They have been helicoptered into helplessness.
- I'm having panic attacks about the test. Please, Dr. B, help me because I'm terrified of tomorrow's test. Well, I tell them, it's a pretty small test, and you've been in class and I know you have a pretty good grip on much of the material. I know I know it, they say, but tests just really scare me. You have to take the test, I tell them. What if I don't do well on it? they ask. Then you don't do well on it, I tell them, but you have to take the test. They take the test, and get a 70. See? they say, I told you I couldn't do it. I don't know anything. I talked to my mom and she thinks I should drop the class and take it later at the community college near home.
- I can't go on the trip, Dr. B. I've been excited about it for ages, but I might not be able to handle it. Handle what? I ask. The trip. It's just too much. But the trip will be fun, I say, and there's work involved, but it's work you already know how to do. I can't handle it, Dr. B, it's just too much. You've already paid for it, I say. You can't get the money back now. I know it may seem overwhelming at first, but it'll be fun and you'll be with your friends and once you get going you'll realize that you can handle travelling. No, they say. I can't. It's too big. I feel like I might have a panic attack. I talked to my mom and she thinks this is too much for me and I should just stay home.
- I'm struggling on my paper and I might need an extension. I can't decide what to write about, and my dad isn't answering his phone. Well, talk to me about your paper, I say. Yeah, I'll talk to you and then maybe I can talk to my dad. Well, I say, the paper is for me, so while I'm glad your dad helps you think through things, maybe you and I can figure out what you can write about. No, they say, my dad always helps me with my papers.
- I just don't feel like I'm part of the campus, they say. Well, I say, at our advising meeting during orientation a few weeks ago, you were already starting to make friends on your hall. Oh, I moved out of the residence hall, they tell me. My mom didn't feel like it was safe enough so I'm living at home and commuting to campus. I never see anyone but the people in class, so I don't have any friends. I don't feel like I belong here. How long is your drive? I ask. An hour and a half each way, they tell me. And I get done so late at night, I get home around 10. I'm always tired, they tell me, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm just not cut out for college.
These are my students. They've been saddled with the worst combination of high expectations (anything less than an A or the top spot or a flawless experience is a waste of your time and means you're worth less) and low expectations (you can't be expected to try again because that would be too hard for you). It used to be one or two per year. Now the extreme cases are one or two per year. The ones who can't handle basic assignments because they might have a panic attack are up in my gen eds to three or four per class section, sometimes more. I can't. It's too much. I can't read a book and then answer questions about it, I feel like I'm dying. I can't get in a motor vehicle and ride to a place I want to see, it's too much. I might have a panic attack - I have panic attacks sometimes. I can't do this assignment. My mom agrees with me, she says it's too much for me. These well-intentioned parents have wonderful relationships with their kids. I've never seen kids so connected to family. They are crazy about their parents. They talk to their parents every day, in some cases many times each day. But they are not talking to their parents just to chat. They are asking advice on how do do basic things in life. And these kids are 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 years old. (1)
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| This rescue helicopter will save you from everything hard. |
There is a lot of talk in academia now about this helicopter generation. The trophies-for-everyone-in-the-league generation. The talent-show-with-no-contest-because-everyone's-a-winner generation. Those of us teaching them at the college level, where independence is key, have no idea what to do with them, except hold our ground on our standards and silently suffer with them while they struggle with ideas like risk and reward, or the possibility of disappointment, or figuring out what they do well and what they do poorly. They are having to learn, at age 18, that self esteem is built from accomplishing things rather than from just existing. They know, and some of them know it quite well, that they've been sold a bill of goods. But they don't know what to do about it. Having had their self-esteem shoved down their throats all their lives has resulted in young adults with low-self-esteem. Many of them have the same level of self-esteem they had at age 5 because their self-esteem has had no opportunity to grow with them, based on what they've accomplished. What they've taken away from all of it is that self-esteem is about feeling loved and appreciated, not looking at something they've achieved, however small, and saying "I did that." Reward is not associated with doing things, so they struggle to incentivize doing things, or to reward themselves when they do accomplish something. And their fear. Oh, their fear. Their fear is what undoes me, every time. I can't. I can't do it. It's too much. This thing I want so badly is too hard. It's heartbreaking. I don't need students with self-esteem that's been handed to them. I need students with the courage to do basic things like go to class and take a test on material they've studied for four weeks.
