Whirlybird

Hello, helicopter parents.  I’ve heard a lot about you lately.

Protective, constantly in touch, always hovering around your children, negotiating their way, solving their problems.

I never could have been a helimom.  My children wouldn’t have let me.

From the day she was born, my daughter, Natasha was strong-willed and clear about her own limits and abilities.  And she certainly didn’t want any help from me, thank you very much.

Her favorite word was “self” – as in “I want to do it myself. ”

That is when she chose to speak at all.  Natasha kept determinedly mum for years. She would mime all her requests.  I knew she understood everything that I said to her, but she simply refused to volunteer any information of her own.

Finally, after two and a half years of the silent treatment, I was in despair.  As I was dialing the speech pathologist, she nonchalantly strolled in and had a pithy conversation with me.

Ha!  I knew it!  She could talk.  She just hadn’t felt it necessary to divulge anything of a personal nature until then.

When I signed her up for “three year old class,” a low key morning program at a nearby elementary school, she didn’t think much of that idea, either.  But she did agree to give it a test drive.

The first week of school, one by one, all the other mothers slipped unobtrusively out the class door.  But every time I tried to leave, Natasha would protest.  She kept an eagle eye on me to make sure that I was still in the room- with my foot on the rug no less- just to make sure that I wasn’t trying to make a break for it.

By Thanksgiving, when I was the only mother left, her teacher insisted that I adios the premises and leave her to the school’s good offices.

“Natasha, I am getting pressured from your teacher to beat it,” I reported.  “What do you want me to do?”

“Mom, when I am four I will go to school,” she solemnly assured me.  I believed her and withdrew her from three year old class.

“You’re not doing the right thing here, Mrs. Ross,” the principal scolded me when I delivered Natasha’s verdict. “You are teaching her to be a quitter.”

“She told me that when she’s four she will go to school.  I believe her.  She always seems to know her own mind,” I countered politely.

“You are only the mother, Mrs. Ross.  I am the professional here and I have seen this before.  If you take her out I predict nothing but trouble from here on out.  She will never go to school,” the teacher said direly.

(Author’s note:  Natasha has more degrees than a thermometer and is a first grade teacher at an extremely selective private school out east.  So, in fact, she’s still in school.)

I wasn’t helicoptering.  Just following orders.

My son, Nick, nineteen months younger than his sister, had no use for a helicopter parent, either.

He talked early and walked early and wanted out early.  He wanted limited parental speed bumps put anywhere on his world.

When the big yellow school bus pulled into our driveway to take Natasha to her first day of kindergarten, she hung back a little until she could figure out her next move.  As I was coaxing her gently into the whole idea, Nick eagerly dashed on board and disappeared into its maw.

I had to pull him off bodily.  He was miffed.

It was the same at Halloween.  Neither kid would let me be the overbearing helicopter parent, doting, or dressing them up for the camera.  I was lucky that they let me tag along.

After she passed the age of six, Natasha never again donned a costume of any kind.  I never once got to see her dressed as a princess or a bride or a little mermaid or a cheerleader or a ballerina, no matter how much I begged for the cute photo op.

To this day.  (See me later about the “bride” outfit thing.)

Nick loved the costume and the candy bit, but he never cottoned to the idea of ringing doorbells and waiting passively for the loot outside with me.  As soon as the hapless homeowner would open his door, Nick would bolt inside.

We tricked and treated in a pack of neighborhood kids and moms, and thus I wouldn’t notice that Nick was missing until three houses later.  I would have to double back and pull him out from under somebody’s grand piano.

Nick also liked his independence when it came to errands.  He would only do them if he could do them himself.

I have vivid memories of his riding his bike two miles into town to pick up a sports jacket that I had ordered at our dearly-departed  Fell Company when he couldn’t have been more than seven.  He peddled off alone, shakily signed the receipt, and rode back with the jacket hanging precariously off the handle bars.

He just wanted to be on his own.

And it was the same when he visited friends that he made at summer camp at their homes in Manhattan or Montreal.

At thirteen, he would jump out of my car at O’Hare- before I even had a chance to pull up to the curb.

With a two-suiter over his shoulder and without a backward glance, looking for all the world like a scale model version of frequent flier George Clooney in Up in the Air.

And this was in a world before cell phones.

I wanted to hover, honest.  I just couldn’t do it fast enough.

Only once did I put my foot down.  Nick had seen Lawrenceville, the boarding school in Princeton, New Jersey, and was all for it.  They admitted boys at the age of twelve and he was rarin’ to go.

Even though he was tall and mature for his age, I had to nix the idea.  I didn’t want him to leave home quite that young.  He would have to wait until he was thirteen, like his sister, off at school in Newport, Rhode Island and loving it.

Nick was disappointed that he would have to stay home an extra year but he took it with good grace.  But I couldn’t resist teasing him

“You know, Nick, when Douglas MacArthur went to West Point, his mother moved there so she could be with him.  Maybe I’ll do that when you go away to school. What do you think of that idea?”

“I have two words for you, Mom,” my son said balefully. “Menendez Brothers.”

May Day!  May Day!  Blackhawk down.