Some of the happiest moments in my life happened when we were very poor.  Sometimes I wonder if being poor for awhile is actually an advantage in some ways, provided it doesn't last forever.  Can a person really understand what poverty is like if they have never experienced it?

When I see people on the side of the road begging, I just drive by if it is a nice day out.  Often wonder what their situation is.  A couple winters ago we were driving down the road and at was about 20 below zero and windy.  On a street corner I saw an old man and his dog with a sign asking for help.  I drive right by him as always and my wife and I started talking about this.  I said wait a minute nobody should be outdoors in this weather, the guy and his dog are going to freeze to death.  This guy might be begging, but I can't think of anything that would be harder to do than whàt he was doing.  He had to be totally desperate.  So we turned around went by the old man again and my wife gave him a hundred dollar bill and pretty much ordered him to get off the street.  He looked stunned said thank you you don't know how much this means and took off.  We felt good about it and didn't feel like what we did was stupid at all.

I have and I'm sure many of us have been around both rich and poor people.  I know for a fact there are very good people in both groups. And there are some very bad people in both groups.

JBB-

You're closing in on the most important point of the relationship between helicoptering parenting and sports.

Parents who believe sports can teach persistence through adversity, teamwork, fortitude, toughness, concentration, poise, determination and other personal traits should understand the importance of letting their kids take a few lumps as they learn to stand on their own feet.

However, the irony is that these parents often possess the same competitive drive they hope to instill in their children.  It's easy to lose sight of the character-building goal of sports participation, to focus on the competition rather than the ability to compete, and to succumb to the temptation of willing their kids across the finish line, becoming the helicopter parents they never intended to become.

I have been guilty of being a copter parent to a certain degree.  

Society and how it is now (zero tolerance nonsense) does factor in a bit....everything can be a worry if you let it.  It is funny and ironic that adults in society hold children to a higher standard than they hold themselves too with the zero tolerance garbage.  

My parenting mistakes were around sports a lot.  Having two boys who by nature are very mellow and laid back (and a little lazy) it would frustrate me as I would misunderstand their laid back nature for a lack of caring.  Other things I let them take control of early on, like school work.  Some mixed results but generally it was ok.  As someone else posted I know parents who do their kids work for them, not help them, but do their work for them....these are high school kids.  I know others that have gotten "learning disabilities" classification put on their kids work, so, if they fail a test for example they can retest it when there is no need for that.  My younger son has some mild dyslexia so his reading has always lagged behind.  This of course affects every aspect of school work.  He could have had the "retest" condition put on him but I opted against it.  A college professor or a boss at a job isn't going to care about it and he won't get "do-overs".  

Anyway, since some are going down memory lane, my father told me when I moved out at 17 "I don't expect you to ask for any help."  If I wanted to go to college it was on me to pay for it, it was up to me to make my own way.  My father is a good man who reasoned no one helped him and it made him tough, so, he wasn't going to help me.  Ok, that is one approach.  There is a middle ground between that approach and parents micromanaging every aspect of their kids lives.  

My first gig, second grade, a student brought me a present, marijuana, she found it on the counter at home. I did work in a very depressed part of a town in NJ, what happens to first time teachers, usually.

When I moved to FL, the same offer, so after I had my first child I decided to teach in private school.  I refused to enter into a system that was so behind every one else in the country, really.  I had a great group of kids, during that time there was little tolerance for children in publi cschools that were hard to handle, they all had some issues most with minor LD and I taught a combined 3-5 grade and it was fun, but the parents were over the top. Eventually they learned that they had to take a step back and stop making excuses for their children's behavior. Get help.  I think they became better parents because of it. That was always my biggest beef, the parents. Too involved or not enough involved. In my household the teacher was ALWAYS right (even if wrong I wouldn't allow my kids to have a negative attitude towards them).

In HS my son got into a ego match with his chemistry teacher. Phone call. That was that, no teacher ever had to talk make a call here again. He learned real fast about being accountable. Thats how it should be. Unless of course you have harmed my child, then you are just an unfit human to begin with.

Anyway, I became real involved with the school board after that and that seemed to work for me. 

Caco, 

Thaks for that. I feel that this countries educational system has been so poorly run over the years and glad to see that they are making states, towns, and administrations as well as teachers accountable. Failing  schools here are now B schools and C schools are A schools. While I realize that is based on test scores, that is a measure that there is some good stuff going on.  And most teachers do complain that they don't really teach anymore, but have to teach whats on the tests, and I am not so sure that is a bad thing because most of them really don't know how to teach anyway. Just such a shortage of really good teachers in this country because of lack of salary and cut benefits.  