And I understand that the test-based, bottom-line curricula though which these students have come has been so monotonized, so robotized, so dumbed-down in some cases, that the fault lies in part with the schools. Here, everybody reach for this lowest possible benchmark and then we'll call you all winners because everybody's a winner. But these kids are not calling their old schoolteachers for advice on which test to study for first, or for moral support before going in to see their advisor for a conversation about which classes to take next semester. Some of them have had obstacles so completely removed from their childhoods that they now don't know how to overcome the dilemma of deciding which campus dining facility to go to for dinner without calling mom to ask her opinion (No, that is not made up. I have that direct from one of my students).
And so to the parents of my hyper-helicoptered students: SHAME ON YOU. Shame on you for letting your kids feel like things people have done for centuries and which you did when you were in college are too much for them. Shame on you for saying "Yes, baby, that is too much, come on home and I will hug you, and if it scares you then you don't have to do it." Shame on you because these kids are not being asked to handle snakes or ride motorcycles on twisty mountain roads with no guard rails. They are not being asked to discover a cure for cancer in a single semester. They are not being asked to write a scholarly book on Chaucer. They are being offered a good education. And it is NOT too much for them. It is hard. It requires effort. And there will be disappointments. There will be risks. They might even discover that they are really bad at something, and then they'll have to figure out how that works in their sense of who they are. They can do it. It's called growing.
I'm not talking about checking on your kids, or commiserating with your kids, or trying to be very positive with your kids so they feel loved and appreciated and hopefully recognize their great value in your family so they'll have a good self-esteem about the fact that they matter to you just by existing. That is not helicoptering. I hear friends worry that they're helicoptering their kids just by being concerned about them. Helicoptering is discouraging them from doing things that are hard, and encouraging them to find an easier alternative, especially if it means they'll stay closer to you. Helicoptering is removing from your kids' lives the risk of losing points or losing a contest or losing face with their friends even if winning would be awesome, simply because you can't handle their disappointment when they lose. You fear that they really can't handle their disappointment. You fear the world outside of your immediate sphere and so you discourage them from going out into it. What if they fall down? you ask. What happened when you were their age and you fell down? I ask you back.
And I know that I'm not a parent and babysitting and camp-counseling don't count. It's different when it's yours. It's so hard when it's yours. And I see the looks on my friends' faces when their kids are struggling and suffering. The pain my friends feel for their children is so excruciating that it shows in their eyes, even over little things like a really hard day at school (so a really hard year at school becomes a trauma my friends can't seem to shake, and I do understand). I see that they want to take their kids' suffering away, make it stop. And I remember, oh, so well, the awfulness of losing a game or not getting something I worked incredibly hard for - I remember that look on my mother's face. I know, at those moments, she would probably have rather it been games with no points or talent shows with no contests, because seeing me lose was completely awful.(2) My parents didn't remove obstacles from my life, though. And they are the reason I have the courage I have. And I've had panic attacks. Full blown, world-coming-to-an-end panic attacks. They suck. But you know what happens when you have a panic attack? You have a panic attack. And then the panic attack runs its course, eventually, painfully, and you might need help or medication, but then the panic attack is over and nothing has exploded or burned down. You had a panic attack. People have them. Everyone around you will understand. Oh, and by the way, you also might NOT have a panic attack. Lots of times when you think you are going to have one you don't. The idea of missing an opportunity you've looked forward to for months and paid a non-refundable fee for on the off chance that you might have a panic attack is total insanity.
