'Helicopter' parents source of school pressure

As a former school principal of over 20 years, the only surprising thing about the issue of "pressure" at Naperville North and other high schools is that it's taken this long to come to the forefront.

However, what current administrators can't say is that the driving force behind all this pressure is the parents of these children. Helicopter parents are now everywhere starting from a young age. They don't allow students to fail or take responsibility for their actions. They don't allow them to be independent, to deal with their own difficult situations, or to accept consequences of their actions. From the parents, there is always an excuse or "it was someone else's fault."

When I was a principal, parents would berate me to place their child into a gifted or accelerated class even though the objective criteria that determined placement clearly indicated the child wasn't up to the task. On a regular basis, parents would call and tell me to tell the coach who cut their child to put them on the team or, if they were already on the team, to play them more. Once there was a student who was eliminated from a regionals spelling competition and said he was "confused" over the word he was assigned to spell. His parents quickly filed a protest.

The list of parents behaving irresponsibly goes on and on and on and most students are afraid to talk about the "pressure culture" at home because of the backlash they will face from the source of the pressure. Schools didn't create this problem. Today's overbearing meddling parents did and they are the only ones who can make it go away.

Stuart Young

Lisle