You know, some of these people might get satisfaction from doing schoolwork now that they can get it right - sorta like those "fill-in" puzzles on pulp in the bookstore.

But there's a balance to be had. In one case, you get a kid who can't do anything without the helicopter nearby. In another, you get a kid totally on their own, whose parent, when they can be compelled to come to the school three blocks away, tells the teacher - and I quote - "That yo job."

I enjoyed reading your excerpt of this article and it made for thoughtful reflection. I'm glad you shared it and also liked your insightful comments -- mainly "I do think Harris overstates the influence of socialization by other children and understates the influence of parents."

I think all parents are, at least partly, guilty of one extreme or the other in different aspects of their children's lives.

Although I've suspected a few folks around the PTA circuit of coming pretty close to the cartoon of the overly involved 'helicopter parent', I would have a hard time using up the fingers on one hand to account for the number of them I've actually known.

I think this is an overused characterization of parents today. That may be because I was pretty poor when my children were small and we didn't live in the affluent neighborhoods.

Whatever the approach, if the children know how much they are loved and valued, that's a pretty good start. Once your family has that going for it, you can fuck up an awful lot without doing too much damage.

I particularly value age-mixed play. Older kids teach younger kids so much, even without trying, as the younger kids always want to emulate them.

I met one kid, a two-year-old, who could unscrew a plastic water bottle lid all by himself. I was amazed, and his mother remarked, "Oh yeah, his older brothers taught him that." Awesome.

I think Harris is more wrong than right, and is too frequenlty dragged out by people who were neglectful parents. Not neglectful in the homework and hairbows way but who didn't pay real attention until it was way too late.

And I wasn't a heli-parent.

What really irks me is how the public school system has become a boiler room for fund raising. My six year old is expected to go door to door selling popcorn, Christmas wrapping, magazines and other stuff at obscenely marked up prices. Every holiday is a new excuse to get them schillin' the neighbors.

I was a sheltered but unprotected kid. Sheltered enough to not develop necessary social skills, but unprotected from the bullying that resulted. From what I've read online since then, this is pretty common among Jehovah's Witness kids. Ugh, I'm just glad those days are over.

I found the example of the Robert Frost assignment very interesting. Because my kids spend a great deal of time playing with friends instead of having every second of their lives monitored by me, they DO have life experiences. I believe even my second grader could think of examples of times that he went against the crowd or chose to try something new instead of something familiar.

When it comes to helping my kids with homework, I simply do what their teachers would do - the teacher would not take over the work and do it for them. I will help explain the concepts to them, but they have to do the thinking.

PJ: I'm sorry you had to go through that.

Based on your posts and our interactions here, you seem to have grown up to be a balanced, fair, insightful and entertainingly cynic person. I always enjoy your posts and am glad you didn't wind up a religious nutso.

It's so sad when people don't see that they're failing to protect their kids in the most important ways, while also denying their kids the ability to protect themselves. Religion does this a lot.

Children do need to be able to run around, explore, play with each other and get in trouble from time to time. Learning to function without direct parental intervention is a necessary life skill. Still, I sympathize with the parents who guide their children toward schedules full of sports, art, music, volunteer and other extracurricular activities. Now that getting a four-year degree is the middle class norm, the likeliest path upward is through a degree from an elite university. The arms race to get into top schools has become so competitive that absent a full slate of extracurricular activities, plus nearly perfect grades, advanced placement classes and top test scores, a kid has little hope of acceptance to any of them.

A couple of decades ago when I graduated high school, one could get into top-tier universities with good grades and test scores and some extracurricular activities; it wasn't expected that one do everything perfectly. Summers could be spent socializing and working at menial jobs instead of resume-building. Weekends one could sleep in. And homework wasn't multiple hours every night. This is no longer the case. Competition is so intense that one has little chance to get into prestigious schools if he doesn't do every last thing – and well.

