Warning! Helicopter Parents at 1,000 Feet!
Take our multiple-choice quiz to uncover your preferred cruising altitude
6. If the deadlines don't kill you, will the rejections?
It's April: Two target schools said yes and two reach schools said no, while your child's No. 1 choice offered a place on the wait list. Your reaction:
A. You can't let your child be disappointed like that! The school screwed up! You place calls to everyone on the wait-list school staff you can think of to lobby on your child's behalf.
B. "You didn't get in where you wanted? Get used to rejection, kid. This is life."
C. Help your child recognize that even though she may feel disappointed, she still has options, and life does go on.
ANSWER: The impulse to protect our children from pain (A) may be understandable, says Rinehart, but "I don't know of a single admissions decision that has been changed because of an angry parent call." What parents can do is present a model of how to handle disappointment: not with blame and outrage (A) or school of hard-knocks cynicism (B) but with a measured overview (C) of what happened and what comes next.
7. Dollars and cents, or the money mind meld
And now comes news of each school's financial package—or lack thereof. You start crunching the numbers and declare:
A. "We can afford any of these schools. If we're paying, we choose the school—not your first choice but ours."
B. "Which school's cheapest? We have our beach house to keep up!"
C. "Let's look at the numbers together, so we can talk about the pros and cons of each school and each financial option."
ANSWER: "When seniors get to April and say their parents won't pay a school's tuition," says Thompson, the former admissions officer, "I think: Why didn't they have this conversation last fall?" Discussions should include budget parameters (B); who's paying (or not) for what (A); availability of scholarships or financial aid; and how location (near vs. far) affects transportation costs. That will make (C) part of an ongoing conversation that teaches your child about financial planning, family decision making, and fiscal responsibility.
8. It depends on how you define goodbye:
Your child is in his new dorm room; it's time for you to:
A. Move into your new house, minutes from campus. You'd miss him too much, and worry too much, if you were farther away!
B. Turn your son's room into your den.
C. Do the math: College semesters are shorter than those of most high schools; add up Thanksgiving, winter, spring, and summer breaks, plus long weekends, and you'll have lots of chances to be together.
ANSWER: Separation anxiety is understandable, but if you're not able to tolerate time and distance apart (A), how can you teach your kids to do so? Yet transitions take time, and an abrupt makeover of your child's room sends the message he really can't come home again. A middle ground (C) means understanding that dropping kids off at college is not the same as dropping out of each other's lives, points out Mike Riera, head of Redwood Day School in Oakland, Calif., and author of Staying Connected to Your Teenager.
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