Yet More Proof That Helicopter Parenting is a FAIL

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Nearly 31% of students -- almost one out of three who sought counseling in the 2013-2014 academic year -- have said they seriously considered suicide at some point in their lives. Five years ago, it was 25%, according to the most recent annual report by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State.

Equally concerning is the significant increase in the percentage of students who have purposely harmed themselves, such as engaging in cutting, hitting, burning and hair pulling, without intending to kill themselves. Almost 24% of college students who sought counseling in 2013-2014 had injured themselves at some point during their lifetimes compared to 21% five years earlier.

"When you put those two together, what they're really reflecting is students are more willing than ever to articulate being overwhelmed and to take that out on themselves, either through self-injury or through talking about the possibility of suicide or thinking actively about that and that plays out in all areas of university life," said Locke, who is also executive director of the Center for Collegiate Mental Health.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/09/health/suicide-prevention-college-campus/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool&iref=obnetwork

Very predictable, if children never learn to do for themselves (****, modern kids cant even entertain themselves), then they are going to have to learn when they are much older, when the price for failing is much higher. Or maybe the nanny state is supposed to look after them Drunk

Ya, I would much rather these people went through these problems while they are in Middle School, like much of my generation did, than at University.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 7 • Views: 1,531 • Replies: 23

[+3] - farmerman - 09/12/2015Hawkeye is fond of "bumperstickers" and popular political ad homs which are nothing more than solecisms(like "elites" and "collective") all manhandled speech

@hawkeye10,

when I usd to judge SCience Fairs in Lancaster County, I always liked to attend some of the dinners and talk to the parents. I found that many of the parents were open to using the terms"We did this project" or "We built this"

That was sorta against the very rules of the SCience Fairs, but it was always just ignored by most judges.

I think that those of us in our 50s and 60s herein, are probably among the last bunches of "free range Kids" (back when that actually meant something ) .I admit that our kids were somewhat sheltered but I hope we didnt smother them to the point that their lives became mere reflections of ours.
I see the error of overprotection and parental induced neotany , and I get a kick out of some of our own A2K members who have kept us well informed of every dookie their larvae made.

I was raised by a military family wherein my dad let me know in no uncertain terms that I lived in HIS house, and I wasnt the center of it all.

Whenever we get these homework questions on A2K, i really cringe at how seemingly helpless some of these kids are. I calm myself with the information that (I think it was Dys ) who once said that the yahoo kids that ask the clueless questions are a very small minority
.

I hope he was right. because I see a lot of kids who are rather non-creative and unable to solve problems in life.

Of course I used to walk to school uphill both ways and barefoot in winter.

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@farmerman,

Two of my kids are very glad that there were raised free range, the middle daughter however thinks she was deprived of a rightful childhood. We she see if she changes her mind, I think she will. She is however brilliant, thought as nails and has a good heart.

By the second year of university they figure out that we did things differently. Somehow they did not see that before.

Quote:

I hope he was right. because I see a lot of kids who are rather non-creative and unable to solve problems in life.

that and too many seem to have a very shallow inner life, to a degree I never saw when I was coming up.

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Have you read the lead article in the latest issue of The Atlantic? It's very good. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

I visit a parenting forum where I've found a few like minded people but the majority go into scorched Earth mode if there is even the tiniest offense committed against their kid or if the kid has one lousy grade. They seem more like animal trainers than parents. It's not the kid's fault that they're incompetent and unable to deal with any challenge.

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@boomerang,

I have not read that but I will. Love the tittle.

This idea that it is the parents job to make sure that the kid never gets a scratch astounds me, the ignorance and the failed priorities. And that we now have done this long enough to see how it turns out, which is bad, and yet I dont notice very many parents considering a different approach.

I read a review done by the father of a family on a Disney Cruise and he said "NEVER AGAIN", not because of the boat or the crew which he said were excellent, but because of all of the unruly brat children and their parents who had no interest in them acting human. I was thinking wow, todays kids are pressured into model citizen behavior at school (and schools actually put it in those terms) and act feral when they are on vacation with the family. Being a helicopter parent seems to mean being stuck to them to make sure that they are "safe" and get everything they got coming to them but once that is done abandoning parenting altogether. They are on a boat, Disney knows kids, they have their wristbands, let them do what every they want! They need to blow off steam from their lives at school cum prison and their strictly regimented activity schedule, right?

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@boomerang,

Ok, I read it. I would sum it up into three main themes

1) the failure of the university

2) the intolerance of the Left

3) the triumph of victim culture

Quote:

Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions. A claim that someone’s words are “offensive” is not just an expression of one’s own subjective feeling of offendedness. It is, rather, a public charge that the speaker has done something objectively wrong. It is a demand that the speaker apologize or be punished by some authority for committing an offense.

There have always been some people who believe they have a right not to be offended. Yet throughout American history—from the Victorian era to the free-speech activism of the 1960s and ’70s—radicals have pushed boundaries and mocked prevailing sensibilities. Sometime in the 1980s, however, college campuses began to focus on preventing offensive speech, especially speech that might be hurtful to women or minority groups. The sentiment underpinning this goal was laudable, but it quickly produced some absurd results.

I see a lot of this with my U Wash Daughter. Free speech and the free mind are under vicious attack at the moment. Considering that this has been building for almost three decades now I dont expect sanity to erupt anytime soon

Quote:

Because there is a broad ban in academic circles on “blaming the victim,” it is generally considered unacceptable to question the reasonableness (let alone the sincerity) of someone’s emotional state, particularly if those emotions are linked to one’s group identity.

