Helicopter parenting

Yes, Treetops, it's depressingly common, and has got worse over the last few years. It's quite rare now for students to come to open days unaccompanied - when I was a student we all went to open days on the train, then (probably when more families had cars) parents would drive them to the city and disappear for a couple of hours so that their children could go to the tours and talks on their own, but now they arrive as a family and it is the parents who ask the questions.

People complain that graduates are not what they used to be, and blame the courses, but as often as not they are far less resourceful and competent as parental coddling has meant that many have not grown up beyond the level of school leavers when they leave university. They have a graduate's academic knowledge, but not the maturity and independence that living away from home used to give them in the days when there was limited contact between home and student.

I am on a Uni site, and many parents seem to micromanage their children totally. From writing 'their' personal statement, taking their entire student loan and giving it back weekly as their child is dreadful with money...how will they learn to do it? One even phoned her DS tutor as she didn't think the course content was age appropriate - far too hard for a child! I asked if her son was a prodigy going to Uni early, no he was an Army cadet aged 19...

She wasn't alone and I started to wonder if I was the weird one...

I'm not a helicopter parent but I wouldn't allow a child to put out a request like that on Facebook and I hope that any of my grandchildren wouldn't be allowed to, simply because of safeguarding issues.
I know my DC did go and find themselves jobs when they were at school or college but it was locally and through recommendations of friends, or through knowing someone local.

The school should be arranging the placement if it is an official one.

Sorry about the garbled post - my spellchecker insists on inserting phrases that are nothing to do with what I’m trying to write. My eldest son is now a secondary school teacher - nothing to do with dairies at all!

This used to drive me mad when my sons were doing work placements. The system at their school was that the school found a placement, unless parents suggested an alternative placement. Both my sons ended up in primary schools, as those placements seemed to be the most plentiful. Many of my friends’ children ended up placed in businesses owned by their friends.

Mind you, thinking about it with hindsight, my eldest son did several years as an agency teaching assistant to make ends meet as a new graduate, and is now a on dairy school teacher. And the younger one was intrigued by the disruptive children he encountered in the school, and what caused their behaviour, and he went on to study sociology! So maybe the school placements were more inspiring than I realised!

We had a young lad on work experience in my office. The first day he read his novel all day and showed no interest in the job. The second day his mum rang up and said he wasn't coming in for the rest of the week as he didn't really like it. We no longer offer work experience

ExaltedWombat

No. Use any contacts and influence you can muster. Your job is to support a child as much as possible, not just throw them into the system with a 'you're on your own now, sink or swim' attitude.

I think there is a huge gap between micro-managing your children's lives, taking over when things get difficult, and 'just throw(ing) them into the system with a 'you're on your own now, sink or swim' attitude'.

IMO, it is our job to bring up our children to be independent and capable, and to give them confidence that they can do things for themselves. This is, of course, a gradual process, but it should be well under way by the time they are 15 and doing a school/work placement that lasts for five days. If it's not the perfect fit they will survive, and may well learn coping skills that will serve them well later on.

I once had a request from a parent to attend a work interview with a candidate! With regards to getting in touch with university professors, I would think that there's some point when individuals must be responsible for their own actions. What happens when there's trouble at work? Or with a partner? A parent can't always beat the path ahead.

Sago

*OP here* Interesting responses, thank you all.

Something that nobody seems to have picked up on is the fact the parent not the child posted the request.
I could never imagine me not saying to my child NO you put out an appeal.
As an employee, I wouldn’t take on a young person who had allowed a parent to do such a thing!

An interesting anecdote, a couple of years ago I was working on a project at a huge global company.
A party of about 12 pupils came in from a local 6th form college, they were having a tour then interviewing for an internship, there were 6 places on offer.

They were in reception area waiting to get in a mini bus to leave, one young man hung back and said to the employee who had been leading the group around “ We asked our teachers what we should wear and they said dress as though you were coming to college, that was a big mistake, I wish I had come looking smart like the staff here”
As the young men left, the employee said to me he has definitely got a place!

It was so uplifting to witness, I’m sure he will go far.

Sago - Well I picked up on your point that it was the parent not the child who put on the posting for work experience on FB. Some children under 16 haven’t got a Facebook account. But in any case if it had been the ‘child’ that had posted you can bet your bottom dollar it is the parent in a lot of cases who are behind the child posting the request. I know of a school leaver who got a plumbing apprenticeship through FB - the employer praised his initiative for his posting when I know for a fact it was his mother who composed the posting…. I probably would have done the same but then it pays to be a little be devious and not too up front . ?

They’ll probably have done as you suggested and also asked their parent to ask on FB if they’re not on it themselves.

OP here Interesting responses, thank you all.

Something that nobody seems to have picked up on is the fact the parent not the child posted the request.
I could never imagine me not saying to my child NO you put out an appeal.
As an employee, I wouldn’t take on a young person who had allowed a parent to do such a thing!

An interesting anecdote, a couple of years ago I was working on a project at a huge global company.
A party of about 12 pupils came in from a local 6th form college, they were having a tour then interviewing for an internship, there were 6 places on offer.

They were in reception area waiting to get in a mini bus to leave, one young man hung back and said to the employee who had been leading the group around “ We asked our teachers what we should wear and they said dress as though you were coming to college, that was a big mistake, I wish I had come looking smart like the staff here”
As the young men left, the employee said to me he has definitely got a place!

It was so uplifting to witness, I’m sure he will go far.

Are people seriously suggesting that they would not help out in looking for possible placements for their children?
Frankly I don't believe it.

I was surprised that my DD school didn’t do work experience at all, my three other children went to different schools and all did it.
I thought maybe it had stop for one reason or other. She is 18 now and just started university but didn’t get to try out the job she thinks she wants

I suppose that depends on an individual's idea of support.

No. Use any contacts and influence you can muster. Your job is to support a child as much as possible, not just throw them into the system with a 'you're on your own now, sink or swim' attitude.

coastalgran

In the latter years as a university lecturer I had to ask parents of 1st year undergraduates to leave the lecture theatre in the first couple of lectures their 18 year old little darlings were attending. One father insisted that he was only sitting in to find out if his daughter would be able to cope with the work load and if she had chosen the correct course. This is becoming more common especially among middle and upper class families.

Yes, that doesn't surprise me at all. I don't understand how anyone can think that this level of interference is 'caring' or 'doing the best for their children'. It might ensure that they get a job that the parent approves of, but it doesn't help them to build relationships or make the difficult decisions that fully-functioning adults sometimes have to do. On their own.

Every parent in my son's school organised work experience for their children via their contacts. The children wrote the supervised letters to the parents contacts. Unfortunately life is never fair. I have worked in the public sector and in the private sector. No matter what laws are in place, helping family and friends by letting them know of certain available options for employment has always been the case. Maybe it is not so glaringly obvious because of various smoke screens but I would suggest it has always been the way all over the world.

I hold my hand up - I helped arrange both my sons’ work experience at the age of 15.
I also had a hand in helping them choose their careers. They both left school at the age of 16 and now in their early 40s have done alright and have no problems making their own decisions. As we couldn’t have afforded to to pay university fees etc and neither of them wanted to run up huge debts they were happy to start work at 16 - they didn’t have the luxury of another five years to make career decisions. Both have gained degrees as mature students - doing it the hard way whilst also working but both had their uni fees funded by their employer….. so doesn’t seem the ‘helicopter’ parenting has done any harm.. I also know when is the right time to step back but we all need to parent as we see best and I don’t blame anyone posting on FB for help - I wish it had been available in my day.

In the latter years as a university lecturer I had to ask parents of 1st year undergraduates to leave the lecture theatre in the first couple of lectures their 18 year old little darlings were attending. One father insisted that he was only sitting in to find out if his daughter would be able to cope with the work load and if she had chosen the correct course. This is becoming more common especially among middle and upper class families.

Plunger

Maybe the child has tried but failed to get a placement as happened to one of my children. Another wanted to work in a very specific area and fortunately my partner's work colleague's husband worked in that areas: they were very lucky to get such a fantastic opportunity. If you can help I see no reason why not.

Agreed. When my eldest did work experience I left it to the school to organise. The students were asked to say what sort of job they wanted and my son said he wanted to work with computers, so they gave him a placement at Comet (because they sold computers). He enjoyed it and was chuffed with the £20 gift voucher they gave him at the end for being a good worker, but it didn't give him much idea of what it would like to work in I.T. support or programming.
When it was my daughter's turn for work experience she was interested in becoming a pharmacist so I decided not to leave it to chance and asked our local pharmacy whether it would be possible for her to do her work experience there. They agreed and liaised with the school to arrange her placement. She's now fully qualified with an MPharm. and works in critical care at a large hospital. I'm not saying she wouldn't have got there without the work experience but at the time she found it invaluable to help her decide if a career in pharmacy was what she wanted to do.

Not a hill I would die on. No idea how helpful their school is, or the circumstances. Maybe just a caring parent?

I don't think there is anything wrong with helping an adult child to get a first job (eg if you hear that a friend is hiring), but that is, IMO, very different from arranging a week-long work placement when they are at school. I think that they should be fairly shared between all the children - not arranged so that the best ones go to the kids with better off parents.

One of the problems with HPing is that their children never move out of their comfort zones, so they become less self-reliant as adults. I'm talking here about parents who ring a university to query a mark their student child was awarded for an essay, or who stay in their (shared) flat with them during Freshers' Week to check that the area, the flatmates and the nightlife are safe - that sort of thing.

Driving them everywhere in their teens, so they never use a bus or a train or have to work out how to get from A to B under their own steam, or checking their A level coursework before they hand it in, so they never know what they can (or can't) do themselves means that they start adult life without the skills to be independent or self-reliant, and does them no favours in the long run. It can also leave them doubting their abilities, which is disabling in itself.

In my experience as a parent/ teacher a long time ago the quality of work experience depends on the personal organisation offering. In the 70s when I ran one of the first work experience schemes it was a novelty for everyone and a great success, By the 90s when I was still involved through work and my son was eligible it had become a chore for everyone. It was off loaded to the careers service who knew nothing about the students and what they got was pot luck. I intervened and dot my son a place in a design agency which was at least useful for him to put on his CV for his career path. I also made arrangements for several students in my care. In my experience a bad or negative work experience placement can be worse than none at all so I don’t blame parents for helping their children if they can. Unfortunately this means it isn’t a level playing field as not all patents can/will help but that’s true in so many areas of life.

Maybe the child has tried but failed to get a placement as happened to one of my children. Another wanted to work in a very specific area and fortunately my partner's work colleague's husband worked in that areas: they were very lucky to get such a fantastic opportunity. If you can help I see no reason why not.

In my working life I was office manager of a large junior school. We regularly had requests from ex pupils to do work experience with us. I made an executive decision, when we had been inundated with these requests - no ex pupils, it's not work experience if you know the place, the people and the routine!!! We did take student teachers, young people doing childcare courses and pupils from other schools who had not attended our school. All agreed this was fair. I must say, although not the best pay for admin/finance work, I loved my job. The HT used to say "people think yours is a nice little job for a mum - they don't have a clue do they?!!!" Sorry, gone a bit off piste here!!