The gap between the opportunities afforded those who attend top schools versus the middle tier is enormous. I don't doubt that there isn't likely to be a huge difference between what a diligent student can learn at an average university and an Ivy-caliber institution. There is, however, an enormous difference in the doors opened by these degrees: the student from a top school carries a diploma that increases his likely earnings forever, makes contacts among people who will populate the top tiers of nearly every profession, and has ready access to career opportunities that those from other institutions simply are not afforded. Knowing that, I understand why parents might push their children so hard. I'd be tempted do the same with my own children.

"The gap between the opportunities afforded those who attend top schools versus the middle tier is enormous."

Eh, maybe. My harvard and Dartmouth educated older bro has been unemployed 2 years now. My state school educated dad was never without a job. They say your school really only matters at the first job. After that it's networking and how you did your first job.

Maybe it's because mine attends a Title 1 school, but I just don't know these helicopter parents. Kids are involved in two or three things, tops. For mine that'd be chorus, jazz dance and Brownies. The rest of the time she's free to decide (or have me decide for her).

I'm not worried at age 8 whether she's the top student, but the amount of homework she has is maddening compared with when I was a kid. Still, I try to encourage rather than assist.

Where I push her is to be creative, think for herself, be kind and empathetic, and to work on her comedic timing. I woke up this morning to find this note on her pillow, for the "creature" she is sure visits our house when we aren't here (typos hers):

Dear Who ever you are,
I would like you to give me a body thats invisble, an invisble 8 year old. Plus a puppy that only I can see. Yours truly.

I"m going to smile about that all day.

Christopher, if what you are saying is true, then my kids are totally screwed. Even if they are perfect students and get accepted into elite, top tier universities, there's no way in hell I will ever be able to afford it.

I do think that some of this arises from a need for the parent to compensate for their own disappointments and inadequacies.

What's seldom discussed, in relation to such intensive parenting, is that this level of intimacy and engagement leaves the child even more vulnerable to the parent's own psychological problems. There's no buffer, and little opportunity for the child to individuate, so they can end up absorbing the neurotic fixations of their parents.

For instance, I know a little girl who's constantly trying to litigate how others treat her. Any time she's involved with other kids, she attempts to impose rigid demands on them as to how they must interact, and how she should be treated, and inevitably comes away feeling that she's been slighted in some way. Her mother thinks that this is evidence of the child's superior intelligence and enlightened outlook, when it's really just a reflection of her own fixation on status and control.

I'd seen this growing up with my own parents as well, who are morbidly and pathetically neurotic people. They imposed themselves on everything that my sister and I attempted to do, but inevitably ruined things, either deliberately as a form of punishment, or inadvertently by just being themselves. Their involvement also carried a stigma, because other parents eventually shunned them, which left my sister and I without many friends.

Eh, maybe. My harvard and Dartmouth educated older bro has been unemployed 2 years now

Nothing is a guarantee - my emphasis was on the opportunities provided by that kind of institution.

My state school educated dad was never without a job. They say your school really only matters at the first job. After that it's networking and how you did your first job.

Yes and no. There are real differences in the kinds of first jobs available to state school students vs. Ivy students, and these differences affect one's long-term prospects.

Christopher, if what you are saying is true, then my kids are totally screwed. Even if they are perfect students and get accepted into elite, top tier universities, there's no way in hell I will ever be able to afford it.

This is less true than it used to be. All of the top schools I know of have policies that guarantee to meet "demonstrated financial need" for admitted students. Some go beyond this. IIRC, Stanford charges no tuition for students whose families who earn under 60k; Harvard offers significant tuition reductions for families up to 180k.

This is spot on. Parenting has become extremely competitive, and it's the rare parent who can resist doing too much of the homework because they realize their child is competing against the other kids in class whose parents are practically doing it for them.

There's an attitude that success breeds success even in the very early grades, and, from what I've seen from raising 2 kids through the school system, that is quite true. The kids with helicopter parents in 3rd grade are at the top of the class as seniors, not necessarily because they're smarter but because their parents are hovering over them for 12+ years to make sure everything gets done and gets done well.