Which the feminists exported from the university into American sex law. Thanks a ton!

As you know Boomer this piece touches on a lot of the stuff I focus on. It was pretty well done but I would have liked to see a tie into helicopter parenting. THe students eat this political manipulation up, and they cant tell that they are being manipulated because they have no clue how power works and they have been actively discouraged from thinking for themselves ( which is why the education system became the indoctrination system) . Their crappy childhoods is why they are such good sheep. They will do anything for promises of "SAFETY", even put the shackles on themselves, because the real world is much to terrifying to face. Because they have been shielded from it for far longer than was good for them. Current youth are the most unprepared for life and the real world of any generation that we know about ever. And it is their parents fault mainly.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Which the feminists exported from the university into American sex law.

I do know about the different legal systems. I'm aware of the different parliamentary procedures.

But here, laws are made by "lawmen" (Abgeordnete/Abgeordneter, in German), and we don't have sex laws in our various fields of law.

Interesting.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Do your young not know how to deal with life because the parents always did everything for them? Because they never were allowed to fail or get hurt they dont know how to bounce back from failing or getting hurt?

This is important Walter, focus please.

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

They seem more like animal trainers than parents.

that's pretty harsh on animal trainers

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@Walter Hinteler,

Hawkeye is fond of "bumperstickers" and popular political ad homs which are nothing more than solecisms(like "elites" and "collective") all manhandled speech

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Hawkeye is fond of "bumperstickers" and popular political ad homs which are nothing more than solecisms(like "elites" and "collective") all manhandled speech

Naming is done to control thought often now days. I have a habit of reorganizing and renaming and using off limit words in order to show light where there is now darkness. Walter and you should be smart enough to see this, and if you are good people you know that this is a good cause.

I do not yield the high ground to you.

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@hawkeye10,

Important or not, my above response wasn't questioning that.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

Naming is done to control thought often now days. I have a habit of reorganizing and renaming and using off limit words in order to show light where there is now darkness.

Call em what you want, I calls em solecisms or, at worst malaprop phraseology

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@Walter Hinteler,

I actually agree with HAwkeyes initial observation that caused this threqd to be. I disgaree with his wanddering off the field and making it some sort of thing that it isnt.

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@hawkeye10,

Hawkeye please forgive me of my question sounds ignorant, but can you please explain to me what the term helicopter parenting means?

1 Reply

@onevoice,

Google is your friend.

I am the opposite, I was a Free Range parent before it was called that. I played outside without a parent when I was 4, walked to school and home when I was in first grade, biked a mile to the store when I was in Second grade, took a two week train trip around America when I was 15. I wanted my kids to have the same adventure, but America had become much much more risk adverse, and we parents were told that we had an obligation to entertain and constantly praise our kids as we made sure that they survived childhood without a scratch.

As has happened so much in my life I was a rebel, I refused to conform.

And I was right.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Yes, Google is my friend. Smile

Unfortunately it doesn't give me your interpretation of its meaning, which is what I was interested in knowing. I don't really know where I fall in all that. A 70's child myself... My idea of fun during the summer was riding my bike all the way around the lake we lived on (26 miles) and stopping at every store that sold candy along the way. Lol Loved me some peanuts m+m's! We weren't around the house much, but I remember distinctly feeling... Almost unwelcome at times?

If we came back for anything other than to use the bathroom or eat lunch we were told, not kindly, to leave. We swam without supervision. I used to get up at 4 am, hop in our row boat, and row all the way to the other side of the lake to this little cove to try to catch a perch for mom or a bass for my step dad. I caught a mud bass big enough to keep once. They are not tasty. Lol

I have worked with at risk teens for 10+ years. Seen a lot of stuff. Learned all the non crisis intervention techniques which was quite helpful as many of these boys and girls learned how to manipulate adults emotionally to get what they want. I don't know if I have anything of value to add to this conversation. I had just never heard of free range or helicopter parenting.

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@hawkeye10,

I don't necessarily disagree with the hypothesis, but this data doesn't support it. For all we know, the students having problems in college are the free range ones or the ones who use a lot of social media or is related to social class or religious affiliation. There are lots of potential hypotheses. It sounds like there is room for a more exhaustive study to understand if there is really a difference between the children of boomers and the children of Gen X.

(I'm guessing that college students today are mostly Gen X children with a decent number of Boomer kids in there as opposed to five years ago when we would have had a lot more Boomer kids.)

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My daughter is reading The Glass Castle - I had read it about a year ago. Now that is free range parenting to the extreme.

So I guess there has to be balance - it really is not good to be so free range that your child gets got on fire at the stove at about the age 3 for example, but hovering over them at 16 so they cannot go any where or do anything for themselves is the over end of the spectrum.

I wonder sometimes if your parent's parenting style might influence you to go the extreme opposite.

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@Linkat,

I used to believe that, and in some cases that does happen. However, in my case I did everything I swore I would never do. (nothing physical) The first six months of working in a residential treatment facility were literally hell. Man those boys... I once gave a boy a consequence for not raking the way I wanted him too. ??? My mother was very controlling in some ways. So much so I was never even taught how to do laundry. I was told if I touched the machine I would probably break it. I learned at the age of 19, when a nice lady reached out to a terrified me when she saw me walk into the laundromat and turn around to walk right back out because the whole thing was entirely too overwhelming for me to handle at that point.

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Yet More Proof That Helicopter Parenting is a FAIL

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