The Online Edition of the Annandale High School Newspaper.

The A-Blast

The Online Edition of the Annandale High School Newspaper.

The A-Blast

The Online Edition of the Annandale High School Newspaper.

The A-Blast

Overparenting affects students

Whether it is helicopter parenting, hover parenting, or curling parenthood; it all comes down to one thing, the recent phenomenon of “overparenting.” Helicopter parenting, the most common of the terms, is used to describe a parent who “hovers” over their children and becomes extremely involved in their lives. To a high school student, this means interfering in academic, sports, college and even personal decisions.
This type of overbearing parenthood has not popped up out of nowhere, but rather has been bred from parents in the 1990’s who were extremely anxious about the safety of their children. According to Time Magazine, the percentage of children walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. These children, affected by the parenting styles of the 1990s, are the present high school students still undergoing similar pressure and influence.

Many students find that it would be much more beneficial if their parents allowed them to make their own decisions. “It helps me learn to be responsible for myself and to mature a lot faster than if they were holding my hand,” senior Jake Dang said.

Parents do not only pressure their students in school, but also in sports. Senior Melvin Robinson has been playing basketball and football since he was a young child, mostly due to his parents’ influence. “When I was smaller they wanted to keep me out of trouble, so they said ‘Yeah you’re going to play football, you’re going to play basketball.’ It wasn’t a choice, I had to,” Robinson said.

Parental influence in areas such as this is not always negative. In Robinson’s case, he found that his parents’ decision, while frustrating at first, worked out for the best in the end. “Now that I look back, I’m glad for it because if I hadn’t played sports I might have gotten in trouble,” Robinson said.

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Some athletes find that their parents, while supportive of their sports decisions, pressure them to focus more on schoolwork. Junior Ahmed Bile, state champion in cross country and 14th place at the Foot Locker Cross Country National Championships, comes from a family of runners. “My father was a runner and won the world championships in 1987. Most parents, especially former athletes, would pressure their kids into doing the sport. I feel lucky because my dad is very supportive of me regardless and he enjoys that I’m running,” Bile said. “[My parents] care a lot more about my school work than my athletics so I feel more pressure at the end of the quarter than before a race.”

Helicopter parenting appears to be a rapidly growing and culturally acceptable phenomenon. Gone are the days when ten year-olds could ride their bicycles into town by themselves, but taking their place are a slew of new products designed to benefit the modern child. Mothers who simply want the best for their children provide a strong and loyal consumer base to discerning marketers, who respond with products like hypoallergenic bedding and socks, GPS devices for locating fast-moving elementary school students and test tubes that help determine whether an object is a choking hazard. No child is too young for extra protection, so helmets, kneepads and leashes for babies are naturally offered to keep infants from the dangerous and fast-moving world.

Even more excessive are increasingly popular specialized pre-schools, which offer courses like Mandarin Chinese to prepare three year-olds for the rigors of the competitive global market. The biggest issue is the pressure that some parents place on their pre-school children continues to follow them into high school and beyond, where their now-adolescent children are embedded with the perception that they cannot simply be a good student or athlete, they must be the absolute best.

High school and college professors often relate instances where parents have contacted them, appealing a grade or admission rejection on behalf of their child. The intense pressure put on many high school students have led college deans to develop the term “crispies,” used to describe freshmen who come into university already burned out, and “teacups,” for kids who enter college and break down under tiny amounts of stress. Helicopter parenting can even extend to the job market. Company managers admit that the parents of some young job applicants try to influence the interview process or negotiate salary issues for their children.
AHS students are not immune to the pressure that parents often put on high school students. Many students are pressured to excel academically and attend a prestigious university, and many parents also press their children to take more challenging classes and fill their schedules with extracurricular activities.

“I get a lot of pressure to take IB classes at home, because my mom was the IB Coordinator here for so many years,” Senior Eduardo Albright said. Albright is the son of former IB Coordinator Erin Albright.

Senior Ellen Dong also acknowledges that she receives academic pressure from her parents.

“My parents expect me to get good grades and get accepted to prestigious colleges and they would be upset with me if I didn’t. They would probably yell, or constantly nag me,” Dong said.
She also discussed the pressure that many Asian parents put on their children, which can be more extreme than parents with other backgrounds.

“In general, Asian parents do have high expectations when it comes to grades and college acceptance and they mostly only think about the prestigious reputation of the universities,” Dong said. “Most Asian parents don’t really understand or regard the process of learning, but just rather look at results. That leads them to only focus on the title or numbers for proof of excellence. It’s probably it’s due to the hierarchic structure of the society in certain Asian countries. That could lead them to be very competitive and focus on superiority. If you think about it, a lot of Asian countries are very small with a high population, which means that there are less opportunities for people to excel in their careers.”

Asian or otherwise, not all parents put excessive amounts of pressure on their children. Senior Georgia Garney, the president of the National Honor Society and an IB Diploma candidate, doesn’t describe her parents as overbearing when it comes to school.

“My parents will ask me about my homework and if I have done it, but they don’t nag me about it. They don’t expect be to get straight A’s, but they do want me to get more A’s and B’s; a C is unheard of. I take IB classes, but my parents and I never thought that I wouldn’t take them, and becoming an IB Diploma was my own decision,” Garney said.

Parents that do over-pressure their children, however, face consequences later. Studies have shown that hover parenting can have a negative effect on children, making them more neurotic, needy and dependent, and less able to function independently in the real world, according to a psychological study presented at the Association of Psychological Science Convention in Boston. Unless society takes a step backward, helicopter parenting seems to be a phenomenon that will continue into the foreseeable future.

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    Carli LoebFeb 2, 2011 at 8:00 am

    Great story! Well written and very in-depth

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    Bail Bonds San MarinoJan 21, 2011 at 12:15 am

    The A-Blast BTW I tried your rss link and it did not. I will try once more in a couple of hours.

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Overparenting affects students