The teachers have gotten lazier as a result, assigning more homework, since they have so many parents "explaining the concepts" at home. Why bother teaching when mom and dad are doing it?

I began like the mom she described, asking if the homework was done. My parents rarely helped with homework. They loved us and were certainly not neglectful, but they expected us to do our homework ourselves...and they were both teachers! But I think my kids paid a price in today's competitive environment, though they're probably better educated than most. They never got an "A" they didn't earn.

Still, that's not what matters. The grades are, and many parents today will do everything they can to make sure their child gets the "A", deserved or not.

Agreed, lovelysoul. Our kids aren't the only ones who succumb to peer pressure. We parents want to be thought of as good parents by our peers also. Or, if we happen to live in the culture that says education and trying to get ahead makes you uppity, we don't want to be different there, either.

One example: so many parents have these over the top birthday parties for their kids: themes, costumes, food/decorations. My son was the first of his friends to have an old fashioned back yard party: a cake, some ice cream, chips/cokes for the parents. Bring out the yard toys. The other parents raved and raved about it and the kids loved just getting to run around and act like kids instead of being forced to sit down and be quiet while some overachieving mom explained in detail how to make the theme craft.

"Agreed, lovelysoul. Our kids aren't the only ones who succumb to peer pressure."

That's the truth, Lesley. In fact, that's the way I think of it. Having kids in school today brings all the parents back to that time themselves - the cliques, and peer pressure to fit in. Only it's worse because these are their precious little children.

I suspect school was viewed very differently by previous generations of parents. School was for the kids...the place they went to all day, largely apart from parental involvement, and where they better behave for the teacher or be punished at home. It wasn't the place parents went to get their egos stroked.

Homework was for practice and discipline, and to let the teacher know how well or poorly the child understood the concepts, so he/she could address any problems before testing, which was what they were graded on.

That's the not the case anymore. In many schools, homework makes up a large percentage of the grade, so the kids who have no parental help at home - or lack computers, books and supplies -are at an extreme disadvantage.

What really irks me is how the public school system has become a boiler room for fund raising.

Glad to hear it. I thought it was only we private-schoolers suffering from this stuff.

In my experience, schools give a lot more homework now, and they are on the parents' case to make sure it gets done. I figure it's my comeuppance for all the years I never bothered doing homework.

My boys are allowed 2 activities per semester. That's it. Right now one is in basketball and swimming. The other does violin and swimming. Perhaps I'm a bad mommy, but I refuse to live my 30s and 40s as a chauffer to two kids who have a better social life than myself.

For the parents who brought up selling stuff...don't you just wish the school would say 'Hey, we need $10,000 for computers. Check, please?' rather than the Sally Foster Hell we all face? It also pisses me off because the country school administration in our home county just built a 2 BILLION (with a B!!!) new office building. Ummmm, Ok. If you can afford that, then why is my kid being enlisted to schill for coupons??

Maybe because I had such a horrible role model growing up, I had to make a concious choice as to what sort of parent I would be.
My eldest was a natural at her schoolwork, I never even had to ask if she had done it, just praise the results. I insisted on her having 1 extra-curricular activity, in her case it was flute lessons. She joined her HS marching band in the 8th grade because our district was so small they needed the warm bodies, and was their jill-of-all-instruments by the 9th grade because she was willing to pick up an alto horn or bagpipes or whatever they needed and teach herself to play well enough to pass.
She was however, a very moody kid and so I learned a great deal of child psychology keeping her depressions under control.if she got bullied at school amd the teacher didn't deal with it properly, I was in the office breathing fire the next day. It was important to me that my kid know I supported her, because I never had that.
My younger daughter is now 17, and night to her sister's day. She's the kind of student that could get straight A's, but only does enough to get a 'c' to pass, so yes, I ride herd on her schoolwork more closely than I did her older sister. She's my artist, my writer, my dreamer, my constant source of grey hairs. She's very much more social than her sister was, so I have her friends over all the time so that I can get to know them and let her know which ones I think are good or bad influences. (most have been good, luckily).
Am I overprotective? Probably. But I don't think I'm overly smothering or restrictive.

