Why I cried at my daughter's parent-teacher conference

By Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

To my eighth grader’s disgust, I got a little teary at her parent-teacher conference last week.

It wasn’t that it was a bad conference. I cried because she’ll graduate from middle school this coming June, which means this was her very last parent-teacher conference ever.

But it wasn't only her last conference; it was mine as well. My children all attended the same K- 8 school, so when she graduates our family will leave the school after 12 years. 

And that’s not all: it was the teacher’s last parent-teacher conference, too. She's retiring after 30 years of teaching. During the conference, she reminded us that she met my daughter for the first time when we were looking at the school for my oldest son, and my daughter was only a month old.

Who wouldn’t get a little teary?

Parenting reality check

Not all of the parent-teacher conferences I’ve attended have been so emotional, but I've  learned something about my child at every one. So I was surprised when I conducted an informal poll in my office and learned that several of my colleagues elected not to go to their children’s conferences this spring. I’m not dissing my colleagues — they're all devoted parents who had good reasons for not going: the district now makes them optional, teachers said the kids are doing fine, they already spend a lot of time at their children’s schools.

They have good reasons — but I still think they’re missing out.

Because parent-teacher conferences provide a rare opportunity to see your child through the eyes of an adult who cares about him or her, but is more objective than you are. The teacher can give you insights into what your child is like when she’s not in the rarefied atmosphere of home: who are her friends? What's getting in the way of his learning? Is he chatty or shy? What subjects make her light up in class?

Boy to man

Over the years, parent-teacher conferences also provide a measure of how much your child has grown. They chart the trajectory of the girl who drew one portrait of herself in kindergarten — and a very different one seven years later (above). 

My younger son was very shy, and during most of fourth through sixth grades, he wore a Russian army hat every day. The hat is hard to describe, it was a brown, woolen hood with a point at the top. His attachment to it, I think, expressed his ambivalence about the pose he wanted to strike in the world: on the one hand it provided cover; it also earned him a bit of notoriety since it was such an unusual sartorial choice.

During the Russian hat years, my son found parent-teacher conferences (and all the adult attention focused on him) nearly unbearable, and he'd slouch so low in his seat that all you could see was the top of his pointy hat. I confess that I was a little worried about how shy he was — and I wondered if he'd still be wearing the Russian army hat when he headed off to college. So the difference was striking during his parent-teacher conference at the end of eighth grade. By then, he’d ditched the hat for good and he towered over most of his teachers.  He sat up in his chair throughout the meeting, joked with his teachers, and talked about his project on the Spanish Civil War.

Rite of passage

During my daughter’s recent conference, her science teacher reminded her that she barely spoke in class during her first few months of middle school. “I had no idea what was going on,” my daughter admitted sheepishly. During her first middle school conference, she mumbled and fidgeted whenever she was asked a question. She’s always been feisty and outspoken at home, and I couldn’t help wishing that she’d show that side of herself at school.

She was a very different girl at her conference last week. She told her teachers and me that she's looking forward to high school but intends to savor her last few months in eighth grade. Her teachers let her know, with different words and in different ways, that she’s ready for the transition to high school (which I know has been worrying her).  “I have no doubts about you,” one told her. “You’re going to do great in high school, and you're going to love it."

In my experience as the parent of high school students, there's nothing resembling a parent-teacher conference after middle school. In high school, parents become a distant presence in their child’s school life. There are a handful of organized school events each year, but that's it. (Visiting high school isn’t that rewarding, anyway, because your child is likely to dart the other way when she sees you coming.)

Granted I’m in a nostalgic frame of mind but even in my impaired state, I want to give a big shout-out for parent-teacher conferences. Like so many things with parenting that you might take for granted or even grumble about, once they're behind you, you'll wish you’d savored them just a little bit more.

