College-Copters Are the New Snow Plow Parents—Here's Why I Won't Be One of Them

Reddit is full of stories like this real post: “I’m in my 1st year of college, but it basically just feels like high school extended except I’m 400 miles from home. The distance however doesn’t stop my mom from micromanaging every single aspect of my life. I must call her a dozen times a day, let her know my location at all times (even though she has it on Life360), never go out of my dorm at night, and absolutely no going off campus…. My entire college routine and life is controlled and it makes me hate it. I don’t know how I’m going to do it for four years.” The point is that not only isn't little Janie or Jimmy enjoying their college experience, they’re also not getting one of the key learnings that college affords: How to develop time management skills, to make choices about all kinds of behavior and to enjoy/suffer the consequences of their actions.

It’s easy to come out of the tunnel of the parental focus required when your child is young, look in the mirror and think: Wow, I’m just a husk of what used to be a vital, interesting and fuckable unit! What do I do now that I don’t recognize myself? My answer, parent of a 6- or 12- or 18-year-old, is not to double-down on ignoring your own individual desires and responsibilities to happiness, but to actually give extra time to them. Don’t let your love for your child be an excuse to abandon your fealty to self. Practically, I’m advising using the time you’d take managing your teen’s social life and fretting about their extracurriculars, and using it instead to write, make financial plans for your future, have sex, exercise or volunteer. Otherwise, when your kid launches eventually, you’re going to have no self to return to.

News flash: Your kids’ accomplishments are not a reflection of you. There’s a host of neurological and environmental inputs that went into creating both Anne of Green Gables and Hannah Horvath, and their parents’ involvement is not primary by the time they are grown-ups. Of course, cultural traditions feature largely in the expectations foisted on young people, but from my perspective, your child is a guest in the house who you are fostering as part of a spiritual project. Your job is to guide them, sure, but it’s mostly to love them, freely and unconditionally. Not to police their immaturity, but to set limits and let them go.

The time and resources needed to be a helicopter parent are luxuries not available to low-income families, where parents often must work more than one job, says Nazli Kibria, a CAS associate professor of sociology, in a story from Boston University’s Jessica Ullian. Personally, I’m not low-income and even still, it’s all my aging menopausal brain can do to hold down a job, pay bills on time and stay healthy, without production-managing another person’s schedule.

But there is maybe a silver lining to all this….sneaky tech. Since so many kids are location-monitored using their iPhones, some have learned workarounds such as spoofing their location using apps (so that parents think they are actually in their dorm when they are not) or getting a second phone from which to call their parents and say good night, then turn the ringer off and go out, using their second phone. While I don’t think any of this is a good idea, I am reassured that kids are using their will and wits to take initiative all on their own to individuate from their parents, which is a normal stage of growing up. Because that’s the project here—your kid’s growing up, not becoming better versions of yourself, or avoiding mishaps or taking just the right route on life’s bumpy road.