Wow. I really must be a throw-back. My girls were never forced to do any extra-cirricular activities that they didn't want to do. Number 1 has been playing piano since she was 5, and Number 2 only last year decided she wanted to play guitar. My parents pay for their lessons. Well, they did until #1 went away to college. Now she pays for her pianon lessons. Which is only fair. Number 2 has decided to drop guitar for now so she can concentrate on percussion with marching and concert bands at school. They have always done their own homework, with minimal assistance from me, except for a couple of really involved projects here and there. Because you can TELL when the parents have done the projects for the kids, and the kids really don't learn anything if their parents do it for them.

While growing up, they've taken swimming lessons (they both LOVE to swim), archery lessons, chess classes and have learned to knit; they also know how to bake (#1 makes a fantastic strawberry rhubarb pie!), and they go ice skating on Saturday mornings when they're so inclined (we have a year-round rink right up the road from here). They have always known that "homework is first", and then whatever free time they have after that and doing thier chores, is theirs. Sometimes they don't have as much free time as they'd like, but I tell them that goes with the territory. Structure your time so that you get the things you have to do out of the way, and then you can do what you want to do.
They're both good kids. They're not always perfect, but they're always mine, and I'm honored to have them, most of the time. (There's only be a few times when I've had to beat some common sense into their heads through the seat of their pants, but at least they're not clueless!) I encourage them to think for themselves as often as possible, but they know, because I've told them many times, I'll always have their backs. I just won't be riding on them.

I met a man at a party who lives in a wealthy area of the city. He joked that his is the poor family in the neighbourhood. He told me that the children in his neighbourhood are under so much pressure from their parents to succeed that some kids literally make themselves ill trying to study for - get this - the IQ test the board gives to all grade three students in order to select who needs to go into the gifted program. Apparently there are many children in grade two and three who actually have tutors to prepare them for the IQ test.

That has to be an example of one of the worst types of parents. Not only do these children feel like total failures if they don't end up with an IQ of 135 or above but they make comments like "I am going to kill myself if I don't 'pass' the test." These kids are seven years old. Even if the kids tutor helps them figure out how to perform better on the IQ test and the child does get into the gifted program, how is that kid going to feel about themselves when they have to struggle through the next eight years of school because they were never meant to be in the gifted program?

Not only is this terrible for the child but because of people like that, a child in this city who should be in the gifted program may not get in because there are no spots available. In Ontario a child needs an IQ of 129 or above to get into the program but in Toronto they need an IQ of 134, because there are not enough resources in Toronto now. WE used to have the richest school board in the province, we now have one of the poorest because we now have to share our board money with the rest of the province. If it was only that we would not be one of the poorest, what really sucks the money are all of the english as a second language courses we have to pay for, for children born in this country!

When I was a kid, if you couldn't speak english you still had to go to regular school, there was no ESL. These kids all managed to succeed in regular school. I personally know several people who went to french school without knowing a word of french prior to going there yet they succeeded.

Fred and Mary:  We put our little Mickey into the best kindergarten, private schools, and EduCamps. We sacrificed to put him through an Ivy League school.
Jim:  What field did he go into?
Fred and Mary:  He is the best educated auto mechanic in the city.

Raising Successful Children
11/15/10 - Econlog by Bryan Caplan

  [edited]  Science supports the sentimental view that parents should simply cherish, encourage, and accept their children. Modern parents need to calm down and see family time as leisure, not work. Having fun with your children may not prepare them for the future, but there are few more rewarding ways to spend your time.
  Twin and adoption studies have shocking conclusions. Upbringing has much less affect on success than most of us believe.
  This research may seem like an excuse for lazy parents. But, reducing useless investment is common sense. If your children's future success is largely beyond your control, then riding them "for their own good" is cruel, worse than useless.