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The overblown case of the high school Harlem Shakers

 

By Leslie Crawford, Senior Editor

Oh yes, one teen is patting and shaking his bootie. Another boy is shirtless and is moving it. A handful of kids – Notify the authorities! – are dancing on the tables. But that's not what’s so gasp-worthy about a viral YouTube video (that now appears to be taken down) of high-schoolers in an ordinary schoolroom in Grand Rapids, MI. What’s unusual is that we are witnessing something rare: an outburst of joy at school by those champion sulkers and eye-rollers: high-schoolers.

The students were supposed to be studying for an ACT test. Instead, given the go-ahead (or so the students claim) by their substitute teacher, the kids launched into an impromptu version of the Harlem Shake. For their misconduct, nine of the students and the teacher were suspended. "This was just extremely poor judgment," school spokesperson John Helmholdt told a TV news reporter. "You know, it's one of those situations where they’re now an examples of what not to do.… They knew that this was not a good idea. It's unfortunate that they took it this far."

Dirty dancing, (pretty) clean fun

Granted, the gyrating miscreants violated the school’s dress code and breached the code of conduct. But no one was hurt, setting anything on fire, or throwing furniture out the school window. Matter of fact, it was inspiring to see teens having what – dirty dancing aside – was some genuine, goofball fun. At school.

To quote Alfie Kohn, who quoted John Goodlad from his 1984 book, A Place Call School: "Why aren’t schools places of joy?" To pull further from Kohn’s book, Feel-Bad Education:

Even in the absence of active misery, the mood in many schools calls to mind Thoreau’s famous phrase: quiet desperation. Students count off the hours remaining until dismissal, the days until the weekend, the weeks until vacation. It is the common experience of tots and teenagers, strugglers and achievers.

Giving the brain a boogie boost

But what if kids nationwide did just as these students and broke out into song and dance on a daily basis? (Does seem to be a trend. My 15-year-old said kids are doing the Harlem Shake at schools nationwide.) Yes, just imagine! Would our kids’ test scores go down… or maybe up? What if every school day started with an energetic, let-it-rip dance session, that got the neurons firing? (At my daughter’s former elementary school, they did just that every Friday morning…the entire school body boogying on the blacktop. It was chaos, but it was spirited chaos.)

Imagine, too, if an inspired administrator had taken an entirely different approach than a two-day suspension. ("That sounds fun!" my 7-year-old said when I told her about not having to go to school for two days. Even at a young age, she's already absorbed the "school is a drag" message.) Rather than suspend the kids for two days, what if he said to them, "OK, you’ve had your fun, but you were breaking the rules. What do you think your punishment should be?" Maybe they could come up with something inventive, like doing a fund-raising music video.

Dancing with the students

I asked my son what he thinks: does the punishment fit this two-stepping crime? "I think it puts teachers in a hard position," he says, "because while they do want to keep the students in line, it's also important to not let school become a sadistic institution where fun is looked down upon and students feel less inspired to learn. If a teacher is put in that position, probably the best thing for them to do is to dance with the students."

 

As my son suggests, how about tapping into what moves students, rather than squash it like the sourpuss principal in "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off"? At the very least, by encouraging joy, maybe kids would come to like school a little more? Why, as Kohn asks, do we take it for granted that school isn't a joyful place for most kids?

As for the dancing delinquents, did they learn their lesson that day in class? "I kind of think it was worth it," said student Luis Romero, who shot the video. "[It was] just a video, we’re trying to have some fun at school you know…."

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What's it like to go to school hungry?

By Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

Most of us can’t imagine toiling through the school day on an empty stomach, but Rosie, a fifth grader who lives in Colorado, can tell you exactly what it's like.

She tries to stay focused in class, but finds herself drifting off into fantasies about food: “I start yawning, then I don't have – and sometimes looking at the teacher and I look at her and all I think about is food," says Rosie. "Cause I have these little visions in my eyes. Sometimes when I look at her, I vision her as a banana, so she goes like a banana and everybody in the class is like apples or oranges…”

A Place at the Table

Rosie’s story is featured in the new documentary, “A Place at a Table” (now in theaters) by the creators  of "Food, Inc."  She’s just one of the estimated 17 million  children (that's one in four kids, and when you include adults, too, the number reaches a staggering 50 million Americans) who don’t know where or when their next meal will come. 

