- Have you ever done your children's homework for them? Have you driven to school to drop off an assignment that they forgot? Have you done a college student's laundry? What about coming along to Junior's first job interview?
It's out there. Coming from my time as a middle school teacher, the most egregious example of overparenting I've witnessed was not one of my students, but a student-teacher that I was mentoring and had to fail.
The student-teacher, a 23 year old girl, exhibited the following signs of overparenting:
1. Her parents called her 4 of 5 days of the week to make sure she had ate her sandwich and to see if she liked it.
2. She had her head down down on her desk sleeping one day before school. When asked about it, she replied, "My Mom made me take some cold medicine today. It might be the kind that makes me sleepy".
3. When she was falling behind in her duties, showing up late, coming unprepared, dressing inappropriately (the young boys didn't mind this), who called me to give her a second chance? Yep. Her parents.
Poor kid. I hear stories like this and it makes me want to call my mom and dad to thank them for being hard-asses when I was growing up. 11 years old? You are now learning how to cook, clean and do laundry. 13? Time to get a job mowing lawns/paper route/something to bring in money. 18? Out of the house.
If they did this now someone would probably want them in jail for child abuse.
- If they did this now someone would probably want them in jail for child abuse.
Whoever those are, screw them good and leave them unattended in a dark alley. Your parents did very well as far as personal responsibility and self-sustainancer are concerned.
Both of my parents are teachers. My mom teaches 3rd grade and my dad teaches secondary.
This is article really hits home. As it is in their school district, at least, the "power parents" can basically do anything they want with next to no backlash from the district. It's hellish for the teachers, who have to put up with it, and it's bad for the kids too.
My parents were very hands-off with my education, especially once I got into high school. My dad was kind of in cahoots with the teachers but I doubt he ever got my grades changed (if anything he had them grade me more harshly). I was expected to perform well, but there wasn't much pressure. I was given advice only if I asked. I did all my college research, applications, scholarship hunt etc. on my own time without help besides advice. I'm expected to pay for my own housing and spending money starting next year.
I think this style of relaxed-but-supportive parenting is ideal. I feel like I was more prepared for being an adult than a lot of my friends, although perhaps not so prepared as people like @francopoli.
I'm not sure whether you know it and just mistaken or didn't know it, but - you can only give a shout-out to a user by enveloping their name with @'s from both sides; it then translates into a link to the profile of the user, as well as notify said user of the mentioning.