For a couple reasons, I've tried to disabuse my kids of the notion that getting into a top college is necessary for a successful life. First, college is an expensive proposition no matter where you go, and the debt incurred buying a top-tier education might not be offset by future earnings the education brings. Second, if they're to strive for something, I'd rather they strive for something they actually wanted to do, rather than something they thought they were supposed to do. Now, both my younger children are good students and will probably wind up going to college, but I want them to do it with their eyes open.

@Eric

"What really irks me is how the public school system has become a boiler room for fund raising."

If I had a child that age, I'd just figure out how much she was expected to raise and write them a check for that amount. I'd rather do that than teach my child that it's OK to knock on people's doors, interrupt their day, and try to sell them something.

I don't think the schools actually get that much from the promotion people after the fund raiser is over, and I'd rather just give them the cash directly, if I felt like supporting them at all.

Not only do these children feel like total failures if they don't end up with an IQ of 135 or above but they make comments like "I am going to kill myself if I don't 'pass' the test." These kids are seven years old.

Those poor kids, they are trying so hard to please their parents. Rest assured, they will get tired of being set up to fail and stop trying so hard to please their parents. I am sure that if their parents really thought about it, their own IQs aren't that high, if they even know what they are in the first place. And secondly, why is it so important to get your kid into those classes? Because your kid will live a happier life as a result? (We can see how well that is working out, already.) Or because you want bragging rights? What great parents. Making their 7-year-olds suicidal over bragging rights.

I think that the degree you choose has a much bigger impact on your success than the college that you go to. An engineering degree from a state university translates into much higher life time earnings than a sociology degree from Harvard.

The Ivy League schools are probably most valuable in providing connections, networking opportunities, and exposure to big-name corporations. This is particularly true for majors like business (my major) where it's all about who you know. It's been frustrating for me that the major investment banks that I'd love to work for (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch) don't even bother recruiting at my state university. If I went to an Ivy League then not only would they be recruiting heavily but there'd be a good chance that I'd know someone whose dad was a VP. On the other hand, I did recently secure an internship at one of the said investment banks, so it's not impossible with a public school education-just harder.

But there are other downsides to attending an Ivy League school. The competition can be cutthroat-I've heard stories about people tearing pages out of books. Plus I think the huge displays and disparities of wealth would make some people uncomfortable. And when you take into consideration all the factors that make for a positive college experience-the location and size of your school, the makeup of the student body, whether you make friends/fit in/find a niche, whether you have good professors and classes, etc-then I don't think there's any particular benefit to being at an Ivy. If it happens, it happens, but structuring your child's entire life around getting admitted to a top-tier college is a seriously misguided waste of time.

At the risk of sidetracking the thread, let me introduce the idea of snobbery / elitism with regard to schooling.

"The best educated auto mechanic in the city". There's an example.

I was at the dentist years ago at NTC Orlando (since given to the city of Orlando in a sweetheart deal). Some kid was coming out of an appointment and the nurse asked, "Gonna be a sailor?" Mom snipped, "Oh, no. He's going to college" and left. "Funny," said the dentist, who had walked into the conversation. "I did that." He was a Captain - an O-6, for you land combatants.

Try to figure out what you want your kid to be. Then, ask him what she wants to be.

I consider it foremost that he or she knows what the hell they're doing. You might notice that an awful lot of Ivy Leaguers are not Commanders of the Order of the British Empire. But there's a piano player who is!

The college thing, like Social Security, is unsustainable. Kids, when they grow up, need to find a way to 'serve their communities' (get jobs) to make money. Unless they plan to fart around doing whatever the fuck they want on their parents' dime. 'On the taxpayers' dime' won't work for long, since the taxpayers are falling short these days.

There are things people need, and people can always earn a living providing these things. When the college degree Ponzi scheme collapses, these jobs will go to those most willing to work hard and do a good job, because that's what their neighbors want.

So, did you teach your kids how to be self-reliant, adaptable, and listen to others? Or did you teach them to be little suck-ups who follow the rules of standardized tests?