As the movie makes clear, when you’re chronically hungry, you don’t get a lot of learning done — which means that America’s hunger problem is taking an uncalculated toll on 17 million futures.

Obesity and poverty

“A Place at the Table” underscored the seemingly incongruous link between poverty and obesity. Hungry people often don’t look hungry – and this superficial (mis)understanding likely contributes to our collective neglect of the hunger issue. Worse, it tends to invite scorn in our fat-phobic culture. The truth is that junk and processed foods, typically packed with fat, sugar, and salt, are often the only food option available to low-income families, since they're cheaper and more readily available than fresh fruit, vegetables, and whole grains. (To learn more about the food industry's ongoing efforts to make snack food ever more beguiling — and nutrition free — read  Michael Moss’s excellent article on the science (and profit) of junk food.)

War on Hunger

The film also explains why hunger — a problem that had virtually disappeared in the 1970's thanks to targeted government efforts — is once again haunting so many American households. It also makes the hopeful case that, given the commitment and the political will, we can banish hunger once and for all, so kids like Rosie won't have to go to school hungry. "[Hunger] is weakening the nation," says actor Jeff Bridges, who participates in the film.  "It's about patriotism, really. If another country was doing this to our kids, we'd be at war."

Go see "A Place at the Table" and let us know what you think!

Follow @CMMatthiessen  

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What's causing the boy crisis?

My child's school is fine, too bad yours stinks

By Carol Lloyd, Executive Editor

Other people may have children who are all dressed up and going to hell in a hatchback, but my wonderful progeny, don't worry about them. My children are fine.  

We've all been there. Worrying about other people's children while we ignore the fact that our own flesh and blood may not be quite as on track as we presume. Turns out this isn't just bit of armchair psychology, but more the stuff of endowed chairs. In fact, it's a burgeoning field of neuroscience that doesn't only explain why most of us -- about 80% -- underestimate our risk of cancer, divorce, and car accidents, but also may explain some happy delusions we cleave to about our own children.

Rose-colored hard wire  

In fact, there's a growing body of research about the "optimism bias" which finds that we underestimate the likelihood of experiencing bad events and overestimate the likelihood of experiencing good events. Cognitive neuroscience Tali Sharot and her fellow researchers have discovered that there's actually a region of the brain -- the left inferior frontal gyrus -- where the optimism bias is headquartered. And researchers can turn it on and off by running a magnetic current through research subjects! Studies have shown that this optimism bias has many benefits -- helping us stay productive, stress-free, and energetic. Only mildly depressed people have no optimism bias, with severely depressed people having a negative bias.

 

What does all this have to do with kids?  This week NPR's Shankar Vedantam interviewed Sharot about some new research which found that this optimism bias extends to parents' predictions for their own children. The study found that while 69% of American adults are obese and more than 80% are worried about the national obesity epidemic, only 20% are worried about their own children's risk of obesity, in an apparent contradiction that NPR summed up thus: "Your child's fat, mine's fine." 

Nearly three fourths of the parents in the poll reported that their chidren were "about the right weight," while only 14% are a little or very overweight, in contrast to national data finding that 32% of children are overweight, including 17% who are obese.   

It isn't hard to see that when it comes to our children's health (as well as our own), the optimism bias may be more dangerous. Instead of our Pollyanna neurons inspiring us to, say, apply to yet another job in a down economy, our inclination toward positive thinking could also lull us towards opting for another evening of chicken nuggets.  

Hope springs educational

Not surprisingly, one of the most prominent polls about parents' perception of public education highlights just this same optimania. According to a Gallup poll, more than three out of four of public school parents regard their child's school as an "A" or "B," but less than one in five of Americans grade the nation's public schools that well. There has been much parsing of this data, but perhaps the simplest response is that it reflects typical brain functioning, a.k.a. human nature. We're optimistic about our personal experience, but hold a slightly negative bias about national trends.

