*This article was written by a member of the Her Campus VCU Staff who has decided to stay anonymous*
I love my parents. I really, truly do. We have pretty much always had great relationship, and I miss them something awful when I’m away at school. Yet, as an only child in an overly conservative, relatively well-to-do household, I have been unnecessarily sheltered for much of my 20 years of life.
My mom and dad are what some (including myself) would call traditional helicopter parents, meaning that they are always hovering; overseeing anything and everything that I do. On one hand, it’s nice. They always check on me to make sure that I’m doing okay, and a lot of times, when I’m having a bad day and feeling particularly lonely, all I want is to talk to them. However, on the other hand, their strict regulation of me is practically unbearable.
I hate to say it, but one of the biggest reasons I was so excited to go to college was to have real freedom for the first time in my life. When I am at home, I am told who I’m allowed to hang out with and when I can see them. Additionally, there are certain places around my hometown that I absolutely cannot go because it’s “just not safe,” no matter if I’m with 20 huge, husky guys or alone, or, if it’s in a great part of town. When I do hang out with friends, I am bombarded with countless questions. Although they’ve never explicitly said so, I think it’s because they expect me to lie to them, or disobey their rules. But I never have, and never will.
My parents always say that they trust me entirely, yet keep me on an incredibly short leash. Essentially, they talk the talk but do not walk the walk. There have been occasions where I am with friends having perfectly legal, innocent fun where I am genuinely terrified that my parents will show up for whatever reason and disagree with whatever I’m doing with my friends.
Maybe it’s my fault for being too honest with them, but, like I said, I don’t want to damage our relationship. I can put up with it. I just wish they would understand that helicopter parenting does not work. Instead of inspiring me to be the level-headed, cautious person that I already am, they’ve made me want to break the rules more than ever. Arguably, the appropriate time for helicopter parenting is the early teenage years, when kids tend to go a little crazy thinking that they’re already adults. That’s when they need supervision. When your parents have already acknowledged that you are a responsible, efficient, trustworthy adult, that’s when it needs to stop.