THE ICONNECTED PARENT
Staying Close to Your Kids in College (and Beyond) While Letting Them Grow up
By Barbara K. Hofer and Abigail Sullivan Moore
Publisher: Free Press
With all the gadgets and mobile Internet options available to us today, it is so easy to remain connected with our kids when they're not with us.
While this is a great thing, there is a tendency to over-parent our children and even mollycoddle them beyond the age of 18.
While parents may fear losing touch with their kids as they grow up, the exact opposite may be happening as parents remain too connected to their college kids via phone, email and Facebook.
This book explores several examples, in the United States, and shows us what journalist Moore and researcher/psychology professor Hofer discovered. Kids in colleges are not keeping in touch by calling home once a week. They now call daily! That may seem like a good thing but in fact it is one of the signs that they are ill-equipped to live independently and away from home.
This is the scenario after years in school where their parents were overly involved in monitoring their work.
If 10-20 years ago, our parents let us make our own decisions, today parents are there every step of the way advising and offering solutions to their children. As a result, children today are consulting their parents for every small issue in their lives.
The authors concur that while being connected with your kids is great, there is a time to let go and that is exactly what parents must do so that their kids can become adults. Failure to do so means that their kids take a longer time to become competent adults, make their own decisions and gain self-confidence.
In a survey done before and after a teenager goes to college, the authors found that most students assumed they would call their parents once a week. The truth was, they called their parents an average of 10.4 times a week!
While most of the teenagers expected to be free of their parents and to be free to make their own decisions at college, they were not disappointed later when they realised they were still relying a lot on their parents.
One student in a focus group even admitted that his mum had his course syllabi and called him regularly to remind him of deadlines.
What's more shocking is that nobody else in the focus group seemed surprised to hear this.
One suggestion that the authors make is that parents could make themselves less accessible so that the kids have to form new friendships at college and make new best friends, rather than still maintain mum and dad as their best friends. This will also force college kids to come up with their own solutions to small issues.
Another suggestion is that parents listen to the problems and instead of offering solutions encourage their child to find the appropriate resources to help them make their own decision. Sounds like coaching.
Additionally, the authors say that parents who think they are helping their kids by checking up on them and helping them edit their coursework are in fact robbing their kids of the motivation to work independently.
Is it any wonder then that their kids join the workforce and feel lost?
Letting go needs to begin when the kids are in high school (or in the Malaysian scenario, secondary school) as the teenagers are encouraged to take more responsibility for their lives. This is where parents learn to stop picking up after them, stop reminding them to do their homework and stop editing their homework.
The authors encourage parents to remember how it was when they were that age – homework was done without dad and mum reminding you to do it; parents did not edit your homework and certainly, you picked up after yourself.
In one case, in the book, a college couple broke up and the girl was so upset she bombarded her parents with calls, email and text messages. The mum visited her twice to try and help, to no avail. Finally, both sets of parents asked the college administrators to step in to help their kids!
How absurd is that?
Sadly, one educationist interviewed in the book pointed out that kids are whipping out their cellphones as soon as they leave class to call mum or dad, rather than interacting with the other college students who are walking right next to them. If this continues, imagine the loss in social skills!
Another point made by the authors is that parents should not be fighting their children's battles.
A big no-no is gaining your child's password for online systems and logging on to register or check things for your child. And, an even bigger no-no is doing your child's homework for him/her or even proofreading it. Educationists are in one mind about this – it is cheating.
Another trend is for parents to speak to faculty members on behalf of their kids. Can you imagine your parents doing that for you when you went to college? If you can't, then remember not to do that ….
While parents are understandably concerned about their college-going kids, they should also be aware that hyper-parenting can be detrimental to their kids' ability to grow up, take responsibility and make their own decisions.
It's great to have a close-knit family but it's crossing the line when you are still making decisions for your college-age child. You can be close to them and talk over the phone without giving all the solutions and fixing their life for them. The day they go to college is when they start learning to fend for themselves. Most kids will swim and not sink if you give them the freedom to try.
Technology is a great thing for keeping us connected but that's no excuse for hyper-parenting.
At the end of the day, parents have to learn to stop wiping their child's nose for them. And, teenage kids need to grow up and stop asking for mum to wipe their nose, or expecting it to be done when they sniffle.
Interesting, enlightening and shocking read. Highly recommended for parents of teenagers.