A former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and New York Times best-selling author Julie Lythcott-Haims spoke recently at Barrington High School in Illinois lamenting that overly pushy and protective “helicoptering” parents are “ruining a generation of children.” Her remarks were quoted in the baiduhai on Oct. 19.
Lythcott-Haims is among a growing number of writers criticizing parents who have characterized high achievers under helicopter parents as emotional softies who still need their parents to make decisions for them even in college. She says that while these students are nearly flawless on paper, with top grades and test scores, they are in constant need of parental intervention when something difficult happens. She believes that these young men and women failed to learn how to cope with failure and disappointment — an inevitable byproduct of overly protective and pushy parents.
Her solution is to take the pressure off by broadening the selection of colleges in order to find a better “fit” that is not as competitive or admissions test driven as is Stanford and other top colleges. I assume she is on a book tour making the rounds of high schools and indirectly recruiting for “test optional” and “less competitive” colleges.
As a college consultant whose practice specializes in admissions counseling, I would love to debate her on that point.
While Lythcott-Haims makes a good point about finding the “right” college fit, let’s face it, the majority of students apply to state colleges, and money generally determines the “fit.” Affordability is the single biggest factor in college choice for most students. Those who work hard trying to make it into an elite college are aware of the high costs of education and hope to win scholarships to ease their parents’ financial responsibility. I doubt she is a critic of working hard to get a scholarship.
I respectfully disagree with her characterization that top-tier students raised under helicopter parents are overworked and “brittle and old before their time.” Nor are they “out of breath” — certainly no more breathless than their superachieving parents who hold top jobs or the assistant professors at the University of Chicago and other top schools who struggle to meet “publish or perish” deadlines in an effort to achieve and maintain tenure.
While most students will never set foot on Stanford’s campus because only a small fraction of students can expect to be admitted, those who are denied admission are no more disappointed and distraught than parents who fail to get an important promotion or a partnership at a top law firm.
There is a fine line between parents being involved and overinvolved. Competition can be a healthy thing that motivates a student to work hard and learning how to handle a loss is an important part of that. The stress of competition is best experienced at a young age, especially when parents can help to put it into proper context.
I tell my student clients that high school is like boot camp and that they need to be willing to make the effort to prepare for the SAT or ACT and submit college applications with well-written essays. The SAT and ACT are the purest, most parent-proof part of the admissions process. This is the one thing that Mommy and Daddy cannot do for you.
Those students who expect the college admissions process to be easy are trapped in the imagination of their own hearts. Their unrealistic expectations will not get them into college or sustain them when they are there. The more students learn how to study and compete in high school the easier it will be to deal with success and failure later on in life.
Gerald Bradshaw is an international college admissions consultant with Bradshaw College Consulting in Crown Point.
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