One of the worst things about schooling today is that there is a much bigger reward for sucking up and rule following than for actual intelligence. This has left most of our colleges filled with good little but not particularly bright girls, affirmatice action beneficiaries, and brown nosing mamma's boys.

I read the Free Range Kids book and it's a good one for the over involved parent. I'm the one who calls out "have you done your homework?" I think it's more important to raise decent human beings than worry about their homework when they're 7. Do they get along with others? Can they compromise? Do they know right from wrong? Are they learning to become less self-centred?

I've seen one kid of an over involved parent who seems to think I'm terribly irresponsible for letting my 2nd grader walk to school alone not wearing a winter parka when it's 12 celcius outside (she's not cold - I asked her).... The kid is a nice kid, but she doesn't know how to relax and throws up at parties. The mom has a permanent look of constipation on her face. No thanks.

Interestingly, a debate broke out on my Facebook tonight. One of my friends posted that her 12 yr old son was stabbed with a pencil at school, and his Blue Angel cap was stolen by someone in the class. She's already been to the school and gotten the asst. principal involved. Today, the whole class will be interrogated about the cap.

So, all the other moms are cheering her on, but an older male friend comments, "Stay out of it. Your boy needs to stand up for himself and handle it or he'll look like a mama's boy."

That didn't go over very well, and the other moms were saying stuff like, "No! Nobody messes with our kids!" And blaming the boy's parents, "Stab THEM with a pencil for raising such a bad kid!" and urging her to go down and make the biggest scene possible in the class today.

But the guy argued that kids will be kids...did they not remember how it was growing up? Boys, especially, will play rough. He said she'll just make her boy look like a fool by handling it for him.

I kind of lean towards the guy's point of view, but I don't want to piss off all these helicopter parents by commenting. But this is really how it is among parents today. They support each other in helicoptering.

lovelysoul, it might do them good to know they're not in an echo chamber. I'd speak up for the other side. I don't think my parents would have jumped in at something like that and I'm a girl! Maybe people have got over sensitive because of school shootings, but come on people! How are kids supposed to learn to handle things without running to "the authorities" for every little thing? The guy is right; the moms are turning their sons into wimps.

"Stab THEM with a pencil for raising such a bad kid!"

Did someone actually say that? *sigh*

"One of the worst things about schooling today is that there is a much bigger reward for sucking up and rule following than for actual intelligence. "

This would be one reason to get your kids in the gifted program, even if it requires pushing. Our TAG classes are fun, as were mine growing up. Instead of diagramming sentences, we were writing and acting out plays. We built ancient Rome out of sugar cubes, and invented our own species and wrote a discovery field report on it. Creativity and being outside the box are welcomed in them. My kids write stories to practice their tag spelling, the normal class has to write the worked over and over and over. Which would you rather do? So yes, I'll be the mom trying her best to get the next 2 kids into it, too. Not "make them suicidal" best, but definately "working on skills" best.

How far will you go to do that, M4? Here in our district, I've heard stories of parents shopping around different psychologists until they get the required IQ test. Some apparently take bribes.

So, now we have gifted kids in the gifted programs who aren't really gifted. A truly gifted child will score high on an IQ test without any coaching. Those kids really need to be in the gifted program, and around each other, as they tend to inspire each other's creativity and understand each other's social quirks.

It's not the answer to a dull school curriculum to put kids in the gifted programs that don't belong.

The sad thing about that "gifted" program is that I bet most kids are perfectly capable of that kind of work because it's more interesting. It's too bad most teachers are too lazy, the government is bent on dumbing down the majority, and so most kids are stuck doing busy work and being herded like cattle all day. More reasons to home school if possible. Don't expect a government employee to care as much about your kids than you do.

High IQ isn't everything. I don't know what my kids' IQ scores are, but I do know that they can do far more advanced stuff than they get at school. I'm so fed up with it I'm moving them to the Catholic school ASAP. I talk to their teachers and nothing changes - same old unchallenging "work." My 2nd grader was doing more advanced work two years ago when I was home schooling her. It's pathetic. I doubt she would score above average on an IQ test, but the curriculum is so dumbed down it's enough to make your head explode. And these "open concept" classrooms are a joke too. I was in one of those and never got anything done.

