No Child Left Alone

I recently stumbled across a reference to the fact that several colleges have felt the need to hire security guards to keep parents out of some freshman orientation activities. In a brief and unsuccessful attempt to find out exactly which colleges these were, I discovered that most other colleges offered flowery invitations to parents of incoming freshman to attend their own parent orientations. I suspect that in most cases these are attempts to distract the parents while the matriculating masses are hustled off to undisclosed locations for the real thing.

Regardless of whether they resort to uniformed guards or poorly disguised diversions, obviously college officials realize that one of their first challenges is to pry apart the Velcro attachments that bind many parents to their nearly adult children. This should not come as a surprise to those of us who practice general pediatrics. But it does represent a significant change in parenting styles over the last half century.

When I was in grade school there were no such things as parent-teacher conferences. Communication between my teacher and my parents consisted of a few handwritten phrases on the bottom of quarterly report cards. No one would have ever imagined that someday parents would receive weekly or even daily electronic reports on their children's activities.

Parents ventured inside schools only when summoned by the principal or the school nurse. If your parent was seen in the school, everyone knew that you had a big problem.

But that was back when a small-screen, black-and-white TV was a luxury few families could afford. Today, parental involvement has become an integral part of almost every school system. Fueled by budgetary shortfalls, volunteerism has been actively promoted and some parents play an important role as teachers' aides and classroom assistants. Many parents spend a half day or more every week in their children's classes.

Volunteering offers parents an opportunity to see exactly what and how their children are being taught. For some parents it is a step in the process of separating that may have been difficult, particularly if they had been practitioners of “attachment parenting.” Some parents have grown to see themselves as a friend and primary playmate for their child. I can imagine that for these parents the chance to spend a few hours in the child's classroom can be comforting.

But, parents volunteering in their children's classrooms can have a dark side. I suspect you have seen it in your own office. In some situations the presence of the child's parent inflames a preexisting classroom behavior problem. In other cases a usually well-behaved child will exhibit an uncharacteristic behavior when his parent is in the class. The child may appear unusually withdrawn and shy or may act out and misbehave.

Another more serious scenario occurs when a child is struggling with separation anxiety or school phobia. For these children, the goodbye at the bus stop in the morning has been a painful parting that they have mastered temporarily. Once in school with the support of a knowledgeable and compassionate teacher, the anxiety has abated. However, the arrival of the parent-volunteer in the classroom later in the morning is likely to fan the fading embers of uncertainty into a raging inferno of separation anxiety.

One of our newest and most difficult challenges as new-millennium pediatricians is to help parents learn to supervise without meddling. As soon as I e-mail this letter to the editor, I'm going to cc it to the school board and suggest that they continue to promote volunteerism. But, tactfully encourage parents to avoid regular assignments to their own children's classes. If I'm successful, maybe one less college will feel the need to call out the troops during freshman orientation.

I recently stumbled across a reference to the fact that several colleges have felt the need to hire security guards to keep parents out of some freshman orientation activities. In a brief and unsuccessful attempt to find out exactly which colleges these were, I discovered that most other colleges offered flowery invitations to parents of incoming freshman to attend their own parent orientations. I suspect that in most cases these are attempts to distract the parents while the matriculating masses are hustled off to undisclosed locations for the real thing.

Regardless of whether they resort to uniformed guards or poorly disguised diversions, obviously college officials realize that one of their first challenges is to pry apart the Velcro attachments that bind many parents to their nearly adult children. This should not come as a surprise to those of us who practice general pediatrics. But it does represent a significant change in parenting styles over the last half century.

When I was in grade school there were no such things as parent-teacher conferences. Communication between my teacher and my parents consisted of a few handwritten phrases on the bottom of quarterly report cards. No one would have ever imagined that someday parents would receive weekly or even daily electronic reports on their children's activities.

Parents ventured inside schools only when summoned by the principal or the school nurse. If your parent was seen in the school, everyone knew that you had a big problem.

But that was back when a small-screen, black-and-white TV was a luxury few families could afford. Today, parental involvement has become an integral part of almost every school system. Fueled by budgetary shortfalls, volunteerism has been actively promoted and some parents play an important role as teachers' aides and classroom assistants. Many parents spend a half day or more every week in their children's classes.

