For helicopter parents, the torment comes as a sheltered generation of children head off to college

A recent front-page article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Surveillance Parents Face Ultimate Firewall: Freshman Year” described the difficulty – even anguish – some parents feel as their children go off to college and find it harder to to monitor them and help them from a distance.

I don’t blame parents for the fear and loss they feel at every stage of the parenting game. However, I blame a culture that has conditioned both generations to the idea that children who do things on their own will simply fail – or feel bad trying – and therefore need constant supervision and support.

The Journal article by Tara Weiss – who seems to have her finger on the pulse of modern parenting – quotes a mother in a support group of 24,000 parents on Facebook. The mother is “so worried about my child,” who, as Ms. Weiss puts it, is dealing with “a damp room, a broken laundry card and other little inconveniences.”

That this mother is worried – well, that’s sad. I wish she had faith that her child could figure things out. But the fact that someone else in the group chimed in: “I’m so sorry. It’s so hard on our moms’ hearts when they fight” – that’s not sad. This is actually a cultural artifact.

Years from now, anthropologists reading this thread will declare that this is the moment when the word “struggle” no longer means “a difficult challenge” but “a child doing everything without the help of an adult.”

Dumb down “fight” and you dumb down a generation. Another mother quoted in the article wonders what kind of device she could get for her son that would ensure he wakes up on time for class.

Hmmm. What kind of device could this be? It would certainly be popular.

And another mother – Go, Tara – told her support group that when she checked her phone at 1 a.m. to see where her son was, he wasn’t in his dorm room. Is it possible, she wondered, that the Snapchat map was inaccurate?

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

This type of worry, like many other worries, is best addressed through exposure therapy: dealing with what it feels like to NOT always check on your children. Experience how amazing it is to see them make it on their own.

Yet the universities themselves – like the enablers – have chosen to maintain this codependent relationship. According to one parent, The Ohio State University is sending home a flood of emails, including instructions on how to gently tell your child that the deadline to complete their schedule is approaching. You don’t have to say it so bluntly. “It suggested that parents might say, ‘Are you planning to add or drop a class?’” Ms. Weiss writes.

There’s even a club – of course there is – for college administrators who are responsible for parental communications. In 2009 there were 49 institutional members. Now there are 230. Meanwhile, the number of parents who interact with their college-going children daily has increased to 44 percent this year from 37 percent last year.

That’s quite a jump.

I realize that a simple text – “Are you interested in the play?” or “I hope the test went well” – is not a decisive factor for a young person. Just believing that our children need this kind of care to feel connected and loved is not true. Children and parents are more connected to each other.

And believing that children need our help to further replace a three-state laundry card is not a belief in anything other than our children’s cluelessness.

And if we can hold back and let our children thrive, college will soon change.

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