The question is: What will help our children's education most? A bias towards seeing the silver lining or the dark clouds?  Being overly optimistic about my daughter's schooling has sometimes made me to look back with regret: "Why didn't I do something?" On the other hand, casting a negative shadow over my child's school because of national stats seems like it would poison the waters of her learning.

All this leaves me floating somewhere between the dark cloud and the silver lining: foggy.  What do you all think?  Do you remain hopeful about your child's school despite evidence that we're all inclined to overlook signs to the contrary?  What do you think's the best approach when it comes to supporting our child's education?  Optimistic at all costs or not?

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Should your kids aspire to these rock stars?

By Carol Lloyd, Executive Editor

This film from code.org doesn't deliver on its name because it isn't really about what schools do or do not teach. We covered THAT prickly pear in our recent story about how coding should be the second language all schools should teach but sadly don't.

Still, it does deliver -- a valentine to computer programming. As seductive and sweet as any heart-shaped box of chocolates, the short film captures some of the most illustrious and industrious titans of tech talking about their love affair with the bits of code that fueled their success. There's Gates talking about how he first used programming to find out where girls would be sitting in his classes. Or Drew Houston of Dropbox explaining that because there's such a demand for great programmers, that they live "charmed lives" -- cue to a montage of the most swank corporate perks: 4-star cafeteria cuisine, ping pong tables, glass practice rooms for rock bands ,and chic modern couches for lounging with your laptop. The film goes hand in hand with a great blog by the founders of code.org about how 90% of schools don't teach computer programming.

As a codefree humanoid, I watched this video with two parts envy and one part incredulity. Really? Is this really where the future is being cobbled together one > at a time? One thing's for certain: I -- the parent who pushes non-digital books bans video games and  encourages tactile learning like sour dough bread baking (yea, yea a wannabe waldorf mom) -- will be showing this film to my two daughters tonight. Neither have ever considered becoming a programmer, though they've floated everything from knitter, calligrapher, martial artist, rock collector, historian of the underground railroad, founder of child-only restaurant chain, and baby eye surgeon, but never ever "just" a programmer.

But maybe that needs to change. One thing that is so powerful about this video is the way it dispells myths: you have to be a genius to program, that it's boring and uncreative, that it has nothing to do with humanity. Vanessa Hurst, cofounder of Girl Develop IT, put it best: "If someone had really told me that software was really about humanity, was really about helping people by using computer technology, it would have changed my outlook a lot earlier."

This is definitely something my kids need to see. What about yours? Are your kids already annointed in the cult of programming or do they still think it's only something those other techie types like to do?

 

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The real problem with American education

Photo by Connie Matthiessen

By Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

There’s growing evidence that the U.S. lags behind so many other countries in educational achievement (17^th among developed countries, according to recent analysis by The Economist) not because of lazy children, incompetent teachers, or mediocre schools — but because of deep inequities in the quality of the education kids receive.

A new report, “For Each and Every Child,” written by the Equity and Excellence Commission of the Department of Education and delivered to the desk of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan last week, provides a clear and unflinching  look at the education gap: 

“Our education system, legally desegregated more than a half century ago, is ever more segregated by wealth and income, and often again by race. Ten million students in America’s poorest communities—and millions more African American, Latino, Asian American, Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native students who are not poor—are having their lives unjustly and irredeemably blighted by a system that consigns them to the lowest-performing teachers, the most run-down facilities, and academic expectations and opportunities considerably lower than what we expect of other students.”

Linda Darling Hammond of Stanford, one of the commissioners, illustrated this educational  segregation in a recent NPR report by providing a stark example: the Beverly Hills school district spends 50 percent more per pupil than Baldwin Hills, a poor, primarily African American district just five miles away. 

Un-American education

The Commission reached some blistering conclusions about our commitment, as a country — not only to equity in education, but to excellence in education, compared to other countries around the world: 

“America has become an outlier nation in the way we fund, govern and administer K-12 schools, and also in terms of performance. No other developed nation has inequities nearly as deep or systemic; no other developed nation has, despite some efforts to the contrary, so thoroughly stacked the odds against so many of its children. Sadly, what feels so very un-American turns out to be distinctly American.” 

