Helicopter Parent, Guilty as Charged

My baby birds have left the nest. I mean this literally. The baby bluebirds that hatched just before July 4^th weekend at our summer house are now off and on their own. On Monday I observed a bit of avian behavior that I have totally anthropomorphized. But I’m sure my interpretation is right.

My day began with my husband pointing out two juvenile bluebirds hanging out on the clothesline. Without the binoculars, they looked like fairly nondescript birds of a certain size, what a neighbor of mine calls “generic brown birds.” But through the glasses we could see what the bird books describe “telltale signs of blue in the wings and tail feathers.”

Their habits and mannerisms enabled identification, too. Just like mom and dad, the juveniles waited nonchalantly on the clothesline and then, spotting an insect, flew down, found their prey, and then resumed their clothesline stance. This continued for about a half hour. Then they flew off.

Soon after, mommy bluebird appeared with a big bug in her beak and waited on the clothesline. She looked here; she looked there; but no children appeared. Finally she dropped the insect and called—we rarely hear the bluebird call or song—but to no avail. The juveniles did not come. She spotted another insect, returned to the line, looked around, dropped it, called, and so on. This went on for fifteen, twenty minutes.

Well, I thought, the baby bluebirds are self-sufficient now, with a rush of a mother’s insight. However, mommy’s hormones are keeping her in mommy-mode. I told my husband I suspected she would keep up this behavior for at most another day until something clicked off in her birdbrain. And thus it happened.

We’ve now entered the weeks of the year when we don’t see much of the bluebirds, unless they do a second nesting. Our bluebirds' first nesting was so delayed this year—big fights with the swallows over nest boxes—that I’d wager this is a one-nest summer. Where exactly these birds go during this period has always remained a mystery. Perhaps as the weather gets warmer they fly a bit north. Or maybe they’re just hanging out in the woods, because come the end of August they’ll be back. Now, we’ve never “tagged” them, so we can’t be sure it’s the same ones year after year. But bluebirds are monogamous and tend to repeat behaviors. They’re also quite territorial, which may explain why we’ve never had two bluebird nests at the same time, although we have five nest boxes, yet our neighbors also have bluebirds. In the fall (and in the spring) we’ll see up to five or six birds, both male and female, at the same time, but by nesting time, we see only a pair.

If I sound hovering and over-involved with a bird species here, let me quickly assure you that I hover pretty intensely over my own young adult children, and I have in fact been intently involved at every stage of their lives. Although the pejorative term “helicopter parent” is fairly recent, Baby Boomers certainly exhibited the same traits twenty years ago that today’s authors describe, and, in fact, the term was first thrown at Baby Boomers. We had fewer options than today’s young parents when it came to classes and afterschool activities in the early years (Gymboree was only beginning, “Mommy and Me” classes only offered at a few forward-thinking Ys), but moms of today’s 16- and 17-year-olds are no less intense than I and the other parents in my cohort. We signed our kids up for SAT prep courses, read through the huge college books, drove (and flew!) to tens of colleges (even when the supposed prospective student was having a tantrum and wouldn’t get out of the car).

Many experts are making a decent living dressing down the over-involved parent. Just google “helicopter parent” and to view an impressive list of the CNN segments featuring talking heads from high schools and colleges bemoaning parent over-involvement. On the other hand, Lisa Belkin who writes the “Motherlode” blog for The New York Times, jumped to their defense (or at least defending the non-extreme version) a few months ago. (See http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/in-defense-of-helicopter-parents/), although, being a good journalist she also mentioned the arguments of social psychologist Susan Newman, the author of Nobody’s Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship With Your Mother and Father, who believes involved parents are doing their children a disservice. (But let me digress a moment and make a distinction: Lisa Belkin is a top tier journalist, Susan Newman is about a fourth tier expert.)

Yes, writing your child’s college essays is a no-no (though reading them and making suggestions, if your child asks is a yes-yes, in my book). I also think that many parents are too pushy about making sure their child is exposed to things that are supposed to make them smarter or more self-assured.

But I will defend any parent who shows interest in his or her child’s activities and feelings. I am a big believer in “family dinner.” “We have to have family dinner so you won’t do drugs,” I anxiously told my children for many years. It was supposed to be a quasi-joke, but I had done research and written on the topic and firmly believed that important parent/child bonds are cemented over the evening meal. (Although it’s the time together that’s crucial, I continue to wonder if the ritual of “breaking bread” also solidifies some kind of primordial family-making imprint in our genes.)

My children have matured into pretty independent souls and are quite responsible—most of the time. But I’m still their mother. I may be in the middle of a meeting when I’ll get a text that reads, “I just threw up. Should I call in sick?” My reaction? The meeting stops. I’ve always made it clear that within reason I will take a phone call or message from my family no matter what’s going on at work. The converse side is that now that my children (and husband) are rational adults, I tell them when I would prefer not to be interrupted and will ignore a phone call, IM or text unless they signal it’s urgent.

Still, in a lot of ways I’m still like that mommy bluebird with the insect in her mouth, waiting to cater to the needs of her children. Today my son called—did we have an extra microwave. Yes, in fact we do, having just replaced a counter-top model with an over-the-stove one, and he can certainly have it. And, speaking of food, my two young grown-ups still go grocery shopping in my refrigerator and cabinets, something I aid and abet by buying special items I know they like before they visit.

Sometimes, when I’m annoyed, I’ll grouse that they’re spoiled; ergo I spoiled them. But, as I firmly believe, you can’t spoil a child with love, even when that child is an adult. So, again, I will argue that involving oneself in a child’s life—even an adult child—has great benefits. You have to find the right balance, of course. For instance, it’s OK for a young adult to call his or her parents freaking out over something. It’s even OK for that parent to offer to come rescue the child because in my experience, and the experience of others who parent like I do, most of the time they just need you to know that they’re having a hard time, and then they can end up handling things. “Don’t you want to know why I’m never going to play the violin again,” my friend’s professional musician daughter exploded from 3,000 miles away when my friend begged off the call because she had company. My friend did indeed call her back a few hours later, listened to about an hour’s worth of rants and raves. But three years later, Emily is still a violinist. So let them vent.

But adult children sometimes need actual parental hands-on help, and expecting the kid to “tough it out” would be nonsensical or cruel. A friend of mine, for instance, recently took a day off from work to spend time with her daughter, who lives in another city about a two-hour train ride away, because the almost-fiancé had just dumped the girl. Over email. The poor young woman was a wreck—we all know how heartbreak goes, and sometimes a mother’s physical shoulder can be healing. Another friend similarly took a few days off to be with her son who needed minor surgery. Sure, one of his competent (medical student, even) friends could have helped him get back from the hospital and made sure he followed the doctor’s orders and cooked him meals and so forth—but what’s a mother for anyway?

We have to believe our children are like those “juvenile” bluebirds, able to support themselves and catch their own worms. So when an adult child tells you to bug off—the same is true for an adolescent—you bug off (unless you really feel your child is in danger. Then the rules change, but that’s another blog for another day). Bugging off isn’t easy. I probably am more upset than my daughter that her boyfriend’s new apartment is six subway stops, instead of six blocks, away. She told me to quit worrying, that everything is OK. So I have to believe her, and I’m lucky to have a blog where I can obsess about this. (Who will walk her home from the subway now at night? I could go on.)

I’ll probably helicopter away for a long time. I could shrug my shoulders and say my “birdbrain” hasn’t gotten the message. Except I really think I’m doing what’s best for my adult children—and what’s best for me.