Terrible Things Helicopter Parents Do [Part 2] (r/AskReddit)

what is the most extreme example of helicopter parenting that you have ever witnessed on my first date which ended up being a friend date but that's a different story the girl brought her mum the mom bought both of this ice cream even though I offered to buy it and stayed with us for like ten minutes before leaving for 20 or so minutes and calling her daughter telling her she had to go and that was something 15 y/o genius girl arrived on our small liberal arts college campus her parents made her check in by phone every time she got back from classes randomly called during the evening to make sure she was still there had the raw spying on her every move and picked her up Friday at 2 p.m. she said that dad paid the phone bill so he could see every call she made this was before cell phones or the Internet she loved poetry we had a poetry slam on Wednesday nights at the student union cafe she wanted to go but they feared she would become too passionate in public she took a risk and went anyway they happened to call five minutes before she got back and then kept calling until she answered she told them she'd been in the bathroom but then they started calling her friends they'd made her highlight names in a campus student directory and in just a few minutes ago two well-meaning fellow student to admit she was at the poetry night her mom and dad showed up before midnight to move her back home we never saw her again I had a friend in high school whose mom was terrible every time there was a party and mind you most of my friends were Mormon so they were supervised appropriate parties she would come just to make sure her daughter wasn't getting into trouble she wouldn't let her watch pg-13 movies even at 17 had a strict curfew and became a constant and judgmental fixture at every social event one time she called me OS because she saw me kiss a boy at her school dance she wasn't chaperoning she was just there to watch her daughter the best story though was one time my friends and I went to my house to watch a scary movie sheltered friend comes helicopter mom shows up My dear mother distracted her in the kitchen so my friend could have a little piece and just be a teenager my mom later said she had no idea want to talk to her about so they talked about cats for two hours my mom is Assam your mom is aji I worked at a science museum that had hands-on for kids the aim of the game was for the child to solve a problem by themselves like can you get X to do why they make something test it and figure out how to make it better one day a woman comes in practically dragging her five-year-old son she sits him down beside me and starts poking me on the shoulder and I'm talking to another family tell my son what to do she says standing over him I tell the family to hold on a sec as I explained the challenge to the newcomer the whole point is to work autonomously so it was alright and I was used to working with a few rude pushy parents so I wasn't surprised I tell the kid the prompt tell him he had a wide range of materials but now the woman wants me to tell him every step of the process tell him the answer tell him the answer she says repeatedly grabbing his hands to make him fold paper or reaching for my own I start getting mad mom the goal here is to learn the scientific method make a hypothesis test it make conclusions and try again but you already know the answer she says tell my son or I'm calling your manager I don't even have a manager in the meantime the poor kid is looking so embarrassed ever time he tries to start something for himself his mom reaches for his hands and tells him to wait for me to tell him what to do the woman was so afraid of him failing when the whole point was to learn from one's mistakes I'm so worried about how he'll deal with mistakes growing up with her around a guy at my high school last year wrote some college application essays and after his parents read them they kicked him out of his own account changed the password and rewrote them entirely that seems illegal I used to teach lecture at a university I had one poor homeschooled student whose mother insisted on attending the university with him she enrolled in the same course and used to follow him around to observe his social interactions and dictate to him who he should be friends with etc but he had limited social skills as it was and this made it much much worse in the end I put them in different lecture streams so that they had to attend separate lectures and labs she spat the dummy and took me before the Dean to change them into the lecture streams but the Dean was pretty happy with what I had done a few weeks later the student came and thanked me personally one of the happier endings military recruiting the helicopter parents who would try to have us recruit their kid without their consent was staggering parents would call to make appointments for testing and were furious when we said we had to speak to the kid if the kid is a minor the parents have to sign a waiver and at that point we can no longer give any information to the parent so some parents would call and pose as their child in order to get test results book appointments and so on some parents even tried to attend the testing with their child and were furious when we said no then invariably when little Johnny got turned down for being a crap pump with no initiative we'd get an earful from mommy about how their child is the most special human being on the earth those were the fun times when I could say have you stopped to consider that Johnny isn't