This is everywhere, and I hear it from friends at every kind of school (including, btw, the community colleges to which some of our students resort as a refuge from the scarier schools, finding only that their fear has followed them to the place where they thought they'd find no challenges). I tend to see more of it because a school like mine, smaller and more focused on campus community and a nurturing environment, tends to attract students who are looking for safety in that environment, And I think we do pretty well at helping many of our helicoptered students find their way to living their own lives. There are the ones we can't help, in the end. Who go home because even though they've done all but 15% of the work for a class they just can't handle turning in that last assignment, and they think they'll just work or something and live at home or whatever. Helicoptered into helplessness.
Do not do yourself or your kids the disservice of thinking that they can't handle normal life and a great deal more. I'll tell you which students as a general rule are the most confident of all the kids I teach: the athletes and the theatre kids. Because at some point along their path, the games were for points and trophies weren't for everyone and not everybody got picked for the all-stars team, and not everybody got a part in the play and some people got parts they didn't want but they made the most of the parts they got and not every play won at competition. The students I see who are most successful are the students who have lost. Lost points, lost contests, lost games. They tried out for teams they didn't make and they've sung their hearts out for solos that went to someone else. And even the ones who hardly lost anything saw their friends try and try and not get what they wanted, and they had to learn to negotiate with themselves and their friends over that inequality. They had to learn to be okay with winning things their friends lost and losing things their friends won. (3)
And let's just get it into our heads, once and for all, that failure can be good. Failure can be GREAT. You know what happens when you fail at something? You try again until you figure out how to do it, so now you know how to do it not just instinctively but in a meaningful way. OR you realize you're not good at it and you stop wasting your time on it and go find something you do well that makes you happy. Obstacles are good. Courage isn't something that happens in the absence of fear. According to Dorothy Bernard, "Courage is fear that has said its prayers." If you want kids that need you to accompany them on their post-college job interviews, then please helicopter your kids. Yes, this is happening. (4) If you want kids who are confident, have self-esteem, and have a chance at not just making it through college but really getting the best education and the best possible experience at it, then teach them to say their prayers in whatever form that takes in your family, and then get out of the way so that they can fall down until they learn how to get up on their own, and until they learn that falling down is okay.
And, please, stop helping them with their homework once they're in college. For real.
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(1) There are, of course, students with genuine emotional problems and disabilities and there always have been, and I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a normalization of helplessness in 18-22 year olds, in which the kids never stop asking their parents for guidance about even the smallest things, and who turn to their parents as arbiters of life who will remove risk for them so that they need never face potential disappointment.
(2) I wanted to be a cheerleader. So much it was hard to breathe. I tried so hard, I took gymnastics, I went to a cheerleading camp before trying out just to try to be good enough. I wasn't. I was devastated. I think my parents may not have totally recovered from how devastated I was. BUT because I wasn't a cheerleader I was free to be on the forensics team and compete (sometimes even successfully) at speaking events, which had everything to do with how the rest of my life has gone. And my life is pretty awesome. Suck it, cheerleading. My parents stood by, clearly suffering with me, while I didn't get to have you. And it turned out I didn't need you after all. I'll bet every reader of this blog good money that if my parents could go back and fix things so that I could be a cheerleader, they wouldn't do it for anything.
(3) There are also the soldiers returned from war, who have no patience whatsoever with their helicoptered classmates. One of my National Guard students told me the biggest problem he sees with him and his fellow soldiers reintegrating into civilian/college life is not PTSD, it's dealing with the "whiny-ass kids who think an essay is the end of the world." Once, when a few students in one of my classes were in fits asking repeated questions over how to format an essay, and were working themselves into a good lather over how they couldn't be expected to put all the punctuation in the right place, and one of the girls was near tears, a 22 year old who had come back from Iraq with a burn on his hand that he couldn't talk about looked at me from his desk in the back row and silently mouthed "What. The. Fuck."
(4) "'Helicopter Parents' Crash Kids' Job Interviews: What's An Employer To Do?" Forbes Strategies 9/20/2013 http://www.forbes.com/sites/theemploymentbeat/2013/09/20/helicopter-parents-crash-kids-job-interviews-whats-an-employer-to-do/