This American Life

The timing was coincidental but the parallels were striking: a recent segment of the radio program, This American Life brought the Commission’s findings to life in its riveting examination of an impoverished Chicago high school. At Harper High School, an all-black school located in Chicago’s South Side (the school has a GreatSchools rating of 1) violence is common. Last year alone, 29 current and former Harper High students lost their lives. The first episode of the two-part series ends on a cliffhanger as the principal tries to decide if she should cancel the upcoming Homecoming football game and dance, because she’s afraid the festivities will devolve into a battle between rival gangs.

The radio segment plunges the listener into the reality, on the ground, of the educational achievement gap. The fact is that some kids in the U.S. are getting a great education at schools that are safe and thriving – but far too many are not.  As a society, we have become comfortable with, or at least accustomed to, this deep educational divide, but as the Commission report argues, it’s hurting us all – not just morally, but economically as well. 

Enhancing lives, boosting fortunes

On a more hopeful note, the report includes a host of very doable strategies to close the education gap — from overhauling education finance systems to improving teacher training and early education. It also makes the case that improving schools would not just enhance the lives of countless children — it would boost the fortunes of our country as a whole:   

“Imagine what we could achieve if we made American public schools competitive with those of a higher-performing country such as Canada in mathematics (which means scoring approximately 40 points higher on PISA tests) over the next 20 years. As our higher-skill-level students entered the labor force, they would produce a faster-growing economy. How much faster? The potential is stunning. The improvement in our GDP over the next 80 years would exceed a present value of $70 trillion. That’s equivalent to an average 20 percent boost in income for every U.S. worker each year over his or her entire career. This would generate enough revenue to solve the U.S. debt problem that is the object of so much current debate.”

Read the report and let us know what you think!

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Who knew there was a season for this?

The thing I never thought I’d learn from teachers

 

By Carol Lloyd, Executive Editor

My 13-year-old daughter accompanied me to the office this week, hunkered down in an empty cube and curled over her book.  It wasn’t long before she’d begun piquing the interest of my coworkers: what the heck was she doing?

Annotated with copious and meticulous notes on hundreds of stickies poking out in all directions, her book Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson looked like the artifact of a fanatical scholar. The method behind this madness?  The practice is called IG – short for intellectual graffiti – a trademarked term created by her brilliant language arts teacher who has managed to make the kind of close, college reading that only OCD graduate students can appreciate seem cool to middleschoolers.

“IG,” she told parents,  “is the graffiti they are allowed to do.  I want them to feel like it’s cool to think.”  If my daughter’s once monosyllabic response to reading compared to her current profligate commentary is any indication, the teacher’s word ploy worked. Talk about the power of rebranding!

Teachers: an untapped resource for parents

I’ve learned a lot from teachers over the years.  How to read, how to factor a polynomial, how to dissect the darker implications of Moll Flanders and use primary sources.  One thing I never expected to learn from them is how to be a better parent.  Now, with two kids in schools with teachers that regularly exceed my expectations, I’m often struck by how good teachers know things many parents  (especially this one) simply don’t know about how to motivate children.

Now with yet another study suggesting that teacher morale is in decline, it’s worth thinking about how precious their skills are and how untapped they remain.  According to the 29^th MetLife Survey of the American Teacher just released, teachers’ level of satisfaction has dropped 23 percentage points since 2008 and more than half of the nation’s public school teachers report feeling high levels of stress several days a week (an increase of 15 percent since 1985).

Earlier this week my 9-year-old was up and dressed in her dungarees, inhaling a bowl of Cheerios and announcing that she needed to get to school now.  What’s the hurry?  I argued.  School doesn’t  start for another hour and a half.  “But if I get to school early, Mr. Chew will let me clean the classroom.”  This from the child for whom it takes relentless badgering to induce her to clear her plate after dinner.  But Mr. Chew in his wisdom has created a system that lets students earn points toward an award for the whole classroom, like a visit to a nearby park or library. The system has caught on like an oil fire in a shack: when I arrived with my daughter there were already four other girls who’d been happily toiling away since the crack of dawn in pursuit of the teacher’s beguiling points.  

