find out how to get home by asking for help, or getting a flat tire, or whatever.  My sister's generation (millennials) seem to have just called for help on their or their friend's phones.  Probably the biggest boost of my confidence in middle school was going to a camp at a university where we stayed in dorms and attended classes - we had to get to meals, figure out where the classes were, manage our rooms and roommates, and so on, on our own - there was some supervision by university students but not a lot.  I know a lot of people who had similar experiences in cadets or school trips at that age.  There was never much, if any, contact with parents.  But that doesn't seem to be the norm any more either.

[frogger]

There is a cost to everything. Keeping your child "risk free" or safe is perhaps more costly and risky than many realize.

[abba12]

The thing is, judgment and societal norms are making this so hard. Even 'drop off' birthday parties and children's activities/events are almost non-existent. 

 

As a child, I remember going to a birthday party at age 5, which was a full day party, ALONE

I remember around age 8 and 10, my sister and I spending the whole afternoon at the carnival, sponsored by the school but not a supervised school event, ALONE (with each other, there were places I couldn't go until my sister was old enough to come too, because going together, in a pair, was safer)

At age 12 I wandered around town, picked up a few things for my mum at the grocery store, and even spent the entire day and evening at the local country show, ALONE. 

 

It may be worth noting that I am legally blind, and did all this despite my impairment. 

 

None of these things are socially acceptable any more, and some of them, according to stories I hear, could even get parents in trouble if they let their kids do it today. But they are some of my best childhood memories, and ABSOLUTELY built my confidence and sense of self. I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't been left to fend for myself a bit, and given the opportunity to prove to myself I could handle things alone. I had no cell phone, when I got lost I had to figure out where I was. When I had a problem I had to negotiate it myself. By the time I was reaching adulthood, I was confident in myself and who I was. I can't imagine trying to start out adulthood having never handled life alone before. 

 

I'm fortunate to live in a country town with many old fashioned 'free range' type people (we'll ignore the fact many of those kids are wandering around town because their parents are in the pub, and just pretend they are like-minded lol...) , and so locally I think I could still get away with a lot, it isn't at all strange to see kids on their own here. And my eldest is going to her first 'drop off' event ever this weekend. But if we ever moved into a more 'middle class' area, I suspect I would have to be a lot more careful. 

[eternallytired]

This thread reminds me of some of my husband's stories.  He is a librarian and has worked at a few different colleges/universities.  The library would sometimes get calls from parents who were either trying to research a child's topic for them and get all the sources lined up and ready for when their kid dropped in the library, or the parent would call to report that their child had lost a book and request that all fines be waved for their poor little dear.  This was definitely worse at one particular private college.  (I worked there for a while, too, and also heard stories of parents calling to try to get their kids out of trouble for poor choices or to complain that a grade was unfair--when often their kid hadn't bothered to show up for class or do any work.  One family was livid when their child got kicked out for not attending any classes and using their time instead to break as many rules as they could find.  The family--parents AND grandparents--threatened legal action because no one had notified them that little Johnny--by this time 19 and legally an adult, so the college could in no way share his information without breaching privacy--had been behaving so poorly.)

[Susan in TX]

"One kid’s father threatened to divorce her mother if the daughter didn’t major in economics. It took this student seven years to finish instead of the usual four, and along the way the father micromanaged his daughter’s every move, including requiring her to study off campus at her uncle’s every weekend."

 

I think this goes way beyond helicopter parenting. This is abuse.

 

Personally, I'd rather my kid be a happy homeless person than a depressed Yale graduate.

 

Susan in TX

[raptor_dad]

Anyone have any thoughts about whether scouts, 4H, or similar programs can help address these issues?

 

 

Sure, I think all those programs help. Stuff happens when you are backpacking, you have to adapt. Some of your chickens die or your pig doesn't flourish. Our local kids maker group's motto is "Helping Kids Fail Since 1998". These programs are great since kids have no choice but to push through. Hopefully, they internalize the values...

 

Kids need a sense of agency and to develop a real sense of competency. That requires both failing and succeeding in real life situations. When DS8 came back from sailing camp and said it was really hard, I was just as thrilled as when he complains about how hard school work is. Struggling with those skills gives him a framework to apply to later bumps in the road.

[Sahamamama]

The examples in the article were so extreme that I couldn't get a handle on whether or not the average helicopter parent was actually causing depression or just these crazy parents.

 

 

I thought the same thing.  That wasn't helicopter parenting ... that was controlling.  

 

 

:iagree:

[katilac]

The study cited below annoyed me. It is the same type of fear-mongering that extreme helicopter parents use as justification (only in the reverse direction, of course). 

 

It doesn't surprise or worry me that a college student, or indeed any person, feels very sad or overwhelmed at some point over the course of an entire year.  

 

I mean, I would have checked off every box myself except for considering suicide - the 8% they cite as seriously considering it is quite concerning, but I would want to see how the questions were worded before deciding how much weight to place in it. 

 

At many points over the last 12 months, I have felt angry at the abuse of statistics - check. 

 

In 2013 the American College Health Association surveyed close to 100,000 college students from 153 different campuses about their health. When asked about their experiences, at some point over the past 12 months:

• 84.3 percent felt overwhelmed by all they had to do
• 60.5 percent felt very sad
• 57.0 percent felt very lonely
• 51.3 percent felt overwhelming anxiety
• 8.0 percent seriously considered suicide

 

[J-rap]

Kind of off-topic, but it used to really bug me when people thought homeschooling automatically meant we were helicopter parents.  (As in, we were so paranoid and controlling about everything that we had to keep them at home.)

 

It's true that we were more careful and very intentional about their activities early on, but we also were able to give them a lot of freedom at a younger age than is usual, because they had had good solid years of learning what's safe, how to think independently, how to come up with creative solutions, etc. 

 

 

[katilac]

Kind of off-topic, but it used to really bug me when people thought homeschooling automatically meant we were helicopter parents.  

 

YES! 

[mommymilkies]

"One kid’s father threatened to divorce her mother if the daughter didn’t major in economics. It took this student seven years to finish instead of the usual four, and along the way the father micromanaged his daughter’s every move, including requiring her to study off campus at her uncle’s every weekend."

 

I think this goes way beyond helicopter parenting. This is abuse.

 

Personally, I'd rather my kid be a happy homeless person than a depressed Yale graduate.

 

Susan in TX

I agree.  This is not helicopter parenting.  This is clearly abuse.