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My 17 year old niece has been "helicopter" parented by my sister for years. She constantly communicates with her daughter, does not let her make her own decisions, make excuses for her, and coddles her. Well, my niece got her first job back in late August, which I thought was great. She was a cashier at a local supermarket. Well, a month into the job and there was trouble in paradise, she kept getting in trouble for not having a balanced drawer. One of her co-workers training her told her "If you don't get your drawers straightened out, you will be fired." She came home upset and crying, and unable to deal with the situation.
If that was my daughter, I would have told her to try to focus more on her job and making change, ignore the other girl, and tell her that there will be naysayers in life. No, that is not what my sister did - she called up the super market and told them that her daughter felt "harassed" by the other girl and asked for another assignment for her. The store told her they need my niece as a cashier, and that there were no other open positions at the time. So, my sister quit the job for my niece because "they got her upset and made her cry."
I can just imagine what it is going to be like for my niece in the real world with all my sisters coddling!
Sounds like even the job was coddling her. I've never been a cashier but I have friends that were and keeping a balanced drawer keeps your job. One friend was off by $5 and almost lost her job.
One of her co-workers training her told her "If you don't get your drawers straightened out, you will be fired." She came home upset and crying, and unable to deal with the situation.
If that was my daughter, I would have told her to try to focus more on her job and making change, ignore the other girl, and tell her that there will be naysayers in life.
What?
Why would you tell her to ignore the coworker who was training her?
She needed to LISTEN to the person training her, NOT ignore her.
And telling someone that unless they do their job correctly they will be fired is NOT being a naysayer. It is telling the truth!
She would not have lasted a month around here... she would have been gone in a few days.
I agree about listening to the person training her...but what I am saying is to teach them people will say things, constructive or not. You can't prevent that.
I have moms bringing their 20 something children in to my clinic and they will not let the young men and women answer questions about their own illness. They stand next to them and hover and I have to negotiate around them to do the exam. How do they expect them to become independent and functional adults???
I don't know what to tell you, but I have a friend with a 20-year-old son and it's the same story. She's made every decision for her son and daughter their entire lives. While her son was in middle school and high school at least once every year she was communicating with the principal about someone (fellow student or teacher) who wasn't doing right by her son. She oversaw every schedule change and did every major project for him. He lives at home and is going to college and she still harangues him about going to bed, buys his clothes for him and does his laundry. He's never had a job and does nothing around the house--not even mow the yard.
When her daughter was in high school she dared to get a haircut while her mother was out of town and her mother was incensed when she came back and said it was a terrible haircut. I could go on and on.
The result? Her daughter is exactly like her mother. She's married now and expecting a baby, but she lives a mile from her mom and makes it clear that she never wants to live farther from her. She dresses like her mother, wears her hair like her mother and worries about the same things her mother worries about.
The son cannot make a decision to save his life. Three times he has been on the brink of moving out of town to go to another college and each time chickened out at the last minute, afraid it was a bad decision. His mother didn't want him to go, but claimed that she didn't discourage him. I know from her comments to me that she told him repeatedly that the classes at the other school would be much harder and he wouldn't know the professors because it was bigger and that he wouldn't get scholarships, etc. Then she complains that he can't make a decision.
He's a talented student and is looking at summer internships now but I don't know what will happen if he gets one out of town. I do a lot of smiling and nodding when she's telling about it all.
What the manager should have said from the get go is that they can only discuss employee matters with the actual employee and said that is all he/she can say and ended the conversation.
Hopefully your niece goes away, several, many hours away from home for college so she can learn some of these skills....
I teach a college-prep subject to students who have few self-management skills, although few have helicopter parents. When the district decided that all students would have to complete the college-prep curriculum to receive a diploma, I decided that the best preparation for college that I could provide them would be to NOT hover over them. I adopted the mantra "You're the captain of your own ship. You can sail it into the reef if you like." It's an extended metaphor that became concrete when the captain of the Costa Concordia sailed his ship into a reef while showing off and killed 32 people. I have his picture on the wall with my saying.
First term is now over and I have many seniors failing. I told one Thursday after grades were supposed to be locked that one of my hardest challenges is to stay off the students first term so that they will see what happens when they abandon their responsibility to learn French. I want them to feel the sting of failure, which is lessened by the district's decision to give all failures a 50 term grade, even the students who have literally attended the class ZERO times. (I have six of them and many others who have only attended once or twice.)
I tell the parents that their children need to learn NOW that they must take responsibility for themselves before they sign student loan documents that will lock them into repayments for college courses taken before dropping out due to low grades. I know from experience that most students will finally buckle down and learn enough French to pass by May. Those who have to come back for a second year of French I are among my best students. Nearly all of them this year have an A for Term 1. So I have to assure the parents that learning how to deal responsibly with failure is a critical part of being prepared for college, when they will be on their own to manage themselves. Thankfully, most of the parents understand and agree.
Parents who infantilize their children cripple them for life. Partly because I lost my father at an early age, I knew keenly that I had to be able to fend for myself if something happened to my mother. That mindset transferred into child-rearing practices where our children had to learn to make decisions and do things for themselves. I can't really comprehend the mindset of parents who treat young adults as small children.
Apparently more and more supervisors and professors of young adults are having to remind parents that their offspring aren't children anymore. Doctors should feel comfortable telling parents to step outside while they discuss personal issues with children who are experiencing the changes of puberty so that they can discuss their medical issues candidly. I hope that the current generation of parents wises up quickly and realizes that the best way to rear children is with knowledge and experience rather than hovering and coddling.
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