When I was in the 4th grade, my dad decided that I wasn't being challenged enough in math because I kept complaining that I was bored. Instead of letting it go and hoping for better the following year, as so many parents do, my dad did what he was wont to do when I was in school: he sent me in with a letter to my teacher. Even at 9 years old, I knew that most parents weren't sending their children in with letters complaining that school was too easy, but my dad wasn't and has never been "most parents." Of course his writing of that letter, despite its good intentions, was a move that resulted in my earning Mrs. Wade's
undying hatred and having my math homework doubled instead of having the
difficulty increased, but it was a valiant effort nonetheless.
Yes, my dad was notorious for writing letters like the letter to Mrs. Wade. He wrote letters of thanks and praise quite often, but he would just as often write to protest unfair practices, to ask teachers for enrichment, or to ask principals to move me into better or the best classes. One time when I was in 11th grade, he wrote to my beloved AP US History teacher to disabuse him of the erroneous notion that Americans couldn't go to Cuba. I don't think Mr. Sanger ended up hating me a la Mrs. Wade, but I would bet he wasn't my dad's #1 fan.
Then there was my mom. Now my mom wasn't involved in the day-to-day academic portion of my life, but she was just as quick to intervene when she felt intervention was necessary. I will always remember the one time in my life that I was called to the principal's office. A lowly 9th grader, I had no idea what was going on when I was called out of gym class, but when the assistant principal asked me if I was "the girl with the bathroom problem," I'd never been so embarrassed in my life. I had made the mistake of complaining to my mom that I couldn't ever go to the bathroom after lunch because the upstairs bathrooms were always locked. Well, thanks to my mom's outraged phone call, from that day forward, the bathroom outside my Latin classroom that met 6th period was kept specially unlocked in case I ever needed to use it. So yeah, you're welcome, Bearden High School students who ever needed to use the bathroom after lunch on the 2nd floor outside Mr. Maxwell's Latin room.
I'll also mention that several years later, as a sophomore at Princeton, our dorm bathroom never had toilet paper, something I kept complaining about to the janitors, to no avail. So I told my mom about it, and she called the dean of my residential college, pitched a fit as only my mom can do, and from that point on, we always had toilet paper. I guess the moral here is that if you ever have a bathroom problem, my mom will take care of it.
In all seriousness, though, I'm pretty sure that my parents were a kinder, gentler version of what today we call "helicopter parents." Today's helicopter parents get a bad rap because they are parents who have gone off the deep end. It's one thing to actively try to get the best possible education for your child, but when you start doing crazy things like writing your child's English papers and then claiming that your child "is just naturally gifted in English" (true story) or when you harass college instructors in order to get them to change their college-aged child's grade (true story), that's when you start giving interested and involved parents a bad name.
The disconcerting thing is that today's helicopter parents will write their kids' research papers without batting an eyelash in order to spare their children from the indignities of having to do actual hard work or actual thinking (true story), but they're perfectly content to remain oblivious to what their kids are tweeting or snapchatting. And believe me, I have seen things that I can't un-see. For instance, I recently discovered something called ask.fm, which is basically a slam book (remember those, children of the 80's?) except that instead of being ripped to shreds and humiliated among a small group of so-called friends, kids are being ripped to shreds and humiliated anonymously by ANYONE on the internet. That also means that anyone--including you or me--can see kids being asked the most sexually-explicit questions ever. And even worse, anyone--including you or me--can see the responses. I should also add that if you ever thought cyber-bullying wasn't a real thing, think again. I'm traumatized by this discovery.
On that note, now that I've re-traumatized myself and possibly scared some of you out there, here's to a brave new year in a brave new world. As the daughter of old-school helicopter parents, I can offer you this bit of unsolicited advice: helicoptering doesn't produce a "whole child" if it's pushing in just one direction. I think if you're going to be a helicopter parent, go for it, but by all means, do it right. Write
an email if it's warranted. Make a phone call if it's necessary. But for heaven's sake, do what you can to keep your kids from willingly debasing themselves on the internet for all of posterity. Look, all that my parents had to worry about was bad intel on Cuba and a shortage of toilet paper; let's be honest--you've got bigger fish to fry.
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