Absent and Helicopter Parenting - Real-world Examples

Often I like to spend some time on a post talking about something that has happened in my life or world and get some feedback from others. Today I want to talk about parents and parenting with two specific examples, both polar opposites in terms of parenting.

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Once I had a young student left behind after school by their parents. They came to the office and told me that their parents had forgotten to come and pick them up. Now this often happens and usually it is because a car has broken down or they are stuck in traffic and 98% of parents will phone ahead to let us know they will be late. Sometimes a student will be left at school as a parent thought, for some reason, that they were not picking them up or had to pick them up later which usually results from an internal family communication error and it is usually rectified pretty quickly with a phone call home.

Then there are the parents who deliberately leave their kids at school late and expect them to sit in the office for an hour as they have to work until 4pm and can't get their kids until then. I will politely call them and remind them of a thing called 'After-school Care' and they need to collect them at the end of the school day as a school cannot supervise kids, legally, after school unless the school is providing something extra-curricular such as sport or homework club. Normally, all issues of students being left behind after school can be rectified with a phone call and I have only come across one occasion where this has not occurred.

One afternoon a student came to the office and informed me that his Dad had not picked him up. As per normal process, we called home, however, could not raise any parent or emergency contact. After trying for an hour I decided to leave the child at school and knock on the door of the house to see if anyone was home. There was no answer so I returned to school to keep calling. After another hour I still could not contact a parent so I was left to my last option and that was to call the Police.

A student is still in my care until a parent or guardian collects the child. the police are able to take custody of a child and take them into their care if a parent cannot be found. In this case the police came to collect the child, only to have the parent also turn up at the same time, over 3 hours after school had finished. It seems that the child was supposed to go home with an older sibling, however, the older sibling thought that the younger one was going to a friends house, so didn't collect the younger sibling from the classroom and walked home. The child left at school thought Dad was coming to collect them and when this didn't occur came to the office for help. The parents phones were flat and so couldn't be contacted.

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Source

At the other end of the spectrum, the helicopter parent is becoming much more common. One such case I have come across is a student who was very anxious and hadn't been at school for a lengthy period. As the student had been so anxious and had previously experienced some difficulties at school, the parent requested that they could sit in the back of the classroom so their child would not feel so anxious. After politely suggesting that this could make things worse, the parent then requested if they could drop their child off at the classroom door and then sit outside on a bench and wait for them to finish! I then had to use all my wit and skill and talk through the need for the child to develop social skills and this couldn't occur if the parent hovered over them.

Eventually we had some success with the parent and the child is now a normal, active learner who attends school everyday without the need for a parent to be anywhere near the classroom.

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These are just two specific examples of parenting and things that can occur in schools.

Please feel free to leave a comment and your thoughts below.

Thanks for reading.

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Thanks to @ryivhnn and @bearone for the footers :)