getting a job because he has no initiative or desire to be here based on a parent pushing him into a career he doesn't want rather than him being allowed to make his own choices usually didn't go over well and then I'd hang up Rowe I would have expected the helicopter type parents to want to keep their precious fragile children out of the military where they might be damaged when I was 15 the parents of a kid in my school year drove seven house to save their pride and joy from watching Casino Royale on the couches on or DVD player driving back from a school trip the best part about it is that he must have asked our teacher what the film was in advance and then told his mum I've got this vision of the kid stepping off the coach in a tuxedo with a martini in one hand and a ravishing woman and the other it is too late mother the damage has been done I work as over-the-phone tech support for a public university during the months of December and April Mays when I get the most helicopter parents each student has a security question attached to their account if this one parent was bound determined to get into his daughter's accounts as he kept giving incorrect answers to the question no correct answer equals no account info given comprehensive assistance given the call lasted for at least 30 minutes and included but was not limited to threatening lawsuits excessive swearing several pieces of office stationery being slammed into the caller's desk over and over the call finally ended with a swift pass to my supervisor who just repeated everything that I had said needless to say that as one of my first calls in telephone support this was definitely one to remember I understand that if you pay the bills you want some sort of access but all that we can legally give his joint access to the bill pay site I did the same when I was in college third day on the job I end up getting a call from a parent who wanted access to their kids grades I repeated what I was told FERPA be praised and the father kept raising his voice my supervisor came out and handled it they rated the guy for yelling at one of her employees great boss I miss her though an acquaintance of mine getting yelled at by her parents when she decided to get an apartment for herself she was 30 at the time I ran a kid's here to program so who wasn't a helicopter parent I had one kid who had a leading role two years in a row but didn't get a led the third year she was in our program she just wasn't the right fit for any of the parts we were doing Fiddler on the Roof Junior and her onstage personality was very diva but we did take one of the smaller roles named Tom's pisum and divide it into three and gave that girl one of the three the mom came storming in and demanded to know why her daughter didn't get a lead and how dare we give her a made-up role and how come a girl who had just joined the program got a lead because that girl was a perfect fit for the part it was just ridiculous and the kid ended up dropping out of the show I worked front desk of a hotel in a Big Ten college town in the moms in the lobby were discussing the college entrance essays they wrote for their kids to guarantee they'd get into the school my grandmother who lived with us did not let me walk up and down stairs and I was also not allowed to let shower water hit my chest she believed that if I either fell on the stairs or did them too quickly I would die she also told me that if shower water pounded on my chest it would destroy my heart and it would be my fault if I had a heart attack and died both of these were enforced rules amongst 10 million others in my house she did have a kid who had died of heart problems but the shower water thing is only an instruction for like right after open-heart surgery Jesus I was a manager of a bagel store had an interview with a kid I think he was about 16 his dad came to the interview and basically answered every single question I asked the kid at the end of the interview I turned to the dad and said you're hired look on his face was priceless the kid laughed his blood off probably an acquaintance of mine I have posted about it on reddit before a couple of times but he is pretty bad so I'll share it again - this guy knows that his son is going to be a great NFL quarterback the kid turned 10 recently and is a decent player but his father has him work with different trainers and spend hours each day practicing he takes vitamins has a special diet and isn't allowed to play other sports because his dad wants him to focus completely on football and doesn't want to risk an injury playing another sport that would sideline him for football he can't have sleepovers or do any normal kid things I know for a fact that the kid has told his father that he doesn't want to play anymore but the dad doesn't care he says that as a parent he has to do what is best for his kid my son's play sports too and they don't always want to go to practice so I understand making them stick with something they signed up for my kids know that they have to finish out a season but I am perfectly fine if they don't want to sign up the next season I just don't understand why someone would continue to sign their kid up for something they clearly do not want to do it's a situation that I can't see ending well reminds me of a freaky documentary called trophy kids it's about parents like the dad you described who see their kids sports talents as a meal ticket as someone who had very lacks parents I can see where a more firm approach to parenting could be beneficial to the child but these parents take it a step too far they're essentially insuring their child resents them later in life more extreme in the duration than the act itself my 71 year old grandmother still phones my 51 year old mother three times a day demanding to know where she is and what she's doing when my friend took her sons to a nursery the mother of a six-month-old baby had provided them with a multi-page manual of how to care for him I can't quite remember the details but she had either written out different types of crying phonetically with a chart of what each type meant or may have stood in the office giving her own demonstration of each cry it did have the benefit of making my friend who had felt a bit guilty about returning to work feel like an entirely normal and reasonable mother by comparison I was at a playground with my daughter two parents were following their similarly aged kid around staying within a foot of him at all times the entire time they were saying things like don't do this don't do that be careful this is too dangerous don't fall let me help you you are going to fall et Cie etc one their constant blabbering was annoying the heck out of me and to let your kid be a kid he will not die going down a four-foot slide I promise I've got him dirty looks from parents like that because my kids are all old enough from you to feel comfortable reading a book while they play but I'm apparently still supposed to be hovering around them don't worry judgmental mom Brigade I still look up at them every few minutes and listen to what they are saying to make sure they aren't being chutes my old room mates mom called me and basically asked me to parent him for her because I was the girl roommate when I was 14 I helped my sister film a project for her and her team mates when they were in the sixth grade they had to do a music video and switch the lyrics of a song to have it be science relay so they chose survivors the eye of the tiger and turned it into the bones of our body everybody came to our house and we shot the music video in one shot in our garage one of the team mates was this really quiet kid but still made the effort to sing along when everybody's parents came to pick them up shy guys mother insisted on watching the video it wasn't ready of course I still had to edit it but nope he ended up seeing the whole thing dangling through the camcorder screen and she didn't like it if she told me to film it again and to make sure shy guy came out more when some of the team mates left already but so everybody had to return to our house and film had gained the cause of a crazy lady oh yeah and she stood behind the camera to make sure that shy guy came out WTF she was a known psycho so we figured it was best to do it again to shut her up this kind of thing is probably exactly why he's shy he's humiliated by his own existence lest his mom come crashing in to ruin his life a college students parents renting an apartment in the city she was in school and so they could take care of her and she could live at home with them I worked in a school for kids with behavior issues these kids were typically aggressive and some would elope from the building parents usually signed the release saying that we could touch their kids for estrange purposes you have to remember that these kids would be out for blood during one of their crisis episodes it wasn't done for punishment only safety well we had one parent who wouldn't sign it because little Johnny didn't really need to be there since we couldn't touch him he could beat up on the teachers and nothing could legally be done we would just move out of the way one day he decided to leave the building and run down the road we called the police and said we had a kid who left the building and we couldn't get him back maaan was notified and johnny was brought back in a cop car she was irate over the situation and took him home for the rest of the day because she was scared he was traumatized in my first college course there was a 16 year old in my class and their parents sat through the entire lecture next to them the professor expressed his concern about her taking up a seat for a student in the mom immediately snapped at him about how she was paying his salary by enrolling her kid there and she deserved respect poor kid made no friends in that class the mom immediately snapped at him about how she was paying his salary by enrolling her kid there and she deserved respect except she's disruptive for the other twenty to sixty students who also paid for the course my brother had it pretty bad he ended up being locked in his room for the summer because he went to his high school grant party without permission he could leave for food or to use the bathroom he decided frigate and went to college far away he's doing extremely well for himself now he's in a fraternity and interning as an actuary oh no I teased the very scary pancake man comment him not scared to make him go away if you are new to the channel you can subscribe I publish new videos every day until then check another video or don't either way have a great day you magnificent people [Music]

Channel: Updoot Everything

Views: 131,645

Rating: 4.9177194 out of 5

Keywords: #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny reddit stories, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, reddit stories 2019, people of reddit, sub, memes, updoot everything, updoot reddit, story, stories, rslash, comedy, fresh, entitled parents, worst parenting stories, strict parents reddit, helicopter parent, helicopter parenting, reddit parents

Id: 1fRCmfRtBU4

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 12 2019