Archive for the ‘Helicopter parenting’ Category

Did the mom who had the Peruvian government track down her son go too far?

Monday, March 4, 2013 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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Garrett Hand and Jamie Neal were supposedly missing in Peru. (Courtesy)

If your son were biking around Peru with his girlfriend and keeping family updated on his adventures through social media and then suddenly stopped posting on Facebook, what would you do?

Would you contact Peruvian authorities and ask the government to search for your beloved son?

Francine Fitzgerald of Concord, Calif., did just that and now the world is laughing at her because it turns out that her son, Garrett Hand, and his girlfriend, Jamie Neal, were never really missing.

The couple from Oakland  changed up their itinerary and decided to hop on a boat and travel through the Amazon where they didn’t have a cell or Internet connection.

Over at Gawker a blog post covering the story ran with the headline: “World’s most embarrassing mom makes Peruvian government hunt down her son when he stops posting on Facebook.”

The story mocks the fact that our culture has become so dependent on Facebook that we assume something is catastrophically wrong when a regular user suddenly stops posting. We’ve all become used to having constant contact with our friends and family, through text messages, tweets, wall posts. When a friend who sends you daily texts doesn’t send a message, you worry: Is she mad at me? Was she in a car accident? Is she missing? The Gawker story also implies that Fitzgerald was the ultimate helicopter mom by contacting Peruvian authorities—but was she really overprotective?

If you were in this mother’s shoes what would you have done? You haven’t heard from your son in a month. He’s in some far-flung country. He’s not answering your phone calls, your emails, your tweets. Would you jump to the conclusion that he’s missing?

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Hand and Neal, both 25, were touring Peru on their bicycles, planning to ride the 350-mile stretch between Cuzco and Lima.

The couple from Oakland was regularly posting photos from their journey on Facebook and family and friends were closely following along. Then, in late January their walls went dead silent. They stopped making calls back home.

Hand’s mom was concerned and contacted Peruvian authorities, and after a month without a word from her son she demanded a full-blown search. The country issued a nationwide alert.

International news media picked up the story, running images of the “missing” couple, who look like your typical happy-go-lucky backpackers. Days later headlines reported that the pair was never missing and simply went off the grid.

The U.S. Embassy contacted Fitzgerald to let her know her son and girlfriend were spotted on a boat on a remote jungle river.

The Peruvian tourism bureau issued a statement:

These two young people have fallen in love with Peru. They have visited off-the-beaten-path places and it seems like they’re having a blast — so much so that they have forgotten to communicate with their families.

Fitgerald wasn’t convinced and demanded photos of her son. According to Gawker, “The tourism ministry made plans to send in a hydroplane the next day to shoot video of them.”

The authorities got more than video footage. They transported the couple to a military base, housed and fed them, and gave them an online connection. After a month, Hand and Neal hopped back on Facebook to tell family and friends that they are alive and well.

Neal wrote that the amount of attention she and Hand received was insane and added “I may delete my Facebook when I get home.”

The mom issued a statement:

I am so happy today that my son is well. Now our family will have to process all of this, and I think this will take some time. I can’t wait to see Garrett and Jamie walking off the plane and into my arms.

Can we judge this mom for worrying about her son?

It’s a terrible shame the Peruvian authorities wasted time and money looking for people who weren’t even missing and that family and friends and the entire world were led to worry over this couple who was simply exploring the depths of the Amazon.  But I can’t judge, as I’m a mother of young kids and don’t have the experience parenting a 20-something. I hope that by the time my kids turn 18 I’m able to let go and give them the independence they need to explore the world on their own—without reporting back to me on a daily basis through social media. I certainly don’t want to be one of those moms who demands that her college kid call home every day. Kids need freedom to grow, fail, learn, discover, succeed.

But I also know the terrifying feeling when you think your child is missing. When my son was 3 years old, I took my eyes off him for two seconds while shopping at Target and he wandered off. He was “lost” for what seemed like an eternity though it was probably only 5 minutes. I quickly recruited everyone in line at a dressing room to look for him and notified a Target employee. I cried out his name, tears streaming down my face, until I found him underneath the rack where I was looking at clothes. The concern around losing a child is intense and overwhelming and I think that fear can probably be ignited easily whether your child is 3 or 25. If my son were traveling around Peru, sending me emails daily, and then suddenly the communication stopped, I’d probably be concerned too.

College student wins stalking order against helicopter parents

Friday, December 28, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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A 21-year-old college student was fed up with her protective parents who sometimes insisted that she leave Skype on through the night to ensure she was sleeping in her dorm room. Aubrey Ireland went to court to request a civil stalking order against her parents and won, according to ABC News. Now David and Judy Ireland must remain at least 500 feet away from their only child.

