I received a phone call the other day from a parent who was looking to do something on his child's behalf. It was an understandable scenario - certainly nothing that, by itself, should result in this parent being accused of hovering, or helicopter parenting, as it has come to be called in the last decade or so. Be that as it may, it did remind me of the phenomenon and so it got me talking to another coach about parenting and that got me a little wound up on the subject. So let me lay out this message, tell a couple of stories, and hope for the best - if it doesn't produce a revolutionary change in the culture, at least maybe I'll get a mild catharsis out of it.
Okay - never mind the aw-shucks, let's-not-take-life-too-seriously tone of the above. This is too important. Parents, hear this: You've been getting it dead wrong for the better part of a generation. Much of what you think of as good parenting is in fact bad parenting. The most important thing you can do for your children is allow them to fail. That's right - allow them to fail. And when they do (and they will), you can react in any number of ways, as long as one of them does not involve fixing the problem yourself or making a phone call to pull whatever strings you know to pull to get the thing worked out in your child's favor.
In the conversation I had with the other coach, I had offered the opinion that although overparenting seems to be this generation's cross to bear, it's probably better than the other side of the spectrum, or neglect. His response was "I'm not sure about that - depends how long it takes them to learn to cope!" And that's it, really, isn't it? What is a twenty-something to do when he's never had to have a hard conversation with a teacher because his parents always did it for him once the conversation became challenging? When I hear stories like the one about the guy fresh out of law school whose mother allegedly called the senior partner who was his nominal boss to gripe about his workload, I always assume that they are urban legends - more fable than actual occurrence. But then fables are often intended to instruct, and are inspired by the desire to rectify some human shortcoming or vice, and thus must reflect some seed of reality. In the interest of mollifying the skeptics, though, here's a true story: shortly before my stepdaughter graduated from the high school where I had been teaching for a number of years, I received a phone call from one of my colleagues who worked in the college guidance office. One of the subsidiary concerns of the college guidance office in any prep school is the class rank of each member of the graduating class, since that is a useful tool on both sides of the college admissions process. They had miscalculated one student's GPA and so my stepdaughter's class rank was, in fact, one position higher than we had previously been told it was. My colleague was sure that I would be horrified, and she was pre-emptively reassuring me of how sorry she was, and she honestly seemed to expect that I would be righteously indignant. Although she had graduated near the top of her class, nothing much was at stake in her rank moving up or down one notch. It didn't affect who was the valedictorian or the salutatorian. It didn't even make a difference in who any of the top 10% "Honor Graduates" were, and even if it had, they caught the error in time to fix it before graduation. Because the school did not publish class rank or provide it to colleges, it could not possibly have affected any of her college admissions decisions. It was a complete non-issue, and no one in my family had given it a moment's thought prior to my colleague's call. And even after my repeated assurances of all of this, my colleague didn't seem to grasp that I was not upset, nor was my wife nor my stepdaughter. She apparently thought that I was just being polite, and continued to verbalize her regret about the error, still waiting for the storm to break over her. Clearly, she had already had too many conversations that had gone the other direction: "what do you mean, you miscalculated!? My daughter's class rank was actually 7th and it was reported as 8th?! Do you realize how catastrophic this could have been to her ENTIRE LIFE?!" It was all I could do not to giggle at the thought.
I sat through graduation as I always did, and was alternately buoyed by the happy solemnity and serene pomp of the occasion and bored stiff by the tedious repetition of academic liturgy, as I always was. And I was neither more nor less proud of my stepdaughter than I would have been if she'd been salutatorian or graduated 83rd. High school graduation is, in fact, a bit of a big deal, but it's not V.E. Day, for god's sake. And I don't remember my wife or I ever having picked up the phone to call one of her teachers to explain why an absence should be excused or why a B+ should have been an A or any of that nonsense. I claim no particular virtue thereby - I learned this behavior from two sources. One was my father, who had always behaved likewise. I didn't know until many years after I had graduated which of my teachers he had believed were not up to snuff because the old man was wise enough to know that nothing good could come from his giving me an excuse to think less of any of them. As it turned out, he had some pretty salty opinions of some of them, and it unquestionably could not have benefitted me or my teachers for me to have known them when I was in high school. The other was having been a teacher myself, and I believe that, for the same reason that everyone should have to wait tables before they ever pick up a check in a full-service restaurant, everyone ought to have the experience of being a classroom teacher before they ever send a child of their own off to school.
I'll close with my favorite story of an educator dealing with an "involved" parent. As it happens, the educator was a crew coach, and the parent wanted to know, predictably enough, why his son wasn't in the varsity eight. After it became clear where the conversation was headed, the coach stopped the parent and said "Mr. Sanderson [not his real name], we can have this conversation if you like, but my experience has shown that every syllable we exchange on this matter diminishes your son's likelihood of success." That was a conversation ender, and the coach not only kept his job but has continued to coach championship crews ever since.
Keep your children from imminent danger and genuine abuse. Answer their questions. Assure them that they are resourceful enough, intelligent enough, and resilient enough to solve their own problems, and let them do it. A skinned knee is a blessing, and not knowing how to talk to your professor when you're eighteen or your boss when you're twenty-three is a curse. Step away from the phone. Have a glass of iced tea, take a deep breath, and count your blessings. And occasionally remember to thank your child's teachers and coaches for holding them accountable - that's what they really should be paid to do.