Volunteering offers parents an opportunity to see exactly what and how their children are being taught. For some parents it is a step in the process of separating that may have been difficult, particularly if they had been practitioners of “attachment parenting.” Some parents have grown to see themselves as a friend and primary playmate for their child. I can imagine that for these parents the chance to spend a few hours in the child's classroom can be comforting.

But, parents volunteering in their children's classrooms can have a dark side. I suspect you have seen it in your own office. In some situations the presence of the child's parent inflames a preexisting classroom behavior problem. In other cases a usually well-behaved child will exhibit an uncharacteristic behavior when his parent is in the class. The child may appear unusually withdrawn and shy or may act out and misbehave.

Another more serious scenario occurs when a child is struggling with separation anxiety or school phobia. For these children, the goodbye at the bus stop in the morning has been a painful parting that they have mastered temporarily. Once in school with the support of a knowledgeable and compassionate teacher, the anxiety has abated. However, the arrival of the parent-volunteer in the classroom later in the morning is likely to fan the fading embers of uncertainty into a raging inferno of separation anxiety.

One of our newest and most difficult challenges as new-millennium pediatricians is to help parents learn to supervise without meddling. As soon as I e-mail this letter to the editor, I'm going to cc it to the school board and suggest that they continue to promote volunteerism. But, tactfully encourage parents to avoid regular assignments to their own children's classes. If I'm successful, maybe one less college will feel the need to call out the troops during freshman orientation.

I recently stumbled across a reference to the fact that several colleges have felt the need to hire security guards to keep parents out of some freshman orientation activities. In a brief and unsuccessful attempt to find out exactly which colleges these were, I discovered that most other colleges offered flowery invitations to parents of incoming freshman to attend their own parent orientations. I suspect that in most cases these are attempts to distract the parents while the matriculating masses are hustled off to undisclosed locations for the real thing.

Regardless of whether they resort to uniformed guards or poorly disguised diversions, obviously college officials realize that one of their first challenges is to pry apart the Velcro attachments that bind many parents to their nearly adult children. This should not come as a surprise to those of us who practice general pediatrics. But it does represent a significant change in parenting styles over the last half century.

When I was in grade school there were no such things as parent-teacher conferences. Communication between my teacher and my parents consisted of a few handwritten phrases on the bottom of quarterly report cards. No one would have ever imagined that someday parents would receive weekly or even daily electronic reports on their children's activities.

Parents ventured inside schools only when summoned by the principal or the school nurse. If your parent was seen in the school, everyone knew that you had a big problem.

But that was back when a small-screen, black-and-white TV was a luxury few families could afford. Today, parental involvement has become an integral part of almost every school system. Fueled by budgetary shortfalls, volunteerism has been actively promoted and some parents play an important role as teachers' aides and classroom assistants. Many parents spend a half day or more every week in their children's classes.

Volunteering offers parents an opportunity to see exactly what and how their children are being taught. For some parents it is a step in the process of separating that may have been difficult, particularly if they had been practitioners of “attachment parenting.” Some parents have grown to see themselves as a friend and primary playmate for their child. I can imagine that for these parents the chance to spend a few hours in the child's classroom can be comforting.

But, parents volunteering in their children's classrooms can have a dark side. I suspect you have seen it in your own office. In some situations the presence of the child's parent inflames a preexisting classroom behavior problem. In other cases a usually well-behaved child will exhibit an uncharacteristic behavior when his parent is in the class. The child may appear unusually withdrawn and shy or may act out and misbehave.

Another more serious scenario occurs when a child is struggling with separation anxiety or school phobia. For these children, the goodbye at the bus stop in the morning has been a painful parting that they have mastered temporarily. Once in school with the support of a knowledgeable and compassionate teacher, the anxiety has abated. However, the arrival of the parent-volunteer in the classroom later in the morning is likely to fan the fading embers of uncertainty into a raging inferno of separation anxiety.

One of our newest and most difficult challenges as new-millennium pediatricians is to help parents learn to supervise without meddling. As soon as I e-mail this letter to the editor, I'm going to cc it to the school board and suggest that they continue to promote volunteerism. But, tactfully encourage parents to avoid regular assignments to their own children's classes. If I'm successful, maybe one less college will feel the need to call out the troops during freshman orientation.