Aubrey is studying theater at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, and her parents have been paying for the tuition, which costs over $60,000 a year. She says her parents were always overly involved in her life and the unhealthy attachment continued even when she went away to college.

“They basically thought that they were paying for my college tuition and living expenses that they could tell me what to do who to hang out with … basically control all of my daily life,” Aubrey told ABC News.

Aubrey’s parents live 600 miles away in Kansas yet often showed up in Cincinnati unannounced. Her mom insisted on regularly Skypeing and sometimes demanded that her daughter leave the program on all night so she could watch Aubrey sleep. The parents accused their daughter of doing drugs and being promiscuous and when they installed monitoring software on her phone and computer, she complained to the school Dean.

Of course David and Julie have their own side of the story and claim that their daughter is lying and used her acting skills to convince the judge.

“We’re not bothering her,” Julie told ABC News. “We’re not a problem.”

No matter, Ireland’s parents have refused to pay further tuition and they’re demanding a refund from the University of Cincinnati for this year. Aubrey has already obtained a scholarship for her senior year.

When I was in college I talked to my parents about once a month. My mom occasionally sent care packages, my dad letters. They visited on the annual parents weekend. I went home over the holidays, though by my sophomore year I was even spending my summers at school.

Today’s college kids have far more contact with their parents as a result of email, cell phones and texting.

Barbara Hofer, a psychology professor at Vermont’s Middlebury College and co-author of The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College (and Beyond) While Letting Them Grow Up, told NPR that college students communicate with their parents on average 13.4 times a week. Research in the 2012 book Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today’s College Student by Arthur Levine and Diane Dean reveals that 40 percent of college students call, email, text or visit their parents at least once a day.

While parents might offer helpful encouragement and advice to their students, they’re also never allowing their kids to stumble, fall, grow, and gain independence. College is a time when children can choose their classes, their friends, their clothes, their boyfriends and girlfriends, and they can learn from their choices, both good and bad.

David and Julie Ireland are obviously an extreme example of overprotective parents but if Aubrey is telling the truth and her parents are really installing monitoring software on their 21-year-old daughter’s phone, then it’s a signal to our society that things have gotten out of hand. Parents need to step back and let their kids make mistakes and find their own successes.

N.Y. parents want to ban ice cream trucks

Monday, April 2, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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The kids are all screaming for ice cream—but not their parents. They’re saying no!

Jamie Wilson

Some parents in Brooklyn’s tony Park Slope neighborhood are trying to stop ice cream vendors from hawking their cold treats to kids in Prospect Park, according to the New York Post.

Pushcarts and trucks selling everything from Italian ice to Nestle Drumsticks begin circling the park’s Harmony Playground in the spring. For some parents getting their kids a cone come April is a tradition, but a few members of the Park Slope Parents online group just wish the ice cream trucks would go away. These parents are tired of listening to their children cry, scream and throw tantrums when they’re denied a sugary ice cream.

“Along with the first truly beautiful day of the year, my son and I had our first ruined day at the playground,” A member of the group named Sarah wrote. “Two different people came into the actual playground with ice cream/Italian ice push carts. I was able to avoid it for a little while but eventually I left with a crying 4-year-old.”

Another mom Sarah Schenck shared with the Post: “Nobody wants to be a crank, but one in three kids are going to be obese or diabetic by high school,” she said. “When my kids see other kids get ice cream, they just start begging me. I just don’t think these are the fights we should be having.”

And another mom, who wanted to be kept anonymous for fear of being ostracized by friends, told the Post that there’s a group of parents in Park Slope who are trying to get the trucks banned. But this mom doesn’t agree. “People just need to say no,” she said. “I say no to him all the time, and I feel his wrath. But he needs to hear that no.”

I get these parents’ frustration with the ice cream trucks. Our world today is filled with treats and when you’ve got kids everywhere you turn there’s a candy dish or a birthday cake or an ice cream store. You’re constantly saying, “No!” or “only one candy,” or “just one piece.” I’ve listened to the loud, obnoxious cries of a 4-year-old who’s denied a Popsicle at the park. Just about any child psychologist will tell you that if you ignore your child’s whining and screams, he will eventually learn that there’s no reason to throw a tantrum every time he wants a Popsicle and hears the word “no.” And learning to take no for an answer is an important lesson for children.

And while I wish some of the candy dishes would go away, especially the ones at dentist offices (come on guys!), I think the ice cream trucks should stay. Parents need to learn that they can’t always change the world to make parenting easier. Sometimes they just have to suck it up and say “No!”

And hey, why not get the kid an ice cream every now and then. Any kid who has never shared a Drumstick with mom or dad on a hot sunny day at the park is missing out.

What do you think? Should ice cream trucks be banned?