As far as PG's comments, I happen to live in a very diverse area of south florida with lots of money and lots of the opposite as well.  Trust me, money doesn't bring happiness. Just a bunch of spoiled troubled teens driving their Mercedes, Lexus and Range Rovers to school and doing drugs on the weekends. This isnt new, my cousin was a heroine addict in HS as were some adults that I know from HS, and that isn't uncommon in a certain neighborhood close by. She died this year, very sad even after the best care possible.

But this isnt about that, this is about being the best parent you can be while teaching your children to be accountable when they become adults. FWIW, the first thing that college coach teach is just that, being accountable for what you do on the field yeilds positive results for you and your team, so much of this really ties into being a better sport parent as well.  

I always havent been a good parent i am sure in my kids eyes.  In fact my daughter hated me until she was an adult.  Its not easy to watch your kids have a lot of heart ache and failure, but they are good kids and they are accountable for themselves as adults and who they are because of what they have learned along the way. I have so many friends whose kids are struggling as adults, they just never let them fail when they were younger and always there to pick up the pieces after the fall. Not that I still dont freak out occasionally but its all good.

If people don't want to hear what others have to offer from experience, then what are we really here for? I have grown kids but I am still learning about being a better parent everyday!

JMO

Another perspective.

"'Helicopter Parenting' Hysteria: The Epidemic That Actually Isn't"

http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/hp/

[Format edited by moderator]

^^^ (PS: I could not figure out how to make the text smaller. My apologies.) ^^^

...guess this thread now should be under 2020dad's mythbusting thread.

I would say that whether it is a myth or not - that many college coaches look for signs of it and most will try to avoid it.

Of course, if your son throws 95 with command of 3 pitches, they may not care if you move into the dorm with him.

(BTW, I'll stick to my view that it most definitely exists and that I have more examples than the one I cited above.  Damaging?  A reasonable argument could be made either way I suppose.  Pervasive?  I wouldn't know, but it is out there, no question).

JB, of course it exists.  

Just to be sure I didn't drift, I went back to the original article.  It said HP is ruining a generation of kids.  I doubt it.  Just like The Who sang, the kids are alright.

I went to my kids school last year to be a "Shark Tank Judge" for audio/visual history projects.  Some kids presentations were so slick and multi media they looked like they were a pitch by Manhattan advertising agencies.  Felt sorry for the kids who clearly did their own work, but only briefly.  They probably learned more.

I attended a local program last month at a high school where Julie presented. She is fabulous!.  Other panel members included a child psychiatrist and the Mother of a young man who was extremely high achieving up to the day he committed suicide by walking in front of a speeding commute train.  The group of nearly 450 parents in attendance probably included a number who interact with their children, teachers, etc in ways very similar to the very pertinent  post from Rob T.   While the program made many in the audience quite obviously uncomfortable, so did the recognition of a Mother with the courage to stand before them, to talk about her son, to talk about his suicide, and to talk about how some, even now, question why he would take his life when he was "doing so well as such a great HS."

In our area, we have parents trying to get their children registered at the very best grade schools, when the child is 6 months old. They already have Harvard and Stanford as their child's future.  They won't take wait or take no for an answer. If they don't get their way, they "use" their "poor" child and how the actions of others, like Rob T's wife,  to communicate very loudly how the child is  devastated.  Many also use their vast amounts of wealth as a power to remove anything, and sometimes anyone (i.e. teacher)  which gets in their way.

Personally, none of us will parent like Julie, who has very much changed her approach to parenting her children away fromm her own experience, based on her experiences and learning as the freshman dean at Stanford.  I can guess that  justbaseball did not post the article for any reason other  than to allow all of us an opportunity for consideration of various perspectives.  Articles from very thoughtful folks like Julie sharing their experiences will, hopefully, allow us to consider other options and to look at different perspectives, especially the perspective of the child we are parenting.

Just me, but I find it very hard to understand how the thoughts can be so easily dismissed, especially when the answers won't be known for years into the future.

Put into an athletic model, there have been many, many threads on the HSBBW that one main reason players end up "failing" at the college level is they are not mentally prepared to fail and to adjust to that failure, because they never had to before college.

In some important ways, that mirrors the message Julie is communicating.

If we truly ascribe to the baseball is life concept, Julie's message seems to be a powerful one to capture and appreciate and consider, rather than to be dismissed as some attack to be taken personally.

This web site immediately published an article about other types of parents:

https://www.admitsee.com/blog/...95690dc4ea-210495249

1. The Astronaut Parent: These parents are literally never around, like they’re out in space.

2. The Curling Parent: Probably the most common, these types of parents give a gentle push, and then sweep the way for their children to succeed.

3. The Helicopter Parent: The most well-known, this parent is always hovering, arguing with teachers and coaches on behalf of their child.

