The Dreaded Helicopter Parents by Caleb and Rebekah

September 18th-20th: Parents’ Weekend at Ohio University.

Greeting signs and festivities were laid out across the campus, as long separated families finally reunited. Joyous smiles were present on the faces of all on the grounds. Cheers filled the air after each Bobcat touchdown against Southeastern Louisiana. However, as little as four weeks prior, OU was brimming with far different emotions.

August 19th-21st: Move-in days at Ohio University.  

Rather than the splendor of Parents’ Weekend, the campus was adorned with dread and sorrow as parents dropped off their children to their new homes. Generally speaking, the day that a parent has to give up his/her child has long been regarded as an overall stressful (to put it lightly) and emotional day.

Why?

“Because...[your]...whole focus just walked out the door,” Amy Karageorge, an OU alum and mother of a current OU freshman, explains. This is true for nearly all parents; after raising a child for nearly two decades, and then having said child basically exit their lives takes an emotional toll. Thus, it becomes difficult for many parents to cope, resulting in calls, multiple texts, and unending Skype requests.

Some students, understandably, are fine with this arrangement, as the weight of this separation is likewise difficult for their well-being. Similar to the parents’ predicament, being raised for nearly two decades by the same people, and then leaving these people also takes an emotional toll. Obviously, some communication is expected, but when does this cross the line between “We miss you!” to completely overbearing?

While the previously stated line may be difficult to find (and in reality, it may be more accurately described as a gray area), the symptoms of the “overbearing” extreme are easily identifiable; when despite hundreds of miles of distance, the parent never ends their role as a parent. Multiple calls a week or month become multiple times a day. The amount of texting could mirror that of a dating couple. In short, the communication never stops.

However, there are far more bizarre instances on record. Some parents have called the president of the college after their child has had a dispute with his/her roommate. In very rare cases, some parents have even moved near campuses just so they can be closer to their child. This separation anxiety seems to be more typical in parents who (for lack of a better explanation) cannot stop being parents; they cannot handle that their jobs have, more or less, ended. They do not recognize their former role has ended, and it is time for their child to become an adult, but on their own terms.

The emergence of these “helicopter parents,” as they have come to be referred, may be the result of multiple factors. For instance, if the student does not have siblings, his/her parents may be more likely to “hover.” This is more or less so a symptom of a larger factor: “[forgetting] what it was like to have an abundance of time,” as stated by Ken Markovitz (who is the father of an Ohio University freshman). “Before,” Ken continues, “we were so busy with everyone’s schedules...I have to retrain my day to be productive.”

But this new-found time alone is not the sole cause of this phenomenon. Obviously the bond between the parents and their child must be considered. However, the real culprit may be something we’ve grown so accustomed to that we forget to factor it in: modern technology, chiefly, the cell phone.

Cell phones have made it so easy to communicate that a simple text message, given some time, may mature into ten texts, three emails, five missed calls, and a Facetime request. Without their child actually being there, parents have been left with enough gadgets to ensure near constant communication; restoring the presence they would have lost.

Although this may seem to be one of the advantages to the “global village” (made famous by Marshall McLuhan) aspect of modern communication (and in other circumstances, it most certainly is), it doesn’t allow for a healthy separation between parent and child. Moreover, it does not allow for their relationship to change as it should naturally. Furthermore, do to their parents’ over-involvement, some students may not be ready to cope with the stress of the workplace on their own, which in turn may also adversely affect their self esteem and self efficacy.

With the risk of damaging their child’s future, parents should to find some sort of medium between overbearing and enough communication. Parents should not “cut the cord,” so to speak, and leave their new students solely to their own devices. Some communication is necessary and generally welcomed.

There is no “one size fits all” solution to this problem. It requires trial and error and learning from what works and what does not. The solution is different for each family; it’s subjective. It would seem that Mrs. Karageorge has found her own happy medium as she “trie[s] to keep in touch with him,” but “ a lot of it as a parent is letting them sink or swim.”

Parents should not worry for their child’s future successes throughout college. Sure, they will fail from time to time, but they should not be helped by their parents as they were just a few years ago. Parents should not be there to pick them up and kiss their wounds; this is the time in their lives when they must learn to patch them themselves. And given the right amount of distance, most will swim. Just as Mrs. Karageorge states, “we tried to prepare him before.”

“We tried our best with that, and the rest was up to him.”