"One of the worst things about schooling today is that there is a much bigger reward for sucking up and rule following than for actual intelligence. "

As my Aunt, who's retired from 30+ years of teaching, says - "it's all mindless busy work and happy talk now".

To be fair to teachers, my daughter's teacher last year listened when I said she would rather read real books than those boring things they get at school. Her teacher this year is all about some stupid official difficulty rating of a book to let her read obviously more advanced stuff - oh, but ze government hasn't rated it for me. :-/ Mostly though, they are all nicety nice to your face then just ignore everything you said. And I'm not one of those pushy parents or anything; they just don't seem to care.

Thag, I so agree with what you said above. Most kids can do the harder work if it's made interesting. I homeschooled my son for awhile and it was a great experience. Highly recommend it.

In defense of teachers, too, I think many of them tune parents out now because they have so many parents bitching and complaining to them, and/or expecting special treatment/accomodations for their child.

I was talking last nt with someone about just how many allergies there are now. His son is allergic to fish, a whole bunch of kids in the class are allergic to peanuts, dairy, and various things. Just keeping that straight would make me an anxious teacher.

We didn't recall us all being so allergic when we were kids. Is this just another symptom of hellicopter parenting?

"We didn't recall us all being so allergic when we were kids. Is this just another symptom of hellicopter parenting?"

In a nutshell yes. Our immune systems have to be challenged when we are young for the body to learn to identify what to attack and what not to attack. These children are raised in an environment where everything is wiped down and every sneeze, sniffle and allergic reaction is dealt with by never exposing the kid to the food or pet in question again. I have found that if I am not around cats for several weeks, or don't wear makeup, I have a mild allergic reaction when I encounter them again. This allergic reaction goes away after a few days of exposure.

>> We didn't recall us all being so allergic when we were kids. Is this just another symptom of hellicopter parenting?

There are a couple of theories towards this question. One of the more plausible is that contemporary children have a less sophisticated immune response due to a lack of exposure to common bacteria.

But there's also the fact that allergies show a strong correlation with neuroticism. People who are apprehensive and anxious tend to also have allergies. No one knows why, or which cause the other.

People are clean freaks these days. I let my kids play in the mud when they were smaller, likely to the horror of the neighbourhood, and they only started getting sick in the winter after they started going to school. Before that, no one really got all that sick for a long time, though we did have our bouts with the pukies and all for a while. Thankfully that's rare these days too. So yeah, I'd say the allergies thing is partly due to lack of exposure. Most people now don't introduce peanuts until a year old or whatever it is. I said balderdash to that too.

I did think probably the problem with teachers not listening is that they're so used to parents who think their kids are speshul snowflakes - I get the feeling I'm getting "the speech" when they answer me. All I was asking is that they be able to read books that we have at home anyway for their homework assignments; seems like that means less work for them but oh well. One out of three didn't give me the brush off and actually worked with me.

Studying for an IQ test is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. An IQ test isn't something you should be able to study for like the SATs or MCATs-it's supposed to reflect your inherent ability. Your IQ isn't good or bad, it just is what it is, like your height or eye color. Learning to beat the test defeats the entire point.

"In defense of teachers, too, I think many of them tune parents out now because they have so many parents bitching and complaining to them, and/or expecting special treatment/accomodations for their child."

I think there's a lot of truth to that. My sister-in-law used to be a schoolteacher, and she said that a lot of the parents she encountered fell into one of two extremes: the ones who were constantly asking for special treatment for little Johnny, and the ones who didn't give a damn at all.

In our school district, the gifted program was a joke. There are way too many avenues for failure. Even a gifted child needs to learn a lot of rote skills before critical thinking becomes an issue. The selection process for gifted programs is often warped by political considerations, and the teacher of the individual gifted class has a big impact on whether it ends up being any better than a regular classroom.