Don’t call it homework!

The aforementioned language arts teacher has even managed to rebrand homework, linking it to a cool internet acronym: SWIK, or “shows what I know.” “It’s giving them a chance to show what they know, it’s not an empty exercise,” she told a group of parents at Back to School Night.  Students now correct her if she ever uses the dreaded H-word.

Indeed great teachers know things about motivating kids that many parents could use.  (A lot of the moments of magical parenting I’ve witnessed have turned out to involve parents who also happen to be teachers.) They know about group incentives, individual inspiration, the power of word choice, the importance of consistency, the optimism created by a symbol scribbled in the margins, and the value of repetition.

So many of these magic tools have helped my husband and me become better parents -- quite unbeknownst to the teachers who have influenced our lives.  So if there are any teachers out there - take heart. Yeah, your job is hard and sometimes you're probably not even sure how much your kids are learning.  But don't forget about the reverbertions of your lessons on all the families you have touched over the years.  Our research suggests it's teachers that parents trust most when it comes to taking advice about their kids. Yes, every parent knows their children best, but sometimes we need the tricks of a professional to help us rebrand that pile of dirty dishes without raising our voice.

 

Follow @Carol__Lloyd

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How to raise a child with emotional intelligence (in only 10 minutes a day!)

By Leslie Crawford, Senior Editor

During our nightly bedtime talks, my 7-year-old daughter has been updating me on the machinations of which girl would, and wouldn’t, let so-and-so play with so-and-so. I listen in the dark as she reflects on the most important part of her day, recess, sometimes with an operatic, "How can I stop this agony?" and more often a wistful, "It doesn’t matter. I’ll just sit all alone."

After a few nights of this, I revved up into helicopter mode and emailed the parents of one of the girls to check in about what I was hearing. The father immediately wrote back that he’d been talking with his daughter, as he does every night, and as far as his daughter is concerned, she and my daughter are solid and there’s nothing to worry about. (Confession: My daughter got the fretting gene from me.)

A national mandate: 10 minutes a day

Look at that, I thought: both of us were hearing from our daughters during night-time talks. I’m talking about talking the talk that goes beyond “How was your day?” and “What did you do at school?” (Why oh why do we ask these questions when we already know we’ll hear “fine” and “nothing”?)

At GreatSchools, we preach the value of reading to your children every day (ideally 30 minutes) – even older kids - because it’s so integral in laying the foundation for a child’s academic success. But what if a “talk to your child at least 10 minutes a day” rule was instituted nationwide? How many more kids would find the time to connect with their parents about the things that just never get the time? How many more parents would get to know the children they love so much? Life, school, work – it’s all so rushed that if we don’t make it a daily practice, days fly by before we get a chance to connect with them. Forget about it long enough and the person you’re raising just might leave the house at 18 a stranger.

Car talk ...with 7-year-olds

Tuck-in talks aren’t the only time to catch your kid. With my son, I long ago learned to prick up my ears in the car, a safe space where he’d free associate as one would to a therapist: me playing the omniscient and non-judgmental driver-cum-listener who would hear the most astonishing questions, confessions, and revelations about school and life. Case in point, when he was about seven, just as we were pulling in front of our neighborhood farmers market: “Mom, why are we here?” 

“We always come here on Saturdays," I answered. "We're just getting a few fruits and vegetables. It won't take that long.”

“No, I mean why are we here, on the planet? What are we supposed to be doing here?” 

Keeping midnight hours

These days, I must be more strategic, accessing him during the most difficult time of “day” for me: late at night. As author Michael Riera writes in his excellent Staying Connected to Your Teens: How To Keep Them Talking To You And How To Hear What They're Really Saying, parents of teens might want to set their alarms to wake up when most humans are sleeping. That’s when your vampire child is most likely burning his brightest and if the moment is right, you’ll find him at his best self – open and accessible and a beautiful blend of the child you knew and the future adult he’s going to become. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll tell me what’s actually happening at high school and, if the stars align, briefly open up about his  life that most of the time is an impenetrable locked door.

