I can’t believe my co-worker just called his daughter at her college dorm to wake her up for school. She’s a freshman and it’s probably her first day of class, but still. My parents didn’t wake me up after 6th grade. I didn’t go to college but I’m pretty sure I’d be embarrassed if my mom or dad called me to wake me up for school.
Did this person do that every day that the kid was in school?
As long as it isn’t interfering with their work, it’s not your problem.
Regardless of age, it seems normal for most parents to be involved in their kids’ first day of school in some encouraging or supportive way. Maybe not at the post-grad level, but their first year at college away from home? That’s normal. Every single morning? Not normal.
Could it just be one of those first day routines that he isn’t going to repeat every day? You know, “I’m thinking of you on your first day, good luck, it will all go great?” He may do it every first day of school she has had, and it may be one of those parent-child things that make them both laugh.
Yeah, I came in here all set to be outraged, but I think a wake-up call on the first day of your freshman year at college is acceptable.
If we’re going to bitch about lazy college students, can we bitch about the people who don’t show up for class and when you see them later in the cafeteria, they ‘just couldn’t handle English today’?
I’ll vote with the if-it’s-just-for-first-day-that’s-cool crowd, but if a college student can’t get up without help from mommy and/or daddy, that’s pretty pathetic.
I know I’ve mentioned in at least one thread a friend of mine years back who, even when her kids were in middle school, continued to cut their meat before she gave them their dinner plates. I suspect if their house had had a basement, their first-born would still be living there, and he’s at least 30 now. But few houses in Florida have basements…
When Douglas MacArthur went to West Point in 1899, his mom, Pinky, moved into a hotel overlooking the academy. He wasn’t the only cadet who’s mom did that either. Helicopter parenting is nothing new.
I don’t find that normal at all. My parents had no involvement in my daily life as an 18 year old. But for kids these days, I think, unfortunately, that type of behavior is all too common.
The wake up call could be nothing or it could be a sign of a serious problem, not necessarily with the kid. My mom was an over-worrier and used to wake us up every single day no matter what. Finally I lit into her about waking me up 10 minutes before my alarm every day and told her to knock it off and let me use my alarm clock already so she stopped. For me. She still calls my brother to make sure he is awake every day and he graduated college two years ago and works in the financial industry now. He just never told her to knock it the fuck off so she never did.
She is a champion worrier. I was living in Washington Heights in Manhattan when Captain Sully landed that plane on the Hudson river and my mom called to make sure I was okay despite the fact that she knew I hadn’t been on an airplane and that it was very, very unlikely that I took the day off work to kayak in the Hudson. I deal with that kind of stuff all the time. I try to let it go because she isn’t very demonstrative about her feelings (for example, I can’t remember her ever telling me she loved me) and I make fun of her a little bit and tell her she is like a robot or a cyborg because she just doesn’t show any emotion at all, but when she calls to make sure that the car accident that happened in my city didn’t involve me that is her way of letting me know she cares.
Over-worrying but not a big problem if it’s just for the first day.
When I went to college, I got to talk to my parents on the phone exactly once a week on Saturday afternoons. They didn’t let me come home until fall break, either.
My MIL is like this. Our daughter was on a short cruise that went to Key West and the Bahamas. It just happened that a tropical storm was brewing in the southern Caribbean, so not an imminent threat to Florida. Still, my MIL called us and wanted us to call our daughter and let her know about the storm. Because the captain was probably not aware of the monster just a thousand or so miles away… :rolleyes:
This is the same woman who worried that if she won the lottery, her grandchildren were in danger of being kidnapped and held for ransom.
She’s normally a very sweet and smart lady, but every once in a while, her grip on reality slips a wee bit.
I guess the only way to know if she’s being a helicopter parent about it is if she is consistent about calling to wake her daughter up.
We kind of have a knee-jerk reaction online when we hear a combination of “College” “parent” and “help”. People enjoy the Recreational Outrage of hearing stories of parents who do their kids’ laundry/pump their gas/wipe their butts in college and mutter about how useless the kid will be when they’re on their own. But I’ve seen a lot of variation.
I’ve seen kids/adults be amazingly inept at mundane things, yet it turned out they had a lot of ‘independence’ growing up- plenty of opportunities to learn and build confidence doing something on their own and just just would never stick.
Comparitavely, I’ve seen kids/adults who do have overbearing parents but are perfectly competent as adults. Having it done for them for years on end didn’t get in the way of them learning and building confidence to do it on their own.
I wouldn’t want to be a helicopter parent myself, but I might call my daughter the first morning of the first day of college, if anything to wish her luck.
Hey, wouldja look at that! Some families are different than yours!
‘Helicopter Parenting’ is getting really common. Many larger universities have entire departments devoted to dealing with parents. From arranging tours to finding accomodations to dealing with academic appeals by parents on behalf of their children.
I think it’s weird, but also becoming the new normal. shoulder shrug As a parent of young children, I think this sort of thing is silly, but in 10-15 years… who knows, maybe that’ll be me.
It kind of scares me, because maybe in 15 years, the kid with “normal” parents is the one who always loses out to the kid with helicopter parents.
I’d be more irritated that she told me about it. Sounds like something she should be embarrassed about having to do or feeling compelled to do, not something to blabber about. If someone revealed something like this to me, I’d be afraid of what other family mundanities I’m about to be served up.
I wonder if this is part of why tuition has gone up so much. All that intervention must translate into higher administrative costs. Plus, if parents are that involved in their students’ lives, they’re going to complain about the university’s short-comings that would otherwise go unnoticed or ignored.
It sort of amuses me that my own college freshman rebuffs all my attempts at helicoptering. I have to beg her to tell me where she is half the time, and she lives at home! I certainly don’t want to run her life, though; I’ve got enough to do running my own.
I’m kind of surprised the parent knew what time to call…I don’t recall ever giving my parents a copy of my schedule, and what if the child was going to go to the dining hall for breakfast before class…or not? And how would they know what time she was planning to get up and get her shower, get dressed, etc? I’d be afraid of waking the kid up when she still had two more hours to sleep!
That being said, when I was in college back in the late 70’s, the girl in the room across the hall got a call every single morning from her parents…plus two alarm clocks going off, and her roommate shaking her. And this was when the room phone was a wall phone right by the door, so the whole hallway could hear it ring and ring until someone finally dragged themself out of bed and answered. Seems the young lady was a notoriously heavy sleeper, and very difficult to awaken. Her roommate was her good friend from her hometown, and she and the parents had worked out the system beforehand.
I had a friend in college whose parents called her 3-4x a day, every day for the 2 years she was there. She would always drop everything to answer the call. It was deeply weird and seemed unhealthy. What could you possibly have to talk about so much?