Take Away the Launching Pad

First I was the backpack boss at the suggestion of the junior high counselors. I’d go through Alek’s backpack after school to check for stray worksheets or unfinished homework. I would grill him on due dates and project progress.

It drove him crazy and made him defensive. This checking of backpacks lasted only through seventh grade at which point I told Alek it was time to be held responsible for his own backpack. Sure, he missed handing in a few assignments, but he paid the consequence with his grades. But then, those were his grades and not mine.

Would he have received better grades had I continued to play backpack boss? Would he have gone to a selective college if I had made sure he always turned in his homework and knew about every test he had?

It’s not that I became a total slacker for a mom; it’s just that I couldn’t keep up a pretense of being what would later be termed helicopter parent. I couldn’t do it. I had to hand back the responsibility. Ask my children, and they still think I nag.

But it took some effort to remove myself from that first son’s air space while still attempting an active kind of engagement in his school life. Would he do all his homework? Would he remember to turn it in? Would he bring home the permission slip for me to sign?

Little did I know that checking backpacks was just the first in a series of good- intentioned efforts by school administrators to get parents more engaged with their children’s academic life. How benign that seems in retrospect.

In one of those which-came-first, the-chicken-or-the-egg scenarios, more and more information started being made available to parents, particularly via the Internet.

At Alek’s freshman orientation in the fall of 2003, kindly administrators gently prepared us parents for our college student’s life away from home. There were many teary eyed mothers and fathers listening to stories about how our kids would be beginning their lives in college and how wonderful it was that we were there supporting them. (I believe this parent orientation was mandatory.)

Then we were told how to obtain a pin number so that we could access on-line our kids’ class schedules and see assignments and grades. Of course, our kids had to provide the pin number, but the college did make it available.

Check your college kid’s grades? It seemed to me not only to be a huge invasion of privacy, but also too much information. What would we do with it? Call our kids and tell them to work harder, call them to remind them to hand in their paper that was due in two weeks? Send care packages because we knew they have exams at 10, 12, and 3 the next day and they’ll need brain food?

Wow, fuel for the helicopter!

Doesn’t being grown-up enough to go to college, drive, vote, serve in the army, mean you should be able to keep tabs on your class work, and not have to report in to your parents?

Colleges and universities all over the country are touting their accessibility to parents. They figure they charge so much, the people who pay ought to have front row seats! Even CollegeBoard.com added a parent site in recognition of the tendency for parents to “coach” their kids along. They’re pandering to the helicopter parents while denouncing them at the same time.

I never did ask for a pin number to access Alek’s freshman grades. We had cell phones, and e-mail, and my boy loved to call with a report of a good grade on a test or a paper. He’d also tell me about the “jerk” professor, which I knew enough to translate to a C on a paper. How much more did I need to know? Aren’t you supposed to go off to college and experience some ups and downs? Aren’t you even supposed to keep things from your parents?

And now the high school and junior high have on-line “parent portals” allowing us to have constant access to our kids’ daily assignments, and grades.

Three weeks into the first quarter after the portal was set up, I checked my kids’ grades. I tensed up, realizing I’d only be content seeing A’s and feeling irritation to see anything less. All you have to do is do the work to get A’s I argue. Of course when I talked to the kids, they looked at me as if my life was totally lacking fulfillment, that I was putting too much pressure on them to get A’s, and that in fact the grades I was seeing didn’t reflect final drafts or final tests or final anything.

In a futile attempt to express his exasperation with me, Hans actually changed the password to the portal so I couldn’t have access, creating a new password clue: “Ha”

I know now that it takes restraint to use the portal correctly, that is, you don’t fly off the handle if something hasn’t been turned in, or there is a less than desirable grade. But if I am going to avoid flying helicopters, it would be nice if I didn’t have a launching pad in front of me at all times.