The gifted program is really joke here too, which makes it all the more comical that parents cheat to kid their kid in.

They basically sat around for the hour, discussing topics, eating popcorn, and building models. They were graded on the models, which basically meant more work at home, in addition to regular homework, so it was almost like a penalty to be in the gifted class.

It boggles my mind. Here we have the brightest students, and they're making sugar cube models while the chinese are teaching them calculus. No wonder America falls farther and farther behind.

Please don't always blame the teachers. Instead, blame the principals. I've been watching my best friend go through her first four years of teaching. And watching her ping-pong her style from year-to-year based on the principal's priorities. It's tough for her, and listening to her stories is fascinating. It's taught me a lot about what really happens at a school. This year, the principal is all about paperwork - COVER YOUR ASS is the mantra. So my friend spends a shocking amount of her time doing paperwork related to who's falling behind, who's misbehaving. Who scored what, why, and what we plan to do about it. A lot of it isn't necessary for the child, but rather, reflects the principal's need to prevent/defend complaints to the School Board.

(It's also been fascinating to watch how the voters or the governor will vote a measure in, and listen to how the principal will blatantly ignore it or blatantly LIE about how they're doing it.)

>>"My sister-in-law used to be a schoolteacher, and she said that a lot of the parents she encountered fell into one of two extremes: the ones who were constantly asking for special treatment for little Johnny, and the ones who didn't give a damn at all."

I'm seeing this polarization more and more. My friend teaches at a Title One. Every year, she has a parent who will openly refuse to show up for conferences. While that's only one in a class of fifteen, there are plenty that won't take their child to school if its raining. If they don't feel well. If it's too cold (it's FLORIDA!). Every year, she has parents that she can't get a working phone number for or a real address.

Meanwhile, the library I work at is in a solid middle-class area. I'm seeing the helicopter parenting. The parents who won't let their child say "stupid", and who won't say "NO". The parents who come in and grab fifteen books on a subject so their snowflake can pass, but no one else in the neighborhood can get a book on frogs. The ones who won't let their child read anything that isn't officially Levelled through the school's levelling system of choice. And the ones who will scream blue murder if you step on their toes in any way.

"While that's only one in a class of fifteen, there are plenty that won't take their child to school if its raining. If they don't feel well. If it's too cold (it's FLORIDA!). Every year, she has parents that she can't get a working phone number for or a real address."

Maybe they don't have a permanent address or phone number? I live in FL, and that is true of a lot of people. Also, I'd rather parents keep their kids home if they don't feel well. Why get my kid sick? However, now, their grades are usually contingent on them showing up even when sick - attendence is tied to whether the school gets an "A" grade or not. At my daughter's school, if a child misses 6 days in a semester, and is failing a class, he/she can't take the final exam to redeem their grade.

I've given my e-mail address to every teacher in every class for 12+ years, and I've almost never had a teacher contact me for anything. I wish! They could've let me know about a lot of things...that assignment my child was missing, that incident in class (that I find out about from other parents), or (imagine this) anything nice about my child's progress.

They simply don't contact you, at least in FL. Maybe the principals forbid it? Maybe whatever they put in writing could open the school up to liability? Almost every contact I've had has been initated by me, but it would mean so much for the teacher to have regular contact with parents, and, in this digital age, it should be easy. Just about everybody has a cellphone, even when they don't have a permanent physical address.

I also rarely had a teacher contact me for either one of my kids. However, the attendance thing usually comes from the administration. The funding formulas in most states are tied to the ADA (average daily attendance) so the public schools lose money if children miss several days of school each year. In a private school the tuition is the same no matter how many days you miss and the parents have skin in the game so they get their kids to class. Bottom line is that people rarely appreciate things that they perceive to be "free" (;paid for by the taxpayers) I have noticed this trend in college as well. We were considered to be adults and it was a rare class that required attendance as part of your grade when I was in school. Now almost all of them do.