School: Becoming Too Involved

Dr. A,
I have two kids in the Alamance/Burlington school system, and I like that parents are starting to become more involved in their children's education. However, not only is it difficult for me as a working adult to be constantly supervising and helping with their projects, signing off on progress sheets and assignments AND holding their hands through homework on a nightly basis, I worry that I am becoming a crutch for my children and hindering the development of their own sense of responsibility. Is there such a thing as being TOO involved?

~Involved Parent in Haw River


Dear Involved Parent,
Yes! There is a term for overly involved parents in every aspect of their children’s‘ lives, especially in schools. They are called “helicopter parents“ because they hover over their children, constantly micromanaging their lives like data on spreadsheets. They often expect perfection which puts children on a stress wire tighter than their parents’ obsessive/protective drive to create predictable outcomes in an unpredictable world. The result can often be disastrous sometimes causing extreme anxiety, angst, cynicism, and developmental disorders. I have to guess you are not this type of parent so I will address your question based on this assumption. Also, since you did not specify whether you are male or female, married or a single parent, I will respond to your question with some generic suggestions regardless of your gender or marital status. You didn’t mention your children’s grade levels, so I will provide feedback on reasonable parental school involvement which is pertinent to all pre-K through 12th grades.

First, a strong home foundation before any child enters formal schooling needs to be established based on the ethics of your faith with emphasis on character-building traits such as working hard through life situations (yes, even for pre-schoolers), perseverance, respect for authority, self-discipline, accepting responsibility, personal accountability, and self-reliance. In the pre-school years, if you are solving all your children’s problems and being overly protective - except in an emergency or when there is imminent danger for physical harm - you are enabling them to become dependent on you (or both of you) beyond providing their natural needs for food, water, shelter, safety, and unconditional love. Allowing children to work out things first before your intervention is crucial to their developing self-confidence, good judgment, self reliance, being prepared & organized, and self-discipline, all of which are the ultimate goals of parenting. These skills are enhanced through age-appropriate developmental responsibilities and accountability. A fair, reasonable, structured, and routine home environment provides children stability and an inner security before they go out into an unpredictable world. 

Assuming you and your spouse have already provided this foundation, the next step is to sustain your expectations through all grade levels with regard to responsibility and accountability for their own behaviors and work assigned at school. This means that your parental leadership must be based on your living the example of your expectations. It is not so much what you tell your children about living life as much as your actions which model the character traits and values you are trying to infuse within them. 

If children know you value lifelong learning, think positively about the schooling process, support their teachers and school administrators—even if there is occasional disagreement—then your children will have a more positive attitude about school at any level. It is important that they observe a unified partnership between home and school whose only interest should be to support every child’s academic, personal, and extra curricular achievements toward living a positive future as a responsible, caring, and competent adult.  

Continuous communication with your children’s schools is crucial to your knowing what is going on and what is expected of them on a daily and weekly basis (homework assignments, test dates, conferences, project due dates, PTO meetings, sports, clubs, special events, etc.). Much of this is now done online with hard copies sent to parents without home computers. In any event, you should set aside at least ten minutes a day with each child to assess how their school day went and what is due the next day and even a week later. It is also a good time to ask about their personal concerns which many kids regard as interference in their lives, but ask anyway. This process is called supervision and should be a daily ritual except on Saturdays when there is no school the next day. Also, don’t be deterred by an occasional resentful attitude from any child who is attempting to put a guilt trip on you for doing your job as a parent. This face-to-face, daily contact is critical to being an effective parent even when not school-related.

Remember, providing support does not mean doing children’s work for them. This only enables them to depend on your help which is the crutch you mentioned in your question. Only after they have completed all assignments—studying for a test, homework, projects—should you offer any advice or suggestions which they can implement at their discretion. Otherwise, most of the work turned in to a teacher is not a fair assessment of a child’s true ability. If any child fails to heed your parental supervision and tries to make you feel guilty for not doing his/her work, then he/she becomes accountable for the result of low grades or even academic failure. You cannot separate responsibility from accountability. To be inconsistent in this will teach children to procrastinate, become lazy, and learn to manipulate others to do their work for them. It will also inhibit their growth toward the maturity of self-reliance and accountability for their actions or inactions. By lessening your children’s dependency on you, they will develop faster toward responsible independence and also greatly reduce the time pressures you feel with an already busy life. They will not thank you now, but they will about ten years after graduation or when they become parents themselves!