4. The Lawnmower Parent: The most extreme of the bunch, they don’t even leave room for hovering. Instead, they’re on their child, pushing, pushing, pushing…

You're reading her (and the Harvard article if you read it) the wrong way, I think.  The intended  message is not  "stay where you are."   It's not telling you or your kids not to work hard.  It's not telling you not to invest in the education of your kids.    It's not telling you that Stanford/Harvard is completely unattainable so forget about it.   (Actually elite universities in recent years have made HUGE strides in making themselves more accessible. They've raised millions and millions of dollars in endowment so that they can make family finances almost no barrier to affordability.)   

It's trying to tell you that Stanford is not the brass ring.  It's trying to give some advice on how to raise not just materially successful but emotionally whole adults. That's   because elite universities have seen close up what is happening to an alarming number of these students.  And they are trying to find ways to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.   It is a serious challenge for them.  Since so many want to come through their doors in the belief that they are exactly the brass ring or at least a ladder placed right up against the brass ring.

They also want parents to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. 

I'll give you one small example of what I am thinking about.  When I was a kid, and maybe when you were too,  good high schools offered maybe  one or two AP courses.  The best students took them, mostly during senior year.  There are kids now a days who start taking AP courses during sophomore or junior year.  Kids who graduate with 9,10, 11 AP courses to their  credit.  

Ask yourself why that is.   Do they do this because they are brilliant and ready to start taking a college load as juniors?   Some probably are like that, but most are not.  They do it because they think it will give them a leg up in the college rat race.  Where do they get this idea.   In part the colleges are to blame.  But so are  parents, high school guidance counselors and also private, for pay  counselors -- can't leave them out.   These kids are push and pushed told to speed up by so many voices.  A good number of students actually struggle mightily in these course.   And frankly, I suspect that many of these courses are not taught nearly as well as they would be at a strong university.   Not trying to knock HS teachers in saying this. 

Do you think college and universities WANT students to have 9 or 10 AP courses?  Not really.  They tend to think that students would be better off taking many of these courses from college level faculty.  Not that they are totally against AP course - -they do give credit for it, after all.  But where does the relentless pressure for more and more AP come from.   Lots of places -- including parents, but also teachers, and counselors, as I've already mentioned, but also school boards, chasing that designation as a top performing school.  

Nobody stops and thinks about the overall effect of this speed up on the kids.  Universities are trying to figure out ways to give students clearer signals of what they are about, what it takes to succeed in them.   

One of the things they want kids and parents to do is to give kids more space to develop their own, authentic selves and not merely to be resume builders and super driven over achievers.  They want kids to be given space to  develop genuine passions that fit into a whole self, not just a self focused on grabbing the brass ring of prestige.  

Students and their parents vastly overestimate the marginal benefit of a little bit more prestige in a university education.  They are so, so consumed with finding the right school, etc, etc.   It needs to calm down.  It's chewing up these kids.    Hard for universities to play a role in calming it down, but they really are trying. 

It's very tricky because one of the things is that as we have become more of meritocracy -- so that family connections and all that have less to do with where you go to college than they once did --- parents -- especially middle,  upper middle class and wealth parents  (with more of this happening as you move up the income scale) have devoted their resources to making their kids have more merit -- thus the SAT cram courses, the personal trainers.   It's not like parents are being unreasonable in taking this approach.   But it has unexpected costs.   And the unexpected costs are very steep.  The dean has seen the cost very, very up close and rightly wants to try to alert parents and their children to some of that. 

Excellent explanation, SluggerDad.  Thanks.

It's crazy out there.  Families and kids are getting increasingly obsessed with the process and doing crazy stuff.   No big surprise that some of the saddest and craziest has happened right there in Stanford's backyard.

I really have no idea what the answer is except to channel Malcolm Gladwell and keep reminding my kids that what matters is what they do in college not where they go.

But it's hard to let go!  While 2015 is off to UC and doing well (at least I assume he is - I'm not a college helicopter parent)  2017's 1st quarter report card came home with 3 B+'s and I have to find a non-confrontational way of telling him that there's absolutely no point in getting a B+ in anything.  Either relax and get a B, or push through and get that A.

Well, that's 4 types that "Ruin College Admissions".  What about the OTHER types, like those who are indeed helpful?  Those 4 just don't cover the spectrum, does it? 

I'm just skeptical anytime anybody yells crisis, then backs it up with anecdotal third party stories.  It's easy to be a pessimist.  The media loves stories about how bad things are now, and how good things used to be.  So helicopter parents are ruining a generation?  Who's to say the current generation of kids aren't the happiest ever?

As the Rolling Stones said, "Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!"

It's not anecdotes.  Julie Lythcott-Haims was the dean of Freshman  (among other things) at Stanford for many years.  She had her fingers on a wealth of data about Stanford Freshman.  By many, many measures Stanford freshman are a remarkable bunch.  But there is concrete data about their overall well-being that would trouble any thoughtful person.   There are similar data from other elite universities.