When we go off to college it is expected of us to start living our lives as adults. We leave home in order to start leading our own lives and we have to let go of mommy and daddy’s hands.

In a brief three months we go from having a curfew and asking permission to deciding on our own when we feel like coming home and making our own rules. For some students breaking the cycle of having Mom and Dad around to lead us through life can be very difficult, but it can be even harder for the parents to let go.

Helicopter parents are interfering with our independence.

Helicopter parents are parents who struggle cutting the cord with their child when they move away from home. They continue to attempt to control most aspects of our lives and we as students allow them to do so. Calling your parents once a week or even once a day is acceptable, but when you are on the phone with your parents between every class or every time a problem comes up you are enabling them to still have control over your life.

We are depending so much on our parents that we are forgetting who is really responsible for your own lives. Us.

When we start becoming more independent our parents will in turn become, hopefully, less overbearing. When students have their parents solve their problems for them they never learn to solve the problem on their own. Situations have come up where students depend on parents to help them solve problems such as not getting jobs or good enough grades. What these students are not realizing is that this plan is completely backfiring.

If a student is getting a bad grade they should go to the professor directly and talk to them. Communicating with a professor yourself gives them at least one reason to think that you are taking responsibility for your own grades. When a parent calls in place of the student it can give a professor the idea that they are unapproachable to the student and they will likely have a worse reaction.

Having your parents do something in your place can also come off as irresponsible. This same concept stands true when applying for jobs. If an employer gets a complaint from your parents about you not getting a promotion it will be pretty safe to assume you will not be getting it.

Where does this behavior stem from? As we start growing up, while still living under our parents’ roof we refuse to take on more responsibilities. Mom will wake us up for school, give us lunch money, make sure we have our practice clothes and even find us rides to and from events we want to go to that night.

When our parents baby us all through life, facing the idea that we actually have to grow up and get “big kid” jobs can be very overwhelming. One of the main problems is that many colleges kids consider themselves just that: “kids”.

The fact is we are actually adults at the age of eighteen. When students still have the mindset that they are children they tend to act like them.

Students want the luxury of being adults without the responsibility. Why not take an advantage of having most of your problems taken care of by your parents. It can be a relief to know that if you slip up someone is going to be there to catch you. What is happening from this is that college graduates don’t know how to live on their own.

Getting a job has become so difficult that parents are even coming to job interviews with the students. If graduates don’t even know how to go out and look for jobs on their own I’m not so sure they did their job in college. This may very well be because Mom and Dad did a lot of that work for them.

Family is important to most people and I agree that having a good relationship with them is healthy. Having parents hold your hand through every struggle, however, can be harmful when it comes time to enter the real world. It may not be time to completely sever the ties with our parents, but it might be time that we get a longer leash.