Countdown to College: Snowplow parents getting in the way

I get it. I’m a few years past sending my kids off to college; they graduated in 2011 and 2013. But have things really changed that much?

It seems so when I hear stories of what some families are doing.

My niece is about to be a freshman at Elon University. She is very excited about attending, although with some very understandable and normal apprehensions.

A friend of hers will also be attending Elon, and her friend’s mom has chosen to rent an apartment in town, for the first month of school, in case her daughter needs something.

When my sister told me this, my reaction was “are you serious?” And the response was “Yes, and now she wants me to rent an apartment as well! She’s even playing the ‘If you were a good mother’ card!”

Thankfully, my sister put her foot down and explained to my niece that she would be just fine and there was no need for her to have her mother within spitting distance.

But this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of parents taking extreme measures. I remember reading how one mom insisted on sleeping on an air mattress in her daughter’s room for the first week of college. Wouldn’t you like to be the other roommate in that dorm room?

We’ve all heard about the Tiger Moms and Helicopter Parents, but a new moniker seems to crowding the field: “Snowplow Parents” – you guessed it – who are willing to plow down anything or anyone who gets in the way of their child obtaining success.

Yes, these are the parents who cause other parents, and even their own children, to roll their eyes in disgust, disdain and embarrassment. Snowplow parents terrify parent orientation leaders because they’ll hijack a discussion and drown out everyone else.

Kari Kampakis is the author of a great book called “Prepare the Child for the Road, Not the Road for the Child.” She is a proponent of letting kids experience failure.

She says, “When we clear the road for a child, we make their life too easy. We don’t allow them to build life-coping skills they’ll need down the road to handle life’s realities.”

She goes on to say that right now our children face “little league” age-appropriate stress, but very soon they will be moving to the “big league” – and if we don’t provide them with the tools to cope with the little stresses, there’s not much of a chance they’ll survive the big stresses.

The best advice is that preparing the child for the road means packing her suitcase with care: Put all the good stuff in, and make sure to save room for resiliency and character.

This story was originally published August 14, 2015 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Countdown to College: Snowplow parents getting in the way."