So yes, of course we want to support our children’s academic success by reading to them for those 30 minutes. And don't forget the 10 minutes a night, per grade, homework rule. (Oy, don't get me started on that nonsense!) But IQ isn’t everything. A child with a well-fostered EQ (emotional intelligence) is far more likely to be a successful adult, one who has learned, often through the regular attentions of a caring adult, vital life skills like empathy and self-control. So let’s hear it for the 10-minute-a-day (only 10!) talking rule, which isn’t really a rule at all, but a pleasure and reminds us why we had them in the first place.

I'm curious how other parents do it: How much do you talk to your child, and where and when do they open up?

 

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Attention helicopter parents: new study shows when it’s time to stop hovering

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

I’ll spare you snide remarks about heli-moms and -dads. My attitude is: helicopter parenting is a modern child-rearing trend. Research supports it: involved, supportive parents set their children up for emotional and academic success. But I’m only human, so I half-laugh at heli-hectoring because, hey, it’s funny.

Yesterday at work, I discovered everyone on our edit team has a very different take on helicopter parenting. One editor thinks being a helicopter parent is detrimental and borderline loony. I think it’s the norm among involved parents – with a handful of extreme cases who are to blame for negative headlines. Another thinks helicoptering has its place but crosses a line when it keeps kids from being held accountable for their actions. We all agree on one thing, though. It’s analogous to calling yourself “lazy.” Sure, you can call yourself “lazy,” or in this case, a helicopter parent, but it’d be insulting for someone else to do so.

Whatever you think of hovering over younger kids, a new study published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies suggests there are real risks for older (read: young adult) helicoptered kids. It seems many parents never quite figure out when to back off. Case in point: recently I cited a New York Times story about a mother who hired a tutor to help her struggling NYU freshman: “[the tutor] spent about 30 hours helping [the freshman] manage her schedule, pick classes and generally feel more comfortable in her new life," reported Abby Ellin. Is this helpful, or did the collegiate's mom simply hire a surrogate helicopter?

Helicopter parenting in college

“Helping or Hovering? The Effects of Helicopter Parenting on College Students’ Well-Being,” set out to tackle this question: Is the hovering helping or harming kids once they're in college?

“Parental involvement is related to many positive child outcomes,” the researchers concede. But when, they ask, does this involvement become developmentally inappropriate? College, it seems, is a common-sense answer. So they set out to test the theory that hovering into adolescence and early adulthood negatively impacts a coed’s self-determination – the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness – leading to depression and reduced sense of satisfaction with their lives.

They surveyed 297 undergrads (12% male, 88% female). Researchers based their questions on “behaviors identified by college administrators as overly involved and inappropriate for the parents of college-aged students,” such as too much control (“My mother monitors who I spend time with.”) and inappropriately acting on their now-adult-student’s behalf (“If I were to receive a low grade that I felt was unfair, my mother would call the professor.”) Then students rated their life satisfaction, anxiety, depression, autonomy, competence, and connectedness. The results? Researchers tied helicopter parenting to college students’ reduced well-being – specifically, their lack of autonomy and competence lead to depression and lower life satisfaction.  

When – if ever – should the hovering become less frequent?

We all draw our own lines, which is why I found the researcher's questions fascinating. For instance, if my mom had contacted one of my professors about a grade, I would’ve been mortified; but I don’t think a curfew when you're home from college is out of the question. In your family, which of these behaviors would be acceptable – and which should you consider scaling back?

Ready, set, ask yourself…

Here are the questions the researchers used to evaluate overly controlling and autonomy-building behaviors.

1. My mother had/will have a say in what major I chose/will choose.
2. My mother encourages me to discuss any academic problems I am having with my professor.
3. My mother monitors my exercise schedule.
4. When I am home with my mother, I have a curfew.
5. My mother has given me tips on how to shop for groceries economically.
6. My mother encourages me to make my own decisions and take responsibility for the choices I have made.
7. My mother regularly wants me to call or text her to let her know where I am.
8. My mother encourages me to deal with interpersonal problems between myself and my roommate or friends on my own.
9. If I were to receive a low grade that I felt was unfair, my mother would call the professor.
10. My mother monitors my diet.
11. My mother monitors who I spend time with.
12. My mother encourages me to keep a budget and manage my own finances.
13. My mother calls me to track my schoolwork (i.e., how I’m doing in school, what my grades are like, etc.).
14. If I am having an issue with my roommate, my mother would try to intervene.
15. My mother encourages me to choose my own classes.

Do these helicoptering indicators (#1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14) sound uncomfortably familiar? If so, it may be time to start building your child's road to eventual independence. After all, the researchers note, it’s not just the child who suffers when the hovering never ceases: “Over-parenting” can negatively affect a parent’s mental health and has been tied to the parent’s “lower satisfaction with life,” too. Which, admittedly, isn't funny at all.

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Does the “IKEA effect” apply to children?

By Carol Lloyd, Executive Editor

It happened to me, just as it happens to just about every parent that ever lived. By the time the baby arrives bawling and purple by way of a body fatigued to the point of madness and despair: the miracle of love arrives along with it.

Then came those first days and weeks and months, that have stretched to years and decades of toil, effort, exertion, and yes, drudgery in the guiding of those two tiny babies towards adulthood. Somehow miraculously, the miracle persists.   

As one grandma put it when she cornered me with a screaming toddler in a crowded grocery line: “It’s the hardest job you’ll ever love.”  

In his recent report on what social scientists have dubbed “the IKEA effect,” NPR science correspondent Shankar Vedantam began with a personal anecdote about a friend who spends his free time caring for two huge misbehaving dogs that bark, get into fights, and otherwise make him unpopular with his neighbors, asking: “Does he do all this work for the dogs because he loves the dogs, or does he love the dogs because he does all this work for them? Most of the time we think that when we love something it leads to labor, but is it possible that labor leads to love?”

Turns out, recent research has confirmed Vedantam’s hunch: labor can indeed lead to love. People actually feel more love and appreciation for the self-assembled products from IKEA (however lopsided that hutch turned out) than those same products assembled by a professional.

Of course, my lovely daughters are neither Vallvik TV units nor Selje nightstands.  And I’m among those immune to the IKEA effect when it comes to cobbling together a Malm desk: there’s no love lost between me and DIY assembly.   

But the labor = love equation illuminates the miracle of child love – and it also explains parents' natural delusional perspective on their children’s charms, potential, and skills. Indeed, it’s no miracle at all, but it's still sublime. Effort and work ignites imagination, emotions, and makes us care. This laborious non-miracle of love sets our relationships to our children apart from most others. After all, in the beginning, their 24/7 needs transform the caregivers in profound ways. The repugnant becomes normal. The mundane, fascinating. The predictable, hilarious. The simple, exalted. Ordinary people become heroes of sleep deprivation and sacrifice – if only for a few months.

That the residue of that labor lasts a lifetime is a telling testament to the human heart. For some, this may be a prosaic explanation for why we love our kids so much, but I find it remarkable: that our exertions can transform our feelings. It’s also a great lesson to impart to our children: that putting nose to the grindstone can unlock a kind of deep satisfaction.

Recently, my daughters and I watched First Position, a documentary about young aspiring ballet dancers preparing for an international competition. As a former dancer, I'm not a huge fan of ballet – especially for little girls, many of whom can’t help but become fixated on staying unhealthily thin. And the film featured more than one stage mother, tilting just this side of the Toddlers and Tiaras windmill. But some of these kids had experienced what all children need to experience, that our “general ed for the general public, fill-in-the-blanks” schools sometimes fail to emphasize: that intense effort itself can breed passion and love, loose screws and all.

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