Helicopter parents and latchkey kids

Isabel back when I started this blog.

Over the past few weeks, people kept asking me how I felt about Isabel going to college and I would smile vaguely and say, “Sad, but she’s really ready to go.” 

The truth was I didn’t know how I felt.

On Wednesday, I went up to say good morning and see if she was all packed to leave for the airport and when I saw her there in her childhood bed, suddenly I knew exactly how I felt because I burst into tears. Her suitcases were lined up in the cozy room where she’d played in her dollhouse, read Beverly Cleary, had sleepovers, learned her times tables, sewed costumes, written college applications, dressed for the prom. . . 

Oh, it was so sad for me! I was abruptly and totally heartbroken. Eighteen-and-a-half years of cohabitation with this calm, thoughtful, lovely girl were over. I drove her to the airport and said a tearful goodbye. I would like to say I wept off and on for the rest of the day, but that’s a far too graceful term for what I did. I sobbed off and on for the rest of the day.

Do you know what was pathetic? Not the sobbing. What was pathetic was that I felt kind of ashamed of being so sad. I was especially ashamed of wanting to text her and see how she was doing that night. Ashamed of wanting to text her and tell her how much I missed her. Like, get a grip, Mom. At the back of my mind were two hideous little words that had never before made an appearance there: helicopter parent. 

I never liked that term, but I didn’t realize how much I loathed it until for a few fleeting moments I worried it might apply to me. What a contemptuous label to smack on someone whose attention to their child doesn’t fit your idea of what's appropriate.

Helicopter parents are the worst. They hover. They wring their hands. They noisily micromanage. The poor children of helicopter parents are (supposedly) flailing out in the real world because, among other things, their moms text them too much. Seriously. I've read this criticism of parents who text their college-age kids in about a half dozen different places. Eventually, it gets under your skin.

Meanwhile, the cool parents are raising independent “free-range kids," a term that brings to mind happy, organic chickens in a meadow with some buffalo under a big, blue, helicopter-less sky. Unsupervised, these kids learn to make their own decisions. They're taking the subway on their own. They're learning how to handle adversity. They're not being driven to soccer and ballet, they're playing stickball or roaming the woods. They're thriving. They probably don't even have cell phones.

When I was growing up, one of the snidest things you could say of a mother was that she was raising a “latchkey kid.” These pitiful creatures were on their own every afternoon while their parents were at work and this was considered a big problem. Unsupervised, they were forced to make their own decisions. They were taking the subway on their own. They were learning how to handle adversity. They weren't being driven to soccer and ballet, they were .  . . . well, back then it was assumed they were having sex and doing drugs. 

If you think about it, a free-range kid is really no different from a latchkey kid except, I guess, there's someone home to let the free-range kid in when she's done free ranging. Whatever that even means.

Parents are always supposedly screwing it up royally, one way or another. You can't win. And yet generation after generation, most kids have this way of growing up ok. All these labels and theories seem completely bogus to me at this point in my life, and yet there I was, hesitant about texting my own daughter.

Anyway. Wednesday was tragic. Thursday was better. Friday, I'm fine. I texted Isabel twice today, shamelessly.

***

I made these crunchy, chocolatey, peanutty bars and they are great but I’m not sure they're worth the trouble of tracking down the feuilletine and cocoa butter. If you have those two ingredients on hand, by all means go for it. 

I also made Laurie Colwin’s nutmeg cake for Isabel’s farewell dinner. It was her choice and a very good one. I hadn’t baked this cake in a few years and had forgotten how sticky, spicy, and delicious it is. I make it in a 